Late December back in ’63. Or something. The title of the post is just what popped into my head while trying to think up a title.

It hasn’t been a crazy night or anything. The kidlet and I spent some time working on a couple of xmas pressies for a couple of rellies. This involved splaying ourselves on the floor and getting up close and personal with a dust bunny or two. I really need a new hoover.

We watched last week’s Bones beforehand though – nothing gets you into the Christmas spirit like a dead Santa. But man, is it me or is David Boreanaz just getting hotter? *fans self* Want.

So that’s our evening: Some Bones, some drooling on my part, and nicks and blood from cutting stuff for presents. Now the kid is practicing her bellydancing and I’m a-blogging. Soon I will be writing. Still quite addicted to Ficlets.com.

I was looking at some other ficleteers around there and they occasionally throw out challenges to the others. Those are fun to do – well, except the last one I did. The challenge was to write something – in descriptive detail – autobiographical. So I intended to either talk about the time we moved to England, or else how horrible junior high was. What I ended up writing about was the day Mom died. I have no idea why. I never talk about that day, or think about it if I can help it. I cant explain why I chose to write about it and put it out there, but I did so there you go. My subconscious must be trying to tell me something.

But aside from that, I like the challenges. Another one was to write the ficlet in nothing but dialogue and include a shocking twist of some kind. Mine didn’t come out right but I liked it anyway. Then there was the vampire challenge – now THAT was fun 🙂

I think tonight I’m going to pick a picture out of their stock images and write something for it.

And then I’m going to bed because I feel weird. Really tired and a little nauseous for some reason. I’d go to bed now but it’s not even 9pm. I’d be up at 3am. Ugh.

It’s been almost a year since we had the Big Ice Storm and now we’re smack dab in another one. I don’t think this one will be as bad, but I just returned from taking the kidlet to work and man, it’s very slick out there.

There was about half an inch of ice we had to chip off of the car. It was kind of fun though, especially when it came off in great big chunks. BUT, we wouldn’t have needed to do that if the garage door key hadn’t broken in half when we were unlocking the garage door to put the car away. We knew the storm was coming so we figured it would b terribly smart of us to get the car inside. *sigh* now I have to deal with the landlord and try to get a new key from the guy who still – a year later mind you – hasn’t given us a key to the back door.

Anyway, I took some piccies, but they don’t do it justice. The grass in the back looks really cool. Each blade is sheathed in ice. Makes a cool tinkly sound when you walk/slide in it.

Click to embiggen:

Hope that tree doesn’t collapse.

My sister is getting married next year as some of you know. But she’s doing it in Big Sur. The congressman she works for is letting her get married on his ranch there, which will be beautiful and as memorable as only a wedding next to the ocean can be. When I got married, we had a tiny little ceremony at Lover’s Point in Monterey and it was lovely. I have fond memories of it, despite how the marriage turned out 🙂

Anyway, that’s a different tangent. Kelly’s wedding posed something of a problem for me, namely, how the hell are we going to be able to afford to get to Cali for it? I love my job very much, but I mostly live paycheck to paycheck and being a single parent of a teenager makes it difficult to save. But I don’t want to blather about my finances. We’re ok, we just can’t do much fun stuff like travel to California.

It hurt Kelly wen I told her I might not be able to be at her wedding. It hurt me too. It’s been a big ball of stress weighing on me as I try and figure out a way to get both me and my daughter to Big Sur. Sure we have friends we can stay with – that’s not my worry. It’s the cost of a road trip, of gas, or of plane tickets. I just didn’t think I could do it and it broke my heart.

But last night, my cousin informed me that his girlfriend (who he’s been with for years and she’s part of the fam) has so many frequent flier miles built up that she’s going to give us the plane tickets out there. First class even! Of course, first thing I did was cry like a girl.

See, she flies a LOT for her job. All over the world. My cousin said she’s got enough flier miles to fly us all to Neptune if we wanted. Anyway, I can’t thank her enough for thinking of us and doing this for us. It’s so awesome.

So when I told Kelly we will definitely be there now, she asked me to be her maid of honor 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m full of win and awesome today 🙂 Thank you Rick and Paris 🙂 Love you guys.

I was poking around Neatorama this morning and came across a saucy little riddle from The Exeter Book. The riddle was written approximately 1000 years ago.

Swings by his thigh / a thing most magical!
Below the belt / beneath the folds
Of his clothes it hangs / a hole in its front end,
stiff-set and stout / it swivels about.

He’s oft filled it before. / Now he fills it again.

Admittedly, my brain flopped straight into the gutter. Those Anglo-Saxons were cheeky little monkeys eh?

The answer’s in the comments btw. Just a bit of fun to start the day 🙂

I don’t have much of anything new to report. Just figured I’d pop in and blather on a little bit before bed.

It’s that time of the year when the xmas commercials start up (they aren’t irritating you yet – that comes in about a week and a half) and everything gets festive. The kidlet and I usually put up our decorations the day after Thanksgiving, but this year, she had to work (a first!) and so did I (not a first.) So we haven’t done it yet. We’ve got to give the place a top to bottom cleaning as well since my lovely sister and her honey will be here over xmas. Really looking forward to that. We also need to find a weekend between now and then to go to Lincoln so we can hang with Aunty Jo and fam.

Oh, I will be shifting ukmelia.com, 24addict.com and minimelia.com to a new server in the next couple of weeks. For years my best friend and her hubby have hosted my little sites and I am eternally grateful for that but he’s closing down his server and my babies need a new home. Truthfully, it will be nice not to have to bother my Chickie whenever the server goes wonky – I always felt bad when that happened. Now I’ll just have to deal with tech support and I know how to handle those guys 🙂

Speaking of the kid’s website, I installed WordPress for her to use to blog. It’s pretty shiny stuff and I hope she likes it. It will allow her to do more with her own site and while I will always love Blogger, for her, WP is a better fit. Now I just have to nag her to blog. Fancy that 🙂 I can’t imagine not wanting to blog.

I know I go in spurts here with my posts, but I’m always blogging somewhere. I love it and think everyone should do it.

I should hit the sack now, it’s getting late for a school night 🙂 One last thing tho – wanted to say a huge WOOT to my favourite set designer whose show got picked up for a full season. So… WOOT! 🙂 Now if the talks end well – and soon – in the WGA strike, then maybe the ripples won’t be as bad as they could have been and everyone can get back to doing what they do best – entertaining me. 🙂

It’s the Day of the Turkey and stuff(ing) so it’s that time when you talk about things you’re thankful for and all that mushy stuff.

So here’s the superficial, fun stuff I’m totally happy about:

– XM Radio and Netflix.
– The fact that I can spend a bday gift certificate on something totally silly like a vampire puppet and my daughter doesn’t laugh too hard at me.
– Cherry Blossom lotion and jasmine perfume
– Buffy, Angel, Firefly – oh hell, Joss Whedon is my God now.
– Swag
– Starbucks venti mochas
– The Internet. Without that I would not have a rockin’ job, would not have above-mentioned swag, and would not have met so many completely awesome people.

And here’s the mushy stuff:

– My daughter. She is the coolest, smartest, funniest, loveliest person I know and she makes every day of my life a beautiful adventure.
– My family, old and new. They all mean everything to me. Some peeps who stop by here might not know the story behind the ‘new’ family I’ve got so here’s the short version: I did not know my biodad growing up (but just fyi, my stepfather was amazing and I miss him every day.) and about 6 years or so ago I looked up my biodad’s email online, found him, and wrote to him. It went well and 6 or so years later I’ve got a bunch of new relatives who’ve welcomed us into their lives and I love them all dearly. And this Christmas, my sister and her fiance are coming back here and I get to introduce them to my cool aunt and her gorgeous family. It’s gonna be spiffy 🙂
– My evil cat Spooky is secretly pretty loveydovey and cuddly. She rocks.
– My job that I love so much that allows me to write and get it published, learn new tricks, and work in a field I adore.

There’s more I’m grateful for of course, but I’ll keep that stuff to myself. Happy Thanksgiving to anyone stopping by here – even you pervs who think I’ve got pics of areolas somewhere on this blog 🙂 (Seriously, I love my statistic info. It’s great reading.)

There is nothing better on a Sunday morning that smelling the smell of fresh cinnamon raisin bread baking while some french vanilla coffee percolates. MMmmmmmmm it’s so lovely 🙂

I’ve also started enjoying getting errands done in the early morning hours on a Sunday. It’s nice to go to the grocery store (a chore I normally despise) when hardly anyone is around. Even Wal-mart seems empty and less frantic during that time. This morning, I was off to the paper to put my column online. No one ever strips the TV column for online because usually it’s just a wire piece. But when we write one in-house, no one includes it. So since this column was on the strike, and I wanted fans4writers peeps to be able to read it, I had to make sure to get it online.

Other than that, it’s definitely another gorgeous lazy Sunday in this house. Shannon is busy teaching herself how to quilt (working in a fabric store has had this affect on her) so she’s been cutting and measuring and sewing all morning. Weird hearing the sounds of a sewing machine in this house because I can’t sew to save my life.

I had to make a bag in Home ec back in high school. A plain old two handled bag. I got a C on it. I just don’t have the patience or talent. I can sew a button back on and that’s about the extent of my abilities. But Shan’s really taken a liking to most things crafty and it’s fun to watch her create stuff.

She just came in to show me the second block of fabric she’s sewn. I can’t wait to see the finished quilt! Her first quilt is going to be a gift for her French teacher whom she adores and will have taught her for four years. See, Shan didn’t stop at the required two years of French class. She’s taking it all four years. My girl wants to be an Etymologist when she grows up (that’s words, not bugs 😉 ) so she is planning to study quite a number of foreign languages.

Great for me because chatting to her in French has helped me remember the language myself. I took it for 5 years, then I had a friend who grew up in Morocco so she helped keep me from going rusty, and then when we lived at the pub in Engerland (ugh looking at that site I built in 1998 makes me cringe. Wish he’d let me redo it now I’m all professional-y) some of the staff that lived with us were French and so I enjoyed listening to them bitch about the rest of us not knowing I could understand them 🙂 Muahaha I’m evil.

Anyway, I’ve got zero plans for the day apart from watching various episodes of Angel for the hell of it, and making a batch of Spaghetti later.

I love days like this.