EEEEYARRRRRRRRRGHKGHK GHK ghk ghhhhk

*breathes into paper bag*

Having a bunch of family come and stay for the Holidays is a lot like billeting a 3-ring circus. There's clowns, a ringmaster, jugglers, amazing animal acts, a slight of hand artist (who opened up my gas fireplace insert, changed the basic settings & rearranged the logs) and pickpockets (those would be my kids).

So it's been an interesting two weeks and I am just about done. Today I am down to one remaining houseguest - my oldest sister. As soon as the New Year is here I will have that ever-popular "so when are you leaving?" talk with her. I am SO ready to get my real life back! It was fun but now I am done.

I miss my bloggy friends! You guys:
1. never mess up my bathrooms
2. eat virtual food
3. entertain me all the time
4. don't need better pillows
5. don't complain that house is too hot when not complaining it's too cold.
6. do not spread your random junk food over my entire kitchen counter
7. need special beverages at all times
8. leave glasses, cups or plates all over the darn house
9. all talk at the same time
and have many other excellent attributes which I am too brain-frazzled to express at this time.

Next year, Mr Swami and I are going someplace tropical and not telling anyone where!!! Mwahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Things I Don't Like

About Christmas.

1. That stupid song about the red shoes for the dying mama. I just hate that one.

2. Ferrero Rochet chocolates.

3. Peanut brittle.

4. Mr Swami going to afterwork Christmas parties that don't include me and then missing Survivor. (Well, I have it on DVR but it's the principle of the thing.)

Only 4 things. See how tolerant I have become? Also, did anyone ever finally decide what this decade is called? The aughties?

My family arrives on Saturday afternoon. *hops* Boy do I have a lot of wrapping to do before then! Evidently, I went online crazy for the grandson. Packages keep arriving for him and I'm all like, "I ordered this? Really?" Lol...

Do Not Disturb (except for my bloggy friends) :-)

Today I am FINALLY! getting out my Christmas cards. Earler today I dug out my big Banker's Box of Christmas card stuff, wherein I save cards people sent me that I really liked, people's Christmas letters, envelope stick-ons, Xmasy newspaper clippings and the remainders of boxed cards I sent in the past but never used up.

At the very bottom of the box I found a complete box of addressed but never mailed Christmas cards! Lol - I had a year without Christmas and never even knew. From a careful examination of addresses and who my Evil Sister was married to at the time I have determined that the year I missed Christmas was 1999.

I have decided to blame Y2K hysteria. Remember Y2K? I was probably busy buying beans, toilet paper & batteries.

1999 was a great year. I was able to give all the pesky relatives I don't like rolls of toilet paper for a "gag" gift. That was so satisfying...

All I Want For Christmas

ia a really good haircut.

Winter Musings, pt I

I love it when the great rivers of the North ice over. It happens so quickly! One day they are ice cold water about the greenish color of old time coke bottles and the next day they are skinned over with thin, pale ice.

I have only seen a shore-to-shore ice sheet form once - and it is very quick, like a lightening strike. It takes just a few calories of energy to convert water at 32' to ice at 32', so once it starts and a small spot reaches the perfect conditions for freezing just the expansion involved in freezing provides enough energy to fuel further freezing - so a sheet of ice will just flicker into existance from nowhere. Way fun to see!

When the water is flat calm the sheets that form can be huge! I think most freezing happens at darkest night when the air is coldest and the breezes of daytime hve faded away.

Soon idiots will start walking on the too-thin ice. Total idiots; really stupid. It seems like every year we require one person to fall through the ice and perish - a sacrificial lamb as it were, to the gods of inadequate ice cover. Then people hold off walking on it again for a few days.

Milk & Bread

I hate grocery shopping in general, and more specofically I hate grocery shopping during holiday seasons. But for some reason I love going to the store on the cusp of a big snowstorm! It is so entertaining. All those people despirately buying milk & bread, just in case. The inane weather conversations. The total abandonment of parking etiquette.

Maybe I just like chaos?

Unsightly Christmas Corpses

DS and I were driving around town yesterday afternoon and noticed an awful lot of those giant inflated & lighted Santa / Snowman / Angel figures laying on the ground all dead & deflated. I think they are usually held up by blowers? And people must be saving energy by turning off the blowers except at night? Anyway - it makes for a very unattractive, Christmas massacre feeling that I do not find Jolly at all! If you have these yard 'sculptures', please do not let them lay there dead. Blow them up. Thank you.

This little rant is brought to you by a Christmas grinch who is probably NOT getting her 50" hdtv this xmas. The DD better smile at me an awful lot!

Who Needs a Ride?

I have been driving my D from dentist to dentist to oral surgeon and back again. This does not leave me any time for blogging or even life. She was real sick but she's better now. Driving sure takes up a lot of time!