Hello New Jersey!

To Jersey and back today... I have been actively, um, NOT looking forward to this trip for multile reasons(let your mind run wild on that one) but I must say: it wasn't too terrible. The weather wasn't too bad and the meetings were productive. Sucks that the meetings ran long--ousting our shot at driving through The City, waking up at 4:30 was miserble , and we are on track for a 5 hour flight home (as a reference point: this AM flight was 2.75 hours. Return flight has had the honor of an hour ground delay and headwinds blowing against us at 150mph resulting in 4 hours on the air. I'm pretty sure I could almost be to London...

Incidentally... There is no in-flight entertainment for the way home and my computer battery is dead. In case you were counting, that=3.5 more hours of sitting on a plane, worn out tired and staring at the seat in front of me (I've already flipped the airline magazine twice-before we took off)

Thank B'geezus for my iToy or someone (me) would be UBERcranky right about now. Other than typing this post, I'm trying to figure out if I'm already too dehydrated from the day.... Or if I should just say "eff" it, and bottoms-up.

Hmm....

Never a good sign....

*bing bong* (flight attendants' voice over PA)

"If there are any medical professionals on the plane, will you please hit your call button"

Cookiethon 2008

Another memorable Christmas cookie-thon came and went... dozens of cookies baked and the neighborhood was treated with ~5 hours of fresh cookie sented air.

The night was capped off with puffs of powdered sugar falling from the sky. And that MUST have been what it was, because we all know that it never snows in Austin-- and certainly not in December. But sure enough-- freezing rain, sleet- and yes, SNOW -- fell in the ATX that night.

Office Humor

One of the funnier random things I've seen posted in the office and I finally had to (momentarily, of course) snag it and scan it for your viewing & entertainment, dear blog friends.




Enjoy it's depth, honestly and the truth it reveals...

Scary, huh?

Happy Friday! =)

Jingle, Jingle...

Playlist updated to include my *favorite* Christmas songs now.... Woohoo!

Jingle jingle could also refer to the new roof we got today =(
I'd like to say we 'could have done without it' ...but we couldn't. Our year old roof was totaled by the insurance company from the hail storm last May. (booo!) BUT - they did finish in one quick day (YAY!) BUT, they realized that the roof of the cabana needed new decking (not covered by insurance, booo!!!) BUT... I picked a new color of shingle, much darker than the old one and i like it MUCH better (yay).

Merry & Bright

Mission Accomplished! I'm feelin' it (the Xmas Spirit, that is): the house is decorated, attended a Christmas party- in Christmas-y clothes- that turned into a late-night dance party (nice...) and I even took pictures for and designed our Christmas card. Woohoo. The Holidays have officially arrived.

Tomorrow night: Christmas Cookie-thon


(that is my tree in the background...)

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas.

Friendly Reminder: It is a Small World

...too small for road rage. (This is the "Airport Story" from Thanksgiving)

road rage (noun) uncontrollable aggressive behaviour by the driver of a road vehicle, especially when caused by stress or frustration

Road rage: Babylon English-English n. act of violence committed out of frustration about traffic or driving conditions.

Road rage is the behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle, which thus causes collisions or incidents on roadways. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.

So we were heading to the airport and decided to park in long term parking over Thanksgiving. YEA for the holidays starting!! Not being familiar with that lane at ABIA, I got into the far left lane which, as it continued on, turned out to be a shuttle lane. Opps- signaled to the right, started to cross the stripe to get over and ***honk*** WHOA- angry drive to the right. WHOA- he yelled something nasty and flipped us the bird (no, we were not inverted). Unnecessary! Mr. Price and I were shocked, but laughed anyway. Really, dude. So in our shock and hysteria of laughing at... let's call him Mr. Angry, shall we?...Mr. Angry, wouldn't you know- he cut us off! Jumped over into the left lane as he apparently decided to park in long term parking too. HAHA!! Mr. Angry who wasn't okay with a signal and a slow drift into his lane totally cut us off! So we laughed even harder then made faux-angry faces at him a the Quadruple-Flip-Off (which = all 4 hands *briefly* waving at him). Bouncin'' down the road.

Awww... he slowed to get his ticket to go into parking and we wondered if we would get a good look at Mr. Angry. Nope! Though we went into the lane next to him, he hurried on through.

As soon as we get into the parking lot, we notice that not only are many lots already full... there are flaggers every 50 yards or so, waving us on. Uh-oh... we are prolly gonna have to park next to Mr. Angry... as we weaved through the parking lots the flaggers got closer and closer together and sure enough- just like at a concert at The Backyard - we were flagged into a specific parking space **right next to Mr. Angry!!** A little uneasy that he might come out swinging- but we didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

Park. Engine off. Mr. Price hops out of the passenger side and with a big grin says "guess we didn't exactly get off on the right foot, huh?" ---Here is where Mr. Angry starts to realize it is a small world and maybe road rage isn't such a good idea--- "Oh, yeah" he mutters, "guess that wasn't exactly the best reaction."

"No worries!!" I beam, "we flipped you off too, when you cut us off a few moments later" and shrugged my shoulders.

Continuing to get our luggage out of the trunk, he had gathered his and was about to walk off when he stammered, "I guess I should have known you guys were going to get over. That shuttle lane it tricky and I've done the same thing before. " We double-"don't worry/no problem-ed" him and he walked off.

This could have been the end. Oh no, not done yet.

Another shuttle pulled up but one of the flaggers yelled to us "We've got more space on this one! You two can get on here..." Of course. So on the shuttle we go with our new friend, Mr. Angry.

Loaded up and headed to the terminal: still having a grand 'ol time and thrilled for a quick holiday, Mr. Price and I are laughing on the shuttle and have all but forgotten Mr. Angry when half way to the terminal.... Mr. Angry slides over into the seat next to us.

Got to give him full props. Maybe he should be called Mr. Not-So-Angry at this point. We received a heartfelt, tail-between-legs apology and something about how "it's easy to forget that it's real people in the car as you drive down the road." He really shouldn't have behaved that way and was embarrassed, etc, etc. Bless his heart. We accepted his apology, told him it was okay and not to worry about it, then to have a great holiday.

Smooth cruise through the airport and 30 minutes later, we're seated and ready to go. Sure enough... who walks onto the plane but: Mr. Angry! He apparently saw us first because by the time we saw him and smiled, he was already ready with "yes, I figured you would be on my flight. It's a small world..." as he was turning red.

I replied with a quick, "sometimes you can make friends in the most unlikely of fashions!"

Good times.

Lesson learned.

too busy for words

words on the blog that is. this is kind of ridiculous: blogging takes next-to-no-time to do, I enjoy doing it but my number of posts has totally tanked lately. this is bull.

another thing i love and has totally gone the way of the dodo: my THING is to decorate the day after thanksgiving. i love it. Friday morning and i'm blasting Burl Ives through the house and am decking the halls. anything that doesn't move gets holly, ornaments or those cute little PB cranberry wreaths. not this year. not yet this year, either.

it's like i'm in some weird kind of twilight zone where thanksgiving has already passed, Christmas-y things are going on and i'm not cursing them for being too early... but there is no sign of the event hitting my home.

sure we were out of town on for turkey day- but we came home that night and had entirely too much wine at my brother's house.... which left me extremely useless the next day.

while i'm griping about my own shortcomings: my midyear's resolutions... may as well get it this all out and over with now:
junk in the...

1. ...inbox: unopened emails has ballooned from 3,020 to 4,679. no credit on that one.
2. ...trunk: haven't worked out.
3. ...attic: haven't made any progress there, either
4. ...fridge: um..... (searching for something to qualify here....) i did clean out the fridge! but that wasn't the issue, it was being more organized about menus and i started the effort, but nope. no credit. big red "X."

So i guess i'm glad i don't 'do' new year's resolutions, because i clearly bombed my mid-year attempt.

In closing, I make this commitment: Tomorrow night, Me, a cup of hot chocolate (spiked with peppermint schnapps), and a ridonkulous amount of decorations.

It's on.

Reasons I was speeding

(written while waiting my turn at the downtown court house).

1) everyone else was
2) I was late for work
3) I didn't see the cop
4) it was a pretty day
5) It had been at least 5 years since my last speeding ticket
6) I had never waited around @ muni before....
7) I needed to take defensive driving anyway to lower my car insurance bill

They called 419!! That's me!

Christmas Cards from Aunt Emmie

I've been taking some pics for (other people's) Christmas cards lately and took three of my absolute *favorites* yesterday, so I thought I'd share some Christmas spirit.

And let me just say this: people who think there is 'economies of scale' in having multiples-- are mistaken.

That and: damn they're cute:







Faith (whispers) "I'm ready for my picture... cheese."


Ava hollas "I'm part of a group? I'm Part of a GROUP!"


Claire asks wide-eyed "Aunt Em-lee, can I have candy now?"


Little Madeleine-lou-who from Whoville: