A Very Happy New Year

May the best of your pasts be the worst of your futures. I hope everyone has a lovely new year.

What are we doing this weekend?

Why spending it with vampires of course :)

Hehe. The kid and I are in a mood to watch Forever Knight which is a show about a repentant vampire trying to make up for centuries of killing by becoming a detective. In Toronto. It's oh-so-cheesy but in a good way.

Gimme Some Meat

Tonya you might want to look away.

Mundane grocery shopping tonight. Nothing special. Needed stew meat :)

Ok wtf is this stuff?

So I'm leaving work tonight and I get to my car to find it covered in this... confetti type substance. It's like it snowed shredded cardboard just on my car. None of the cars on either side of my car had this crap on it, why mine? And just WTF is it??

I still have no idea but it makes taking driving pix difficult when the flash reflects off this crap.

Post Xmas

If there's one image that could sum up my family holidays this year, this one would be it:

Fast Food Sunrise

A shot of the sunrise over Amigo's.

I know. WTF right? Well I've been sick the past couple of days so I don't have pix. Will pick it back up when I feel better. Til then, I've got backups.

Christmas Aftermath

You spend so much time and tape wrapping presents and accenting the wrapping with frilly bows and ribbon only to have your floor end up looking like this:

Xmas Eve

On Christmas eve the kid and I spent the afternoon with the Gs. This year unfortunately everyone but me was sick with phlegmy colds :( Shannon couldn't keep her eyes open and my grandparents were hacking and coughing through most of the meal and present opening.

Actually Grampa's on the mend now, everyone else is a few days behind him in the "I'm soo siiiick" timeline. Here he is carving up the huge ham we had for dinner.

View from the pump

I hate gassing up the car. But at least I had my pump points! Yay Cheaper gas!

I love my job

My one complaint about Shan being the only clarinet in orchestra is that she's tucked up in the back with the other wind instruments and no matter where I sit in the auditorium, I can't see her play.

Today she played with GISH alumni in the halls this morning on the last day of classes and the paper was there to get pix. My favourite photog Scott snapped her playing and sent me the pic as a surprise. What a sweetie :)

So today's photo is courtesy of Scott Kingsley, photo journalist for the Independent. Thanks primadonna!

Let's be bad guys

Yeah baby!!!

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

The final orchestra concert of Shannon's of the year. This time everyone had their lovely black dresses and the boys were all in tuxes. It was quite posh considering :)

A very enjoyable show. The cam and I didn't take the best photo but I had raised it above my head to get the pic to try and avoid flash glare on bald shiny heads in the audience in front of me. Didn't work very well and the pic is blurry to boot. Ah well.

Last mouse

Jo made these cute little chocolate covered cherry mice which are totally delish. We're took home 5 or 6 of them and there's one left a little over a week later.
The prolem with these little guys is they're sooooo rich. Chocolate overload if there is such a thing topped with a succulent, sweet cherry. They're amazing.

Anyway today's pic is of one of them. Cute aren't they? :)

The Schoolmistress

She was in her first play today. Well, this weekend. There were three performances. I think she liked it :) If there's one kind of geek to be in school, the drama geek is the most fun. I loved it so much in school. Being surrounded by creative and fun people all the time, the crushes you develop, the exhilaration you feel when the final curtain comes down - the sickness and fear right before your cue, the long hours spent dressing the set and actors, more hours on top of that spent blocking and rehearsing.. God it was fun. I'm so chuffed the kid enjoys it too.



Shannon played the Schoolmistress in "A Christmas Carol." A small part to be sure, but frankly she was just excited to find she made it past the audition stage and had a part at all. The other girl in the shot is her best friend who played one of the businessmen discussing Scrooge's death during the future sequence.

I would put up a shot of her doing her part but it turned out too dark. Ah well. It was a good performance :)

The Christmas Chair

We didn't decorate this year. We're trying to find a new place to live and have beeen slowly packing things up so we decided not to put up the tree and lights etc. But I feel all weird about it.

So instead we have the Christmas Chair :) Shannon strung her "Last Samurai" swag lights that she received at the White Elephant party last weekend and I've put the pressies we have so far (more arriving this week. Bless online shopping) on it et voila, a festive chair. Fitting actually because I got that chair from Saint Francis a couple of years ago as the employee xmas gift.

Anyway, without further ado, the Christmas Chair:



Ignore messy house.

Moonlight and roses

Ok so no roses, but the moon looks really cool tonight.



Well, it looks cooler than this picture. It's crisp and cold, but with a light mist higher up so it gives the full moon a slightly ethereal quality. I love full moons.

Anyway, I had many opps for pix today but because I have a memory like a sieve, I left the camera sitting on my bed this morning.

YOUR willy?! MY willy!

Ahhhh The Full Monty. I love this movie and I had a craving for it tonight. So since today was a normal (read: boring) day where the only thing I really did out of the ordinary was buy some xmas pressies for Shannon (and can't put up a pic of because she reads this), here's a shot of the best scene in the movie (well, second best if you count all of the cast in the buff at the end :D)



If you haven't seen it, the boys are in line for their dole checks and "Hot Stuff" by Diana Ross is playing. They all begin subconsciously doing their strip routine while waiting in line. It's hilarious :)

The movie was big in England while I was living there which was fantastic for me because men in pubs would get totally off their heads and decide it would be fun to reenact the big moment :) I never saw so many willies waggling as I did that year.

Freaky weather

It's sunny, it's snowing. At the same time.



Tres bizarre.

Three times. That'll do.

Ok. So we went to Harry Potter one final time before it leaves town and we begin the wait for the DVD. It's just a lovely movie :) We like it anyway.



Was nice to see it in a virtually empty theater too.

Bleepin' Trains

I know it's not their fault and I know nothing will ever be done about it, but frankly today I'm freaking sick of the trains. No matter what time I leave in the morning to get Shan to school, I will a) be stuck behind Grandma in her big old Cadillac as she putters along ten miles below the speed limit, b) hit every red light along the way, and c) get stuck waiting on a fecking train. All of these add up to Shannon being late for school and in detention for it. I could leave an hour before she has to be there and she'd still be late.

It's really bugging me.



Oh I know I could pick a different route and avoid the train by taking an under or overpass, but even then the other two factors will kick in and we'll still be late. I can't win.

So flat

The driver's view of the long stretch of road between Lincs and GI. Sooo difficult to stay awake because as you can see, it's very boring and flat.

Everybody Loves Raymond

I love this cat. Jo's kitty, Raymond, has to be the softest cat I've ever felt. It's like petting air. He's also quite long :)

The Office Swarm

Man you put out a little bowl of choccies in an office and it's not long before the coworkers swarm :)

First Batch

So my Netflix movies came. Huzzah! Thanks again Gary :)

"Triplets of Belleville", "Priest" and "My own Private Idaho" were the first ones. I put Shannon in my account so she can have her own queue of movies and she chose Triplets - though I'd wanted to see it as well. She saw it in French class but couldn't really get into it due to all the distractions that come with watching something with a roomful of people. We dug it :)

"Priest" was cracked an unwatchable though, but Netflix will replace it as soon as I send it back. I'm not fussed about that.

This is going to be so cool.

Rerun

I just couldn't get round to snapping a pic today. Too many crazy things happening. So I'm putting up a pic of my lovelywonderful daughter whom I love beyond measure. She'll know why I'm doing this.

Xmas on the Cube Farm

Today I realized I had a little box of decorations that I'd put away from last year so I decided to stick 'em up. Tonya added her lights and a couple stockings, et voila! We're officially festive.

Happy Holidays.

/refusing to say the other greeting.

Netflix recommendations

I dig the Netflix recommendation system. You go through their movies and rate movies you've seen, and then they taylor a recommended list according to your ratings. It's been a cool way to find movies I may have forgotten I wanted to see :)

Anyway, It's windy with blowing snow yet again today and I'm tired of taking pictures of it. It was another regular old Monday at work. We retooled IndyKnow a bit, got some good ideas going, worked on ways to bring in web traffic etc. That was pretty much the highlight.

Anyway here's a snap of some of my recommends :)

Pick a door any door

Shannon had her first rehearsal for her first play today, only she had no idea which door she was supposed to go in to get to the rehearsal. Today's pic is her walking back to the car after trying door #4. It's Sunday after all and the school really isn't exactly open for business. After about 20 minutes and a few more doors later, we finally got the right one, tucked away in a corner, looking more like a janitorial entrance than one students might use.

Post-ditch

This is us giving up and driving home after attempting to drive to Lincoln. The snow won. The detour into a ditch was the kicker. Once some nice men pulled us out, we hightailed it home at a sedate 30mph.



Shannon braved the blowing snow and cold to lean out the window and grab the snap for me. It's on the road back to GI from exit 418.

Another first

Shannon as she signs up up for her first checking account.

Don't worry, she's had about three different people give her their soapbox lecture about being responsible and writing everything down :)

Ho - Ho - Ho

Today I lit the fake office plant. Now it feels more festive in here.



I know I said I'd do a Dinsdale's pic but I forgot to take it. I was too elated from finding out I didn't have to pay one cent for the repairs :)