2007: A Recap

We're nearing the end of 2007, and I decided to take a few minutes to reflect on the past year. I have to say, it was one of the best years I've had in a very long time. Allow me to recap the highlights for you:

Even though I was technically finished my grad school classes in December of '06, the graduation ceremony was held in February. So I started my year by graduating with my masters... and a 4.0 . And I don't feel bad bragging about that, because I worked my ass off to get it.

Also in February, I threw myself a graduation party. I figured I earned it, especially considering I hadn't done anything special for my previous graduations. It was a kickass good time.

In April, I was in yet another wedding (number three!)... and despite the drama preceding the Big Day, I had a good time at the ceremony and SO much fun at the reception. And I LOVED my dress.

In May, I bought a new car. I'd wanted to buy a red SUV for ages, and I finally decided to do it. And I'm so glad I did. It's an awesome car.

In June, I got to visit my dear friend Bonnie (and her husband Mitch) in New York. While I was there, Erin went into early labor... and her and Mike welcomed Henry Michael into the world two weeks early!

In July, I took the trip of a lifetime... three weeks in Australia! It was an amazing trip. It wasn't exactly a vacation, because I was there to chaperone a boychoir. But I had the BEST time getting to know the boys, hearing them perform, and seeing the sights Down Under.

Also over the summer, I threw three awesome parties. A Memorial Day party in May, the Wild West Bonanza in August, and a Kill the Booze party at the end of the summer. All good times, as always.

In September, Sam and I started looking at apartments... and found one! So at the end of September, I finally moved out of my parents' house!

And not a moment too soon... because in October I turned 30. The big 3-0. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And I got to eat fondue!!!

In November, Sam won tickets to see Dane Cook. She took me, Karen and Joe... we got to ride in a limo and meet Matt Cord and hang out in the press box with Preston and Steve. And Dane was hysterical!

Then this month, Sam and I threw our first party in the apartment. We packed the place with as many friends and family members as possible. Good stuff indeed.

All in all, it was a fantastic year. 2008 is gonna have to work awfully hard to top it. I'm ready. Bring it on, bitch.

I’ll be home for Christmas

This was my first Christmas away from home. It was interesting. I wrapped all my presents in the apartment and transported them to my parents' house on Christmas Eve. We had our annual feast for Christmas Eve dinner - all sorts of yummy Ukrainian foods, including borscht, pierogies (potato and sauerkraut), and buckwheat (which I refuse to touch... just the smell turns my stomach). After the extended family left, my parents and I exchanged presents with Doug and Jill. They went back to North Wales that night and then to Jill's brother's house on Christmas Day. It was the first time Doug and I didn't open all of our presents on Christmas morning. But it wasn't so bad. I stayed at the house (on the sofa bed... ugh...) and my parents and I exchanged presents in the morning. It was different without Doug, but at least we got to see him the night before. It's all good.

It's funny how much your presents change when you get "old." And how excited you get over things you would have tossed aside ten years ago. This year I got a battery operated screwdriver, an umbrella (auto open and close... yay!), flannel sheets, a bottle of blackberry brandy, perfume, flavored coffee, a book, a Target gift card, an AMC gift card (now I can go see "Sweeney Todd" for free!), and season three of "Mad About You." Plus, my parents gave me a gift bag filled with food stuff (grater, baster, hot cocoa mix, taco dinner kit, applesauce, etc), and some money to put toward furniture and stuff for the apartment. Good haul.

Now I have the rest of the week off... simply glorious! I plan to spend it well. Going to the movies, going shopping (both grocery and fun stuff, because I feel like treating myself), visiting friends, going to parties, and catching up on some reading. And whatever else I can squeeze in. And absolutely no lesson planning until sometime next week. I refuse to even think about work.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Enjoy the rest of the Christmas season!

two more days!!!

I feel like Christmas should have been over weeks ago. I've heard every Christmas song ever written, my tree's been up since November, and my shopping is finished (except for the people I won't see til after Christmas). Our last day of school was Friday... the culmination of an extremely long week which included our school's annual Peace Vigil and our faculty party (I got a basket of Tastefully Simple stuff as my polyanna gift!). My computer desk is piled high with presents from the kids... this year's mug count is five (four with candy, one without), and I think I got a total of six candles. Boxes of candy made a surprising comeback (3 full sized, 1 medium, 3 mini). And the gift of the year award is a tie between a Yankee Candle electric tart warmer (shaped like a gingerbread house, came with a Cranberry Chutney tart) and a gift set including a picture frame and a tealight lamp (both decorated with brown glass mosaic tiles, matches my bedroom perfectly!).

I never got a chance to blog about last weekend, but it was awesome. And amazingly busy. Saturday morning I went to our school's Lunch with Santa at 11 AM, where I chatted with my kids and their parents, sold homemade crafts, and served hot dogs. From there I went straight to the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown to see the Keystone State Boychoir's Holiday Concert at 2 PM. The boys sounded wonderful (as always), and afterwards I stayed to say hi to my godson. I was also greeted quite enthusiastically by the boys that I chaperoned in Australia as well as several of the other boys who remembered me from the tour. It was great to see them all again! (I'm hoping to go on tour with them again next summer... all fingers and toes crossed...)

From there, I zipped home to get ready for the party! People started arriving promptly at 6 PM and after that it was a BLUR. Everyone showed up... family, friends, and about a zillion babies. My favorite part of parties like this is watching my friends mingle. People who don't know each other bond over the strangest things... like taking over the world, for instance... lol. Much alcohol was consumed (my personal favorites were the Bailey's Mint Chocolate and the Canadian Club), and everyone sampled the homemade coquito. Overall, it was the perfect party. Good food, good drinks, good friends, good music... I couldn't ask for anything more.

Happy Christmas Eve Eve to all! And to all a good night!

sing we now of christmas...

Eight days til Christmas!!!

I'm sure that by now you've heard every Christmas carol known to man. Some are classics, some are fun, and some... well, some don't deserve any air time, in my humble opinion. Allow me to list these for you, in no particular order.

1. "Christmas Shoes" - To quote Sam... "Please sir, I need some shoes for my dead mom so she looks good in her coffin. Merry Christmas."

2. Barbra Streisand's version of "Jingle Bells." Normally I love Babs, but this one is just too much for me. Especially the rousing ending where she speeds up the tempo and sounds like she's stuttering. No thank you.

3. Anything by Michael Bolton. That no-talent ass-clown.

4. Anything by Celine Dion. Especially her "Feliz Navidad." She's French Canadian, for Pete's sake! (I mean, for Pierre's sake!) Why is she singing in Spanish?

5. "Same Old Lang Syne," by the recently deceased Dan Fogelberg. I actually like this song, on some strange level. But it has very little to do with Christmas, and it's depressing as all get out.

5. Kenny Loggins, "Celebrate Me Home." I just don't get the words. Is it supposed to mean, "Celebrate the fact that I've come home"? Or "Welcome me home"? Or "Celebrate my home"? It reminds me of the "Will and Grace" episode when they're at the gym and Will sees a guy he went out with once who asked him, "Will you cuddle me bum?" If you've never seen that episode, that won't be very funny at all. Sorry. (Stake it, UK!)

6. Anything by Neil Diamond. He's Jewish. Why is he singing about the birth of Jesus if he doesn't believe in any of it? Oh right... for the money. Ah, commercialism. The TRUE meaning of Christmas.

7. Bruce Springstein's Christmas songs. "I just wanna say... I just wanna say... umm... wait, it'll come to me." I just can't stand the man.

Honorable mention goes to the following songs for their ridiculous lyrics:

1. "Wonderful Christmastime," by Paul McCartney. It's just so bouncy and synthesized... and the choir of children refrain ("ding dong ding dong ding dong...") is extremely annoying.

2. "Little Saint Nick," by the Beach Boys. "Christmas comes this time each year..." Thank you, Captain Obvious. When else would it come?

3. "Do They Know it's Christmas?" by BandAid. "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you." It just sounds so heartless. Hey everyone, pack your bags... we're going on a guilt trip!

I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten, so expect many addendums to this list. And feel free to comment and add your own!

Decking my hustle and trimming my bustle

Hello, hello to all my blogerific friends...

Haven't blogged in awhile. I've been quite busy. I have a to-do list on my white board that overwhelms me when I look at it. But I've been able to cross a few things off the list in the past few days. Nothing makes me happier than crossing things off a list. Who needs men? Who needs chocolate? Who needs alcohol? Just give me a notebook and a pen and a list of things to do. I'll be happy as... as... wait, forget what I said about not needing men and chocolate. That was foolish of me. I take it back. But I do enjoy list making.

I feel like I'm on top of a lot of things (tee hee... I said, "on top") where Christmas is concerned. The halls have been decked both at home and at work. My cards were written in November (don't hate) and mailed the first week of December. I went Christmas shopping today and nearly exhausted the limit on my new Target card. Sigh. But I'm almost done shopping, which is good.

This year I opted not to exchange gifts with my friends. Most of them are married and/or as low on cash as I am. Not to mention that there are a lot of them, and how do you decide who gets gifts and who doesn't? And quite frankly, what do you get a 30-year-old for Christmas? You either have to ask them what they want (which is just awkward, cuz then they know what you're getting them), or else take a guess and buy something that they may or may not like. Or you could always go with the ever-popular gift card exchange. Might as well just exchange cash. There was talk of a pollyanna awhile back, but plans for that went awry a few months back. So that's out. Which is just as well, because the pollyanna situation is always an iffy one. You set a price limit, but not everyone sticks to it. So you might wind up spending the full $30, while someone else only spent $15. And not everyone sticks to the suggested gift list, either... which kind of defeats the purpose. Anywho.

So I'm buying gifts for family (which includes parents, Doug, Jill, and my two young cousins), a gift for our work Pirate Party (everyone has a different name for this... when you pick a gift and the next person can either steal your gift or pick a new one, etc etc), a work Advent Angel (we leave them little gifts and such during Advent), Toys for Tots collection at work, Backpacks for Pride (fill a backpack with essential toiletries, socks, underwear, gloves, hat, plus a few small toys... for children of battered and abused women who stay in shelters), AND presents for three children of a family in my work parish. They lost their home and all their possessions in a fire, so me and a few other friends are playing Santa so that the mom doesn't have to worry about buying toys for Christmas. It's an exhausting list. But it feels good to do all that at Christmas. I should really do stuff like that all year round.

And that's what I've been up to. How about you?

Recipe for any Lifetime Christmas movie

To make a Christmas movie suitable for the Lifetime channel, start with one of the following combinations of characters:

Snooty/high class/over-worked/spoiled/jaded business woman and sensitive/emotionally needy/do-gooder man.

-or-

Sensitive/down-on-her-luck/romantically scorned woman and high-powered/heartless/scroogy businessman.

Supporting cast may include: meddling, but well-meaning, mother; children who are wise beyond their years (often see the "true meaning" of Christmas before their adult counterparts); town kook who mysteriously helps everyone come together in times of duress (usually played by Peter Falk).

Bonus points for addition of soldiers. They add a sense of good old American pride tinged with melancholy nostaglia, as it forces us to remember our troops who won't be home for Christmas.

(Note: When in doubt, cast Kellie Martin or Jane Seymour as female lead.)

Once the characters have been chosen, there must be some sort of conflict or trauma preventing said characters from having a happy holiday. Acceptable scenarios include, but are not limited to: recent divorce, life-threatening illness, large new corporation about to put small town general store out of business, death of family member.

A good setting is one in which our lead characters are forced to spend time together, thus enabling them to work out their problems. Popular settings include: stranded at the airport, snowed in at the family cabin, lost in the forest, working together to write an article for the newspaper/magazine/news program.

Dialogue is key. Use phrases such as, "It just won't be Christmas without _____ (dad playing Santa Claus/a big family dinner/Grandma's apple dumplings)." Or, "Where's your Christmas spirit?" Or, "C'mon, everyone! Let's gather 'round the piano and sing carols!" Or, "Will Santa still be able to find us in this cabin in the woods?"

Basic plot is as follows: male and female are thrown together in some improbable situation. There is some sort of deadline that must be met by Christmas Eve. Failure to meet said deadline could result in a disastrous holiday. The characters' inability to see eye-to-eye causes many heated discussions. The scroogy character finally has emotional breakdown, recalling traumatic childhood memories, allowing the senstive character to see the "true" person inside. Much bonding follows. Scroogy character caves and helps the sensitive character save Christmas. Much merriment ensues as the whole town celebrates the holidays. Small town Christmas pageant, nativity, or Christmas parade often brings the movie to an close.

And there you have it.