Here we are again!

Shreds of things today. It was a long weekend...and it left me with very few coherent thoughts.

1) Kenju got it right, so go to her site to read all about the great inaugural meeting of the Highly Irrational Raleigh Area Bloggers Association (HIRABA).

2) I realize I have not yet bored y'all with tales of my Thanksgiving. Nor will I. Suffice it to say that I made enough stuffing to ensure an adequate supply for a week of meals, and that for once people other than me ate the homemade cranberry sauce. Also, I did not have to clean up one.single.dish. All in all, a successful holiday.

3) Sometimes I am on the ball and get things done before they need to be. Take, for example, the fact that I have a bag of gifts for my coworkers sitting in my office just WAITING to be given out for X-mass, and it's not even December yet. Is it too soon just to distribute them and have done with it, do you think?

3a) I have also finished the writing of the holiday letter. What is wrong with me?

4) More to point 3, but enough different that it gets its own number, I have engaged in a holiday rubber-stamping frenzy that has sucked in both Things. Christmas cards, thy name is addiction. There is also glitter spray involved, and sparkly pens. This degree of shimmer does not seem to affect the masculinity of the Things, as shortly after finishing any session of creativity with holiday stampage they can be found pounding one another or pretending to be Pokemon once again. This pleases me to no end (not so much the pounding, but the sparkles-can-coexist-with-manliness thing. I need the help, quite frankly, if I'm going to get all 120 cards done in time for the holiday, and any hands are helping hands with that amount of obligation). They're coming out quite nicely, might I add. Thing 2 has quite the designer's touch.

5) In much more "moving" news, the dining room is almost bereft of boxes. This IS a major milestone, people. The "library," on the other hand, gained a few new boxes over the weekend. Sigh. Something about "getting the crap out of the garage so some WORK can be done in there" was muttered (repeatedly) over the course of a couple of days this past weekend. Being as how the "work that's going to be done" involves making bookshelves for the "library" (in quotes because it sounds so damned pretentious and yet that's exactly what it's going to be!) and finishing base cabinets for the breakfast room so our Tupperware has a place to live that's NOT in the dining room, I can live with the boxes. I eagerly await the ringing of the circular saw and the soothing hum of the orbital sander....the sounds of progress being made are sweet indeed.

6) In the unpacking this weekend I found the following: Christmas decorations, about 8 strings of lights, 18 electric candles for the windows to make our house look bright and cheery, a Mac OS, 2 modems, 2 almost complete sets of dishes that we no longer need because we've since bought new stuff, a pile of decorative gift bags, a half a box of Q tips, old letters sent to me by boyfriends I had in college (yowza, the things they did say!), my botany/microbiology/zoology books from back in the day, pictures of me at 24/5 years old (goodness, how thin!), and a wicker picnic set that has to be from 1971 or so (because that's the year mentioned on the as-yet-unopened Thermos label) from the "Optima" company (which I found out through a Google search is a British firm that still makes "fine quality picnic sets).

(and also, apparently, a gift for using parenthetical phrases)

Rather a nice haul, don't you think?

Unpacking is a heinous chore, I'll give you that, but when you stumble across things you've been toting around for 20+ years (the wallet that was carried in high school, for example, complete with graduation pictures of people you don't recognize) it's like rediscovering yourself. I also found a whole sheaf of music from wayback, most of which I can't remember playing, and a good chunk of which I should have returned (oops! Sorry Hayfield High School! Y'all must have supplied the music for the Regional Band program in 1978 or so. Need all those third horn parts back?).

7) I recovered a chair cushion also. Yay electric staple gun! Kapow! Blam! Dangerous weapon in use! Loves it.

There you go. I believe that puts you pretty much up to speed with what's going on with me right now.

Oh wait...

8) 30 minutes in the pool yesterday. The SkinnyBack program took a few days hiatus, but is back on track.