If you had invoked me before you began this journey,

Holidays were, in short, pretty damned nice.

And quiet. This is very important.

We had my dad over on Friday afternoon/evening - made lamb in a garlic cream sauce (Julie Sahni - Classic Indian Cooking, for all your needs) and watched lots of No Reservations. As usual, this involved much laughter over Bourdain's adoration of pork, discussion on CAFOs, food production, genetically modified food, knowing what you eat, and, well... yeah. Just watch Food, Inc. and you get the gist of the discussion.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Along those lines - two calls from dad, the second one boiling down to "Get up here today, damn it." meant we hit up a new Oriental Supermarket on La Cholla and Orange Grove - Lee Lee - yesterday. This place is awesome. Seriously. And they've got good prices on meat (and produce), a large variety of stuff, and just... well, dad and I kind of drooled... Since dad's pretty much canvassed most of the grocers of this nature in town and about these days only cooks for himself and focuses on Thai and the like food, he was great to go with.

And they have Silkies, ie Blue Chickens. And a good fish counter. And! And! And! I could go on. It boils down to the simple fact that they are well worth checking out. Do so at your earliest convenience, even if they're a bitch to get to.

Oh, and domnall bought a big pot. Dad pointed it out and said "That would be great for brewing..." and then we turned back to see him putting it in the shopping cart. Hee!

But, back to Christmas and stuff.

I'll shamelessly admit, as I've gotten older (egads! I'm only 23. another reminder I'm about the youngest in my social circles.. *sigh*), Christmas seems to involve less OMG!Presents and more just kind of kicking back and relaxing. And domnall and I seem to be fond of large presents to ourselves (last year? cookware. this year? pavilion) and a few little ones. I got the Walton Ford Pancha Tantra, which I've been drooling over for years. Taschen being, well, Taschen, it's taken this long to get out something reasonably affordable. I love the publisher dearly, I just shudder at their prices. I also got two Nancy Silverton cookbooks - Bread from La Brea Bakery (my dad on the bagel recipe - "you can get in touch with your jewish roots! even though you're not jewish...") and Pastries from La Brea Bakery (which meant a discussion on the making of puff pastry).

We opted not to hit Chocolate Decadence on Saturday night, instead going to Something Sweet for shade_scribbler's Birthday-Like Thing. Which, I must say, was well worth it. Nine of us just chatting and stuff for a few hours. I really miss her and yu_gi_oh_freak as they've moved to San Diego now, but it seems like things are going well and that's what matters.

And then we bought paint and stuff at Home Depot. And worked out a vague schedule for finally tackling the end of the house and the rest of unpacking (yeah, yeah, yeah) and all that jazz. Plus decided to hit IKEA on Friday in the name of a TV center thing and a few bookcases and then seeing Shaun and Megan in Phoenix.

I've got a four-day workweek (meh.), but it's going to be quiet, and we all kind of like that. I suppose I could use sick time or something like that, but I don't really feel like it. It is to be hoarded, it is.

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Today? It's a good day.

I finally got a day for the Little Bighorn trip. Or more accurately, I finally asked about it. And found out we have dates but money's not been allocated, so I couldn't get it done beforehand. So I don't feel nearly as bad. But it's looking like Januart 23rd or 24th to February 4th. Goals therefore include get a bunch of machine sewing done so that I can take handsewing with me on the trip and get it done there.

Pre-registered for Estrella as well, which is good. We'll be camping with Dancing Goat, and if Southern was anything to go by, it'll be a good camp. Plus - banners this weekend! And who doesn't like banners? (Note to self - finish sketches beforehand.)

Yesterday wasn't quite so bad either. I mailed my request for a birth certificate and dropped off the stuff needed for Merrill Lynch. Hopefully I can pick up the check by the end of the week and then mail it off and finish up that saga.

Tonight involves finishing up a final. I've still got a chunk to do, but I have a larger chunk finished. Since I seem to have just squeaked in above a 90 in my other class, which means an A, no need to worry about extra credit. This pleases me to no end.

So... Another 3 and a half hours and then home to write on LCSH and user-generated tags a la LibraryThing.

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Well, have Estrella sewing plans plotted out. This is a very good thing. And I'm actually pretty sure it's all doable, which is even better. Stuff won't be perfect, but we're slowly heading in a direction towards more things I'm actually proud of making. Going to get Dom to warp up his loom(s) and make me trim as well, so there shall be prettiness.

And a pavilion. Panther Trader Tent shall be ours!

Plans this afternoon, once I get home, include thus - making dinner and doing schoolwork. I'm rather behind on the discussions for one of my classes, so I'm going to knock out several of them and then get to work on two quizzes, a paper due Friday, and an assignment due Thursday before I can sit back and goof off more.

This sounds like a brilliant plan to me. It really does.

And finally, once more, a great big FU to my body. Namely, the fact that I'm breaking out and it annoys me. Granted, it's slowly clearing up (I think), thanks to some aggressive attacking on my part and a few changes in things. But that doesn't make it any less annoying...

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Overall, a good weekend, I must say. This is particularly true after the sheer chaos of Friday. Alright, maybe it wasn't chaos so much as completely and utterly draining.

Saturday was the Breeder's Cup, and on a whim, I gave my dad a call. He'd mentioned it was this weekend, as had a dear friend of mine (Jon), who's about the only RTIP person I still really talk to and my source of almost all lovely racing gossip. And I figured "well, it's been too long since I've watched a race, it's a good excuse for dad to come over, why not?"

He brought over the Form, we provided lunch and dinner and a TV (*cackles* I love the fact that we still get some cable channels even though we don't actually have cable, just a really nice internet connection). No bets were placed (mainly because, I think, we didn't feel like leaving), but we did not do half bad at all. One if entitled to pleasure when a very nice longshot wins. Some of the races were wonderful and it was, as always, a pleasure to hear Trevor's voice. The Classic was damned good and I can see the appeal of Zenyatta. The loading was also interesting, if only because I've not seen a scratch at the gate in a long while. Overall, considering that I haven't looked at a Form in over a year, pretty damned good.

Sunday we saw The Men Who Stare At Goats with my dad and a friend of his (all four of us agreed it was very fun) and cleaned. Then, weavedancer and dverning and Faye came over for My Name Is Bruce and dinner. And then we tossed on Final Fantasy: Advent Children because, well, I think because Dom could. And it was just fun, which was definitely enjoyable. The house is looking better, and well, we discovered that not having checked the pool in awhile means there are mosquito larve in it. (Which means a trip to Home Depo after the Chiropractor this afternoon so we can shock it to high heaven. Which is fine anyway as we needed propane for the new stove.)

Tonight, need to find stuff for Southern so we can pack tomorrow. Also need to work on school stuff so that I'm not totally behind when we get back. I'm looking forward to it, though, without a doubt. Good chance to get out of Tucson, without a doubt.

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