wickedwords

My family and I just spent a fabulous 8 days in beautiful, warm Kauai. For Ev's graduation, J gave him a week's worth of timeshare at one of the resorts at the sunny south end of the island. We hung out and did touristy things, including a day long catamaran trip up the coast to the north shore, with some snorkeling on the way back. We didn't do much snorkeling other than that, and only made it to a beach once, but our room face east and we saw the sunrise every morning over the rocky coast below us. We saw waterfalls, the lighthouse, and we did the drive up Waimea Canyon to the incredible lookout. Completely fabulous, and I am utterly exhausted (not to mention lightly tanned!). Can't believe I am supposed to be back at work tomorrow.

My son is really low key about his activities. This morning I was reading through the end of school activities, and "dramafest" was mentioned. I asked Ev if he was interested, and he said, "yeah, I kinda am. They're producing the play I wrote and I want to see what they did."

"...Producing the play you wrote?"

"More of a monologue really. There's a drama 2 student is directing it."

"You have a play being directed?"

"I submitted it as part of my play writing class. I think they picked ten or so."

"Out of how many?"

"30? 33? I guess."

So a we're going to go see evan's monologue produced next week. Lucky I mentioned the dramafest to him, or I wouldn't have known that my kid -- who has orthographic dysgraphia and cannot write by hand so anyone can read it -- had a play selected for production.

You know, I wish he were a little less low key about his success.

Oh. my. I am at BEARS! BEARS! BEARS! on my story. I wasn't able to write yesterday as work had a meltdown while I was at a doctors appointment (still looking good, yay!). So I still have that one last scene to do and I have promised myself I will get it done tonight. ::determined nod::

In other news, Ev received acceptances to two universities yesterday, western (or as he prefers to call it, the mages college at winterhold) and PLU, the college I graduated from. Since Western's his first choice, that's probably where he'll end up, but I want to get the financial aid letter first so we can compare costs.

It was a whirlwind of activity, and I got absolutely no writing done, so I am now heading into near-panic over my unplotted, unwritten story. I did have a marvelous time, though.

Friday was L's company Christmas party, and I got to learn about playing craps. I won enough to get a few chances in the 'big winner' drawing, but not enough to win anything. There was good food and cake, and I finally met the guy that we play left 4 dead with sometimes, which was cool. I also ran into some people that I had interviewed with last may, when I took my current contract, and they asked me if I would be interested in a full-time gig. So that was a yay, too.

Saturday, we slept in, then headed into seattle to go to the BSG exhibit (I have pictures that I hope I remember to post. Nothing great, but pictures! I was that excited.) Then we checked into a hotel, walked down to the wild ginger for dinner (where we ordered way too much food, but all of it tasty), and walked over to SAM where we realized it wasn't open late on Saturday nights so we missed out on the Picasso exhibit.

We froze out tails off walking back to the hotel, but the streets were so lovely with the horse drawn carriages, the special holiday lights, and the figgy pudding caroling competition going on, it was totally worth it. We ended up just hanging out watching the history channel in the hotel room after that, all of us dinking around with our phones (or video games, in the case of my son) while American Pickers was on.

We crashed early, since we had tickets for the 10:00 am entry at the Harry Potter exhibit. We walked to a Starbucks that wasn't open for breakfast, so then navigated to one that was open, passing a block full of people already waiting in line to have pictures taken with Santa.

Then it was on to Seattle Center and the exhibit, which was truly wonderful. It was amazing to see all of the detail that went into everything. I loved it. We followed it up with Dim Sum in the international district, then wound our way home and essentially crashed. I'm not exactly sure why I am still upright, but I think inertia may be the answer. I took tomorrow off to hopefully catch up on housework, do some christmas shopping, and writing. So hopefully by tomorrow night, things will be in better shape.

But gosh, the weekend was worth it.

Today is my son's first day of driving instruction. On our way home, we swing through the drive through of the local taco place, and we're talking about, oh, the fact that my car is 12 years old and we need to start looking for a new one, plus where we can go for him to get some experience behind the wheel. The person taking orders is slow, and it's hot, and we finally pull up to the window and she asks me if we want a drink tray, and I say "sure...". Something catches my eye as we are sitting there and...there's white smoke pouring out of the hood of my car.

I yell at Lar, interrupting his discussion of good empty parking lots: "There's smoke coming out of my car."

The drive through attendant asks if we want salsa.

"Uh, no!" I yell, gesturing at the hood, the nearby mall, and the smoke.

She hands us the drinks and a bag, and I head for the closest parking space.

"You forgot your salad!" she yells at us, as I slide into place. As lar jumps out --"pop the hood, pop the hood, pop the hood"--There is a long string of water, a bad noise, and I get the hood open. Steam gushes out, and we can see the radiator fluid leaking onto the pavement.

Ev jumps out of the back, drinks in hand. "I'll get the salad."

So. While he gets the salad, Lar looks it over, we talk, we trudge back to the fast food place and grab a booth to call AAA from. I look at the trail of water, plus the huge puddle under it and sigh. It's obvious that my car completely lost it when it realized we had a teen driver.

I'm gonna try and do some of this posting thing. In my mad gaming frenzy, I completely forgot to post about my life on occasion. I guess that's because there's been nothing major happening in my life -- no major fandom, no major family things (YAY!!!), no serious issues now that the cat's feeling better. In general, I just feel so much better than I did when I was going through treatment that even though I'm still tired at times, I can see on a daily basis that I'm doing okay.

Work is also okay. I'm learning the job, which is similar to one I used to do, but slightly different--and that's making me feel good too, since I know I can do it. A little bit of a challenge, and it's not overwhelming.

I'm carpooling in and taking the bus home most days, so my husband bought me a kindle. I had to wrestle it out of my son's hands as we took the train down to my dad's place this weekend. I bought him a book, but he loved being able to read on it, and he didn't hardly play his video games at all. It was so weird! I ended up reading my books on the kindle iphone app, but it's impossible to read fanfic that way.

Speaking of -- what is your favorite kindle-ready fanfic story? I downloaded a couple of things from the efiction to go site, but if you have a favorite set up for a kindle, point me at it! I think I'm ready to read just about anything.

Unlike a lot of my friends, I don't watch a lot of movies. I watch a lot of tv, but it's mostly episodic rather than the self-contained flick. So this year as a family we set a goal of seeing 50 movies, whether on TV or in the theaters, just for the heck of it. So far, we have managed to see one a week, but I thought I better write them down before I forget.

1. Sherlock Holmes
The first movie of the year, and a pretty good choice, too. I liked the movie, but didn't love it, even though I very much wanted to. I really didn't like Irene, and the focus on her bugged the heck out of me, but I liked Holmes, Watson and Mary. I liked the steampunk elements, and the quasi-Cthulian story, but I never identified with the characters. So it was something I watched and enjoyed, but felt no huge attachment to.

2. Duplicity
This was fun, a good caper flick, but the ending soured it for me. I felt like I had the rug tugged out from under me there at the end, and really did not like it.

3. G Force
This one we saw on-demand, and I kinda had one eye on it and one eye on my iPhone throughout the flick. It was fun and undemanding, plus there were a lot of pop culture references which was cute. Not a stellar flick, but entertaining.

4. Up in the Air
I totally loved this movie. I believed in the characters and their journey, and I loved Ryan's mentor relationship with Natalie and his friends-with-benefits relationship with Alex. I was involved with them all and watched them change and grow--or not--and I was with them every step of the way. I think this one will go on my favorite movies list.

5. Stand and Deliver
I love this movie and it is one of my all-time favorites. So when I saw that it was on the free movie list, I could not pass it up. I love underdog academic movies, and Edward James Olmos is brilliant in this; Evan could not believe it was the same guy that played Commander Adama at first. (And Lou Diamond Philips was such a baby back then! He looks so different now on SGU.) Evan got completely wrapped up in it, and he reacted as deeply as he does when he's wrapped up in a good book or manga. This was a complete win for all of us.

6. The Birds
Neither Lar nor Evan had seen the full movie, and it was just as tense and unsettling as I remembered. This is probably the most intense edge of the horror genre that we can watch as a family, but we all enjoyed it. Then we sat around a bit and compared it with the zombie genre that is currently popular, along with all of the sci fi "nature hates you" movies.

So 6 down, 44 to go. So far, we're doing well

For those that are keeping track, in the past month, we have:

1) Discovered that saying 'please take taxes out of my UI checks' means 'please take much less than you need to out of my UI checks, so I can pay a significant lump sum to the government next year'.

2) Had my car fail the emissions test, and spend much money trying to repair it so it can pass--yet does not. Car license paid after the 'wow, they paid a lot to a certified mechanic and it still didn't fix the darn thing' waiver secured.

3) Leak in upstairs bathroom estimated at $1500; husband freaks, goes to home depot, and pays $60 to get the parts and repairs it himself. Yay, shower in 2nd bathroom works!

4) Hot water heater dies.

5) More money shelled out. Permits secured. New water heater installed. Bath taken. Life is good.

6) Wake up this morning, and find a puddle of water on the kitchen floor. Water filtration containment system cracked when water heater installed (husband calls this the 'water hammer effect'.) New trip to home depot in his immediate future, so that the dishes can be done and tea made without having to go upstairs to fill the kettle.

Just...ugh. These little paper cuts can stop anytime soon. I am tired of bleeding money.

My son went out and measured the snow in our backyard, and right now, we have six inches, but the snow continues to fall. It is lovely and nice from inside the house. We've already baked muffins and I have some russian tea cake cookies almost ready to go, plus we're having pot roast for dinner. I have managed to get lights on the tree, and plan decorations for later; I also want to read a bit, and play on the wii today. I guess my son's snow day means I get to have one too. ;)

Ooh. Time for more tea I guess.

As with any big holiday, there were a few hiccups. I woke in a grumbly mood, and it took more than my first cup of tea to really wake me up. While I was in my not-awake state, I put the back-up cinnamon rolls (yes, the pillsbury ones) in to bake for an easy treat. Only I must have set the timer for too long and didn't notice; with the cat sitting on my lap, I sort of forgot to check on them and they ended up on the lighter side of burned. Which left fewer to eat, and required a liberal dose of frosting to cover up.

At that point, my dad called, and peppered me with questions on how to make my mom's creamed onions. It was a dish that she may have invented, and she took it to every family gathering: easter, Christmas, and thanksgiving in particular. I knew she had par-boiled the small onions then made a cream sauce, covered the onions with it and baked the whole thing for at least an hour, but I had no idea what the temp was. My dad had asked my mom about it, but she can't remember those details anymore; when my brother tried it, he cooked them for an hour at 400F, but it didn't come out quite right. My dad was going to try steaming the onions, then baking at 375F; I agreed that sounded good, and wished him a happy thanksgiving.

At that point, I proceeded to: burn the some of the sausage for the stuffing and drop a mixing bowl and have it shatter all over the floor.

Lar then suggested I go back to bed and try again.

Once we got the stuffing assembled--with the non-burned sausage--I sorta did that, having the tiny freak out about my mom not being aware anymore, bathed, and dressed. And that was pretty much the last of the cooking that I did for the day. Lar had gotten up early to do the Turkey, sticking it in Alton's brine, and when it was ready, putting it in the oven to roast.

When it came out, I stuck the sausage, dried cranberry, and apple stuffing in while Ev worked on the mashed potatoes (first time responsible for a dish, woo-hoo) with his dad's help. I assembled the green bean casserole, and stuck it in the oven next to the dressing.

Only, there wasn't quite enough room, so a stuck my hand in the oven to shove the stuffing over, forgetting that it had already been in a hot oven for ten minutes. I yelled, my son asked if I was okay, I said "no", put the green beans in the oven in the newly created space, got myself some ice out of the freezer, wrapped my hand up with it, and promptly sat down to play a lot of pandemic until dinner was ready, leaving Lar to make the gravy.

Despite the minor mishaps, everything turned out great. The stuffing was fabulous, the turkey moist and flavorful, the yellow gold mashed potatoes perfect. And the pies for desert were fantastic; I really owe alexfandra for her chocolate pie filling recipe, as it was 'lick your plate clean' yum for the whole family.

Today, we're taking leftovers down to the MIL, for a second day of feasting. See y'all when I get back.