Whew. I think I'm reaching my holiday feasting limit. I feel like I'm not going to have to eat for about a month after I go home as it is, and I still have a couple of new year's parties to go to! Help! I'm going to need a plain, light diet for some time to recover this year, I think.... :)

Interesting to see my brother's band, Nothing At All, last night. He is a pretty charismatic performer--one of the more interesting people to watch in his band--and he really gets into the music. I don't listen much to the kind of hard-rock/"alternative"/whatever they're calling it now that he plays, so I'm probably not the best judge, but I thought they were really good. They have a female lead singer who reminded Michael and me a little bit of Gwen Stefani, which makes them stand out a bit in the male-dominated world of hard rock bands. They did a good job, and sounded really good despite the fact that I'm not sure the sound guy did them too many favors (guitars drowning out vocals in places, everything very very loud, etc.). They did ask him to change their levels more than once, but...what can you do. Probably the only thing more irritating than being a sound guy who keeps being told what to do by the band is being a performer who also knows how to do sound and not getting what you want for your show.

Anyway...there was a fair crowd of people there, and Patrick's band was really the only one that got them up moshing/"hardcore dancing"/again whatever they call it now/not that I'm feeling out of touch with youth culture, oh no. He seemed pretty happy when it was over. Hopefully this went well enough to compensate for the bad performance at their last gig. Patrick has been doing a lot of songwriting in the past year or two, and I hope that some of them make it onto their new album.

Strange to think that we'll be flying back to hell in a few days. I don't really feel like I've been here almost 10 days already. Not really looking forward to leaving winter and being back in SoFla, though it will be a bit of a relief to get back to my own apartment. I love my family but I'm not used to living with other people anymore! Plus the freedom of a vehicle is always a bonus.

Ahhh....minus 14 celcius, hoarfrost, and a light snow. I feel great!!!

trying to find some bellydancing shows to go to before we leave...unfortunately it looks like weekday shows at restaurants are sparse. I suppose that's really something I should have anticipated...we'll have to plan to go out the night before we leave, I guess.

Well, here I am in Edmonton, posting from my dad's computer. Dial up connections...whew...forgot how slow they can be! I'm trying to check my hotmail, and it's a sllloooowww process. I'll probably be done writing here before my inbox loads!

We've had a pretty good Christmas. The weather has been neither as cold nor as snowy as we'd hoped--it's only been a few degrees below zero--I haven't had to wear my winter coat once! We spent Christmas Eve on our own this year, instead of the usual visiting with cousins, and then had people over Christmas Day, instead of being on our own, which has made the holiday seem a little different and strange. Boxing Day we were out to see Michael's family, and I was out with friends yesterday. Today we're just hanging out at home. Michael is over, finishing the chess game he and my dad have been conducting over email for the past month or so. Nice to have time just to relax...I always anticipate visits here as being restful, but then between jet lag and running around trying to get to see all my friends enough before I go there's not much down time!

The thing I'm really excited about is going to see my brother's band play at the Sidetrack on Tuesday. They have been touring here and there, and they just got a grant to record a CD this year, which is cool. I've actually never really heard him play, past the annoying electric guitar practice when we were teenagers, so I'm really looking forward to seeing them, and i'm impressed they have a gig at what is a pretty major venue for local music here.

Woo hooo! Getting on a plane to go home tomorrow!! Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to get much done at work today.... :)

Michael and I had a pretty full weekend. We hosted our annual pre-Christmas get-together at my place Saturday night. Ergo, I spent all of Saturday catching up on my housecleaning, which has been sorely neglected this past week or two...it turned out to be a bit smaller of a gathering than we had originally anticipated, but we still had enough guests to make it feel like a party, and we also got to see some people that we hadn't got together with in a while, so it was all good. I made my family's traditional christmas apple cider--cinammon sticks, allspice, cloves, brown sugar, and sliced lemons and oranges simmered in apple juice and served with rum--which went over pretty well.

Sunday Michael and I exchanged Christmas gifts (only time we could devote to it before we left), and as usual, though he always complains that he isn't good at shopping for gifts, the things he got me were great! I have a new set of instructional bellydance DVDs to play with, as well as a couple of good CDs to dance around to. I got Michael a drum to learn to play Middle Eastern rhythms on, as well as an instructional CD, so we can do stuff together. He was also really happy with the tickets to the Panthers-Rangers game that I gave him. Hopefully Messier won't retire before March!

Of course, the big thing this weekend for me was that I made my solo improvised bellydance debut at the holiday performance party my teacher threw at the Chocolate Moose cafe. It went pretty well, I think, probably in part because I had so much else to do and think about this past few weeks that I didn't have much time to get nervous about it. I started out with a slow veil piece--which is my stronger suit, I think--and then a shorter faster section. I finally had a chance to use one of my newer silk veils! I also ended up kind of improvising a duet with one of my teacher's more advanced students for part of one of the open dances, which was neat--it's fun to have a partner to play off of just to see what happens. Of course, I did so much dancing that my back is a little sore today...but it was worth it! Michael took lots of photos--if I have a chance I'll scan some at my parents' over the holidays, and post some links for you.

t minus 4 days and counting...and boy do I need my coffee this morning. I didn't have time to make my usual thermosful before leaving for work today, and considering the amount of sleep I got last night I'm anticipating a day of grumpiness and caffeine withdrawal headaches. Times like this I really wish I could stomach the Folgers crap that is sitting in the workroom across the way. Unfortunately, the watery, bitter, acidic taste of canned coffee that's been sitting open in a cupboard for months (they buy in bulk) just doesn't sit well somehow.

one of my favorite retailers, despair.com, was featured on NPR this morning. Apparently, more people than just me can actually be motivated by demotivational merchandise. Who knew.

Weather has been "colder" in SoFla lately--going down into the 40s and 50s at night, with highs in the 60s during the day. Of course, at this point, that's not that much different than what's going on back home, which pisses me off to no end. I've been looking forward to winter for a couple months now, only to find that when I finally get back up north they're going to be in the middle of a thaw. grumblegrumblegrumble...

with apologies to T.M. Shine...

Typical day in my life this week:

• 4:00 am: neighbor's alarm goes off, dragging me from a deep sleep.
• 4:05 am: beep beep beep....
• 4:10 am: beep beep beep...
• 4:15 am: I'm outside, wandering through my apartment complex, looking for the alarm that has gone off for an hour every day at this time for a week, to the accompaniment of beep beep beep...
• 4:18 am: found the place. Of course no one is home. beep beep beep...
• 4:20 am: I'm back at the house searching for paper, pen and scotch tape. beep beep beep...
• 4:40 am: affix a note on the apartment door. Go home to the sound of beep beep beep...
• 5:00 am: beep beep be--...quiet. FINALLY.
• 5:30 am: still not asleep. Stomach is in queasy knots from tension and lack of sleep.
• 6:00 am: now the rest of the neigborhood starts getting up. beep beep be--. Car starting up. People talking outside my window. beep beep beep beep be--. There's a radio. There's a shower...
• 7:00 am: Well, there's the sunrise...
• 10:48 am: drag myself out of bed, after managing maybe 2 hours more sleep. I have a vague memory of being partially wakened by the phone, but there's no message so I disregard it.
• 11:30 am: phone rings. Again, I disregard it, figuring it's the usual telemarketer or wrong number.
• 12:05 pm: pick up the message from a half hour before. Surprise, it's the one call in a thousand that was actually for me. And both my calls this morning were from work. Guess who was supposed to come in early today? Oops.
• 1:00 pm - 6:45 pm: drag myself, exhausted, through a normal work day, which at this point essentially means babysitting teens after school until their parents deign to pick them up in the evening.
• 6:45 pm: taking a break on the balcony with my immediate supervisor, with whom I have a friendly work relationship. We're bitching about the ineffectiveness of a committee we have to work on.
• 6:46 pm: said supervisor's wife drives by in the parking lot and beckons him to come down. I return to my desk.
• 6:48 pm: said wife is now in my office space. "I want to tell you something, and you are going to listen. You are not going to speak to my husband again."
• 6:49 pm: Maybe you don't understand. I have to talk to him. He's my boss, and we have to work together.
• 6:49:30 pm: "but you are not going to talk to my husband again."
• 6:50 pm: whatever.
• 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: learn waaaaay more about my supervisor's home life than I ever really wanted to know.
• 10:00 pm: get home, fall into bed, thinking about all the things I have to do but have no energy for. My house is a mess, my dance solo for Sunday unplanned, my Christmas party on Saturday night unprepared for, my sink is full of dishes...but I'm too tired to move.
• 10:30 pm: call Michael, who is still at work, and speculate about who smashed his car's rear window earlier in the week.
• 12 midnight: desperately tired but still can't sleep.
• 1 :00 am: ditto.
• 2:30 am: finally drift off.
• 4:00 am: beep beep beep...

oh well...

But here's the good news:

1. t minus six days and counting till I'm home in Edmonton.
2. Southwest Regional's Adopt-a-Family holiday project was a success. My co organizer and I collected over $400, and we were able to provide 2 toys from each child's wish list, new clothes for each of them, and gift certificates for the grocery store and Bath and Body Works (a store like the Body Shop) for the mother. We had a lot of fun collecting, shopping, and wrapping; hopefully the family will enjoy their gifts.
3. we're finally getting new security at work, to replace the old guy who was totally ineffectual and spent all his time reading the dictionary and compiling lists of people in the library he hated rather than keeping the kids in line.
4. I finally finished my Christmas shopping!
5. Did I mention I'm going home soon???

whew... life is getting busier over here! I'll update the review pages sometime...honest I will...

Breathing a bit easier this week, for the most part--I can get to sleep all right at least, except when my neighbors play their rap music till 4 am :( Anyway, being able to put the sinus medication away for a while is a relief.

My Christmas shopping is finally getting done...though a couple people are proving difficult and, as usual, I'm finding it easier to find gifts for myself than for them! I should just never go into SteinMart at all, I guess, even when I'm shopping for other people. It's the kind of place where you find something for a ridiculously low sale price, and bring it up to the register only to find there's an additional discount today, and, well, faced with such cool stuff, what else can you do? This week I found a sleek black lamb's leather jacket, regularly $290, and I only paid $100!! woo hoo! I've also been shopping for my library's adopted family, which has been fun. We managed to collect quite a lot of money for the project, so we should be able to do pretty well by them, I think.

Michael and I were at a hockey game last night...we usually go see the Oilers when they play, but this year they didn't come down so we had to settle for the Habs. I enjoy watching hockey live much more than on tv, but I must say that it seems like Canadian hockey teams are getting pretty depressing. Florida is not a good team at all, yet they seem to win just about every game against a Canadian team that we go to see. I mean, honestly, what kind of world is it when FLORIDA and DISNEY WORLD beat Canada at it's national sport???? And a WINTER sport at that??? Argh....

My other big news is that I got my hair cut this week. Those of you who've known me for any length of time will understand exactly how much of a loaded statement that is. I haven't been in a salon chair for over 2 years. It's not much different, just missing some split ends and cut in some long layers, but somehow it's still a big deal :)

Hey, that medicine you're taking? Odds are it doesn't work. And little did we know it, but while we were sleeping, some developing nations tried to convince the U.N. to take over the Internet. Isn't life fun?

Back to work this week after a relaxing Thanksgiving vacation. We spent most of the first two days on the beach at Naples and Marco Island, swimming, reading, and collecting seashells. Saturday was cooler--quite chilly for Florida, in fact--but we had already planned to spend that day shopping so we didn't mind. We managed to get a bit of our Christmas shopping done, and I don't think we thought about work once! What a relief! Now, if only I could have the hotel's hot tub in my backyard...

Been busy with holiday planning this week. I decided to volunteer to organize my library's participation in a County Holiday Project, so we arranged to adopt a family with four kids for Christmas. We get to provide each child with two presents, and we're going to include a Publix gift certificate for the mom as well. Morale has been a little low at work lately--we've been shortstaffed for a while now, as well as dealing with various policy changes and edicts that seem designed to make our work lives harder--so I thought that this project might be one way to raise people's spirits a bit as well as doing something good for the community.

Life has been harder on other fronts lately, as I'm still battling what now seems to be chronic sinus problems rather than allergies. Without decongestants, I can't breathe through my nose at all, and experience a lot of discomfort from sinus pressure/swelling as well. So, in the short term at least, I have a choice between dealing with constant unbearable symptoms, or drugging myself up with OTC products 24 hours a day. Boy is my doctor going to get an earful when I finally get to his office in January!