It's the most wonderful time of the year!

So, officially, my favorite season of the year is Autumn. I love the leaves changing and the weather and everything. But I must tell you, that my favorite holiday season has arrived.

ITS CHRISTMAS!

*according to Nichole's Rules, the christmas season begins the moment the Thanksgiving meal is over, and last until the ball drops on New Years Eve. During that time it is mandatory to listen to holiday music.

Thanksgiving was . . . unorthodox this year, so we broke tradition by not decorating immediately after the meal. Usually this is when I convince everyone that we should put up the tree, decorations, and villiage. My most persuasive argument is that I will gladly drag all one hundred of our Christmas box (big beefy boxes) out of the basement/garage/attic/ or where ever they happen to be stored that particular year.

So I drug everything out on Friday, and we began to decorate. But another hang up! Due to rats (blast those creatures) the old fake tree is retired to porch duty, and we were without an inside tree. We planned to get a real tree this year and wait till after the season to get a new atrificial. So no tree on Friday.
We also had a few complications with the villiage, which is my dads baby, so it was half up when I left for work. Eight some hours later when I came home (thanks dad for picking me up) I discovered to my delight, a tree in the dinning room!!!!! I worked very hard to convince myself not to stay up into the wee hours of the morning decorating it.
Saturday was another kink. The whole family, myself excluded were going to Indiana to have a late Thanksgiving meal with relatives. I had to work, and therefore had to stay. I sat and stared at the tree. It stared back. (maybe not really that bad) But I knew, that if I began decorating it without the rest of the family, I was so much dead meat, smoke me and use me for stocking stuffers. So I waited. Until Sunday.
Sunday was well . . . interesting. Due to circumstances not quite beyond my control I slept on the coach, which means no alarm. Mom woke up dizzy and lightheaded, Dad woke up sore throat and nauseous( they can't even agree on their symptoms when their both sick!) So, when everyone woke up, church people were already filling out We Missed You Cards.
I think that God organized this little break from the week, (The most spiritual resting day I've had for awhile)
Needless to say, we finally decorated the tree!
I got the ball rolling by mentioning that the whole family was here (tech. Tiff was on the way, but soon to be present.) and that I had to work at three so could we please, please, please, decorate the tree. Sniff. I think it was the tears and grovelling that finally got them, and my volunteering to untangle the lights.

We went with colored lights because we didn't have enough white lights (not that I'm light-racial or anything, I only prefer white lights for that classic look rather than color for the traditional look.) Apparently no one in my family likes putting lights on the tree either, so I did that too. By the time I finished everyone was getting in the spirit, which means the radio was on, the kids were arguing about who got to put on the angel, and dad had found himself a project in another room.
Bulbs first, then snow flakes, then icicles (plastic not tinsel) then the special ornaments.
Every year, everyone in the family gets a new ornament, with their name and the year written on it. We try to coordinate, like the year we got, precious moments, or Winnie the pooh, or snowmen in candy cane stripped outfits, or the smore/marshmallow fig. You get the picture. So everything got put up (and I do mean everything, mom still insists on hanging the can lids that we punched nail holes into and ran a string through during some craft time)
Toward the end it was a scramble for hangers, but I made do for the last three with modified paperclips -- in a festive green -- which I'm going to have to remember when I put up my tree.

So anyway. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am happy. Our house is Christmasy. And I just love this season!!!

big picture/small picture

I was always fascinated by those giant pictures made of of thousands of small pictures. I even tried once to make one. But I couldn't see the big picture. I saw faces. Faces of friends, family, even complete strangers, but I could not do away with the pieces to create a larger work.


At first I thought that must mean I am a small picture kind of person. I have since learned that I am nothing of the sort. I don't do details. In my last two jobs I have struggled with remembering all those little detail. I have the over all idea, but I forgot something here, another thing there.


I must, I suppose, dwell somewhere in between, (story of my life) not really catching all the details, not really getting the big picture. But I have moments where I come close to one or the other. There are those few times, when looking at a picture or a person everything seems clear, or I seem to get a deeper sense of what or who they are. Likewise, I occasionally get a glimpse of the larger world around me.


Like the other day, as I rode the bus in to work. I saw an old man, coming down a set of stairs, a young man, shaking leaves out of some bottle crates, and a little boy playing at push ups in a car wash lot. As I sat there in my seat, I began to get a glimpse of the world around me. How many thousands of people do I pass every day? And how many do I see? Three. Three people that made an impact on me, the thousands of others slip by like drops of rain, significant only in great numbers, and then only in registering their presence.


Always we are ourselves, living our life every minute of every day. But occasionally we get to take part in someone else's life. Sometimes we are more than just ourselves. Sometimes, we are, family, seeing and living as a group. Sometimes we are friends, getting deep inside the world and emotions of others. And sometimes, we are a crowd, feeling a little of the combined consciousness, mind, and power of many people. But mostly we are one, just ourselves, staring out the window, unable to see the forest for all the trees.

I wondered, as my bus careened along, what was I to those people? Did the old man coming down the stairs see a girls face staring back at him from a bus window? Or just traffic? Did the young man see another human being with acknowledgement in her eyes? Or just feel the breeze of cars passing. Did the little boy look up and see someone watching him play? Or did he only hear the sounds of car horns, more distant to him than his imaginary army base. Did anyone see me? Or was I just a drop of water in a bucket?

Maybe I was the girl running for the bus. The person in your bus seat. The stranger in the crosswalk. But did you see me, or did you notice me? Was I one out of millions? Or was I someone who caused you to think about the little pictures that make up the big one. Did I walk past you before you even knew I was there, or did you go home and blog about me?

P.S. If you saw me, could you tell me how I looked? because I wasn't really sure about that outfit . . .

unusual, unorthidox, unethical?

We went out to eat for Thanksgiving!

I could hardly believe the news when my mom announced that due to the Thanksgiving style meal we had enjoyed with our grandparents about a month ago, we were going out to eat. She informed us that in no uncertain terms was she going to slave away in the kitchen to provide a second Thanksgiving meal. I mean what is that all about.

Ok. So sacrilege aside, how was the food?

Well, it ain't like momma used to fix it.
The stuffing was dry. (so they tell me. I don't actually eat stuffing.)
The turkey was . . . turkey. (not my favorite meat.)
The sweet potato casserole. well lets just say that it was fixed by Yankees. (they can't really help it.)
The rest was ok, but I did find a disturbing lump of quivering red goo, which my dad said was supposed to be cranberry sauce, (eww) but we managed to convince Letha it was jelly and she rather enjoyed it on her biscuit.

All in all, the no prep/no clean up factor did not really make up for the no taste/no leftovers. But However, I will not complain, because there was pie.
Not just any old pumpkin or pecan or apple pie, this was an apple pumpkin pecan thingy.
I have no idea where they put the apple, mostly it seemed to be pumpkin pie with pecan crumble on top, but served with a generous helping of whipped topping, cut into huge slices, the pie, well lets say the pie made me happy.

Lesson learned?
Next year we cook the meal at home, but go out for dessert.

a young adolf

A young boy sits in front of the fire. He stares into it mesmerized by the dancing of the flames. This is power he thinks to himself. The ability to consume and destroy your enemy, the ability to overcome what is set in your path. Flame conquers.
He watches as the dry logs snap and slowly change from solid into ash, dropping away bit by bit. But he is not satisfied by the slow demise, and the steady glow of flame. He picks up a metal rod and prods the log, knocking away the old ash to reveal new wood, new meat for the fire. And the fire responds by leaping to the new patch of wood, burning for a few minutes brighter and higher than before. The boy is delighted, but soon disappointed that the fire slows again. Again he prods, and the fire soars, fades, prods, soars.
He is lost somewhere in the flame, absorbed. To increase the power of the flame he must give it the sacrifice to feed on. On and on he continues, until his mother calls him away to bed.
When he walks away, he does not notice, that by burning the log faster, the fire has run out of things to feed on, it dwindles, and nearly dies, before his father comes to add another log.

Things I did today.

Today I woke up to the ringing of my cell. Mom calling wondering if I could rummage through the freezer and pull out something for dinner, she forgot. We talk a few minuets until I knew what I was looking for, then she had to go. But now I was wide awake. It was 9:30ish so I got dressed and got the meat out of my freezer (which they store stuff in, pork chops by the way) and headed down stairs.

I thawed the meat in the microwave, then put it on low in the crock pot with some cream soup. and threw in several tinfoil-wrapped potatoes on top. Dinner taken care of I looked around the kitchen. It was a mess, mostly from a little project of mine the night before. So I cleaned up, filled the dishwasher, wiped down the cabinets, spot swept, and threw away all the trash.

In loading the dishwasher, I gathered all the cups and such left on the dinning room table. The dinning room was a mess too, (this time not my fault but due mostly to the boys - dad bought a train set last night for his new restaurant and he and Dakota couldn't resist setting it up in the middle of the table to see how fast it would run. Dishes away and trash thrown out, the dinning room was clean.

I moved to the living room. I decided to watch an episode of one of my fave old TV shows, Hogans Heroes, but the screen was malfunctioning and nothing would play. So I looked around the living room for inspiration. It was dirty too. So I opened the blinds (I cannot stand a dark room) and picked up in there (mostly after the dog, which chews everything and makes nests - like a rat.)

Living room clean mostly - I remembered that I was suppose to fix the roof on the dog pen today, and they needed fed anyway (the outside dogs -2 not the inside rat/dog -1) So I grabbed the drill (which had reminded me of the job) and headed outside. Fed the dogs, then I got the plastic roof off, but the drill was dying so I had to put it on charge before I could put the roof back on. (The roof was up in a traditional v shape, but I was going to flatten it and close off part of the front to limit the cold air coming in.

While I waited on the drill to charge, I remembered that I had just dug out my old camera the other day, and bought some film to play with the night before. So I took a few picks of the dogs, and wandered aimlessly for awhile. I got cold, and went inside, sung along to a few songs on the radio, country of course, then figured the drill had charged enough to finish my job.
Back out in the cold, I got the roof on, found some boards to close off the front, and filled the dog house with fresh cedar chips.

Back inside the house I looked around. What to do now. I decided to watch Hogan's Heroes on the computer. I couldn't get it to play on there either (the disc thing was stuck and wouldn't open.) But being in the computer room reminded me that of hamster - the only current resident of that room. I had promised mom that I would clean out the cage. Its Dakotas but at four we don't just turn him loose on that sort of job.

Hamster cage clean, I went back up to my apartment, and finally got to watch my Hogan's Heroes up there. Interrupted of course by several calls from my family. By the time it finished I was scrambling to get ready and make my way to work, where I sit now thinking back on my morning.
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Then it hits me. I cleaned a house. Not mine. Cleaned a hamster cage. Also not mine. Took care of three dogs. Only one was mine. And made dinner, which I won't be home to eat. That's when I started thinking, I should probably hang out in my own apartment more.

something new every day

Tomorrow will be my third day going to my new bio class, and I have already learned so much. Here is a list of a few things I've learned so far.

~ Taxonomy is a system for classifying living things using eight "steps".
As an example we used the classification of a house cat.
Domain - eukarya (this tells you that the cells of this being are more complex
Kingdom - animalia (this tells you its an animal (duh) but bare in mind humans fall under this category)
Phylum - chordata (meaning has spinal cord)
Class - mammalia (a mammal has hair, etc)
Over - carnivora (eats meat)
Family - Felidae ( of the cat family)
Genus - felius ( mostly small cats)
Species - felius catus (domestic house cat)

~Atoms are so small that it would take about a million of them to stretch across the period at the end of this sentence.

~I believe in evolution (we have defined evolution as the evolving of species to suit there environment. This is obvious, because the best suited animal survives and reproduces, giving it offspring more of those characteristics which enabled it to survive. Over time this can change the entire appearance of a species. I still believe that a monkey will always be a monkey no matter how much it changes, and to believe that one thing can change into another is the most profound form a idiocy. )

I have learned that we should not eat or drink in the laboratory, mt dew code red is only slightly less acidic than vinegar, you can reveal the iron in cereal by crushing it and dragging a magnet through it, some young men will argue with you whether the color of a base and phenthelphaelin (not sure that's spelled right) is fuchsia or violet, and that in today's generation language skills . . . well it just makes me sad.

I look forward to tomorrow and the chance to learn new things, that I may share with whomever reads this. Until then, I had better go do my homework or I shouldn't bother going to class.

Words and Phrases

This is a list of fun words and phrase to say, and their meanings.

~

Moo Goo Gui Pan -
is a Chinese dish of chicken and vegetables in Chinese gravy.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

is a political position that originated in nineteenth-century Britain, where antidisestablishmentarians were opposed to proposals to remove the Church of Englan's status as the state church of England forwarded principally by both Payne and Tuffin.



Meningococcal

is a serious bacterial illness. It is the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in children 2 through 18 years old in the United States. Meningitis is an infection of fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord.



Quark

Is a type of subatomic particle.



Smock

Is an outer garmet worn by rural workers, especially shepards and waggoners, in parts of England and Wales from the early eighteenth century.



Inconceivable

Impossible to comprehend or grasp fully.



Rhutabega

is the common American English term for the plant, while "swede" is the preferred term used in much of England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and India. The swede is a root vegetable that originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip. Its leaves can also be eaten as a leaf vegetable.



Loofa

are tropical and subtropical vines comprising the genus Luffa. The fruit of at least two species, Luffa acutangula and Luffa aegyptiaca, is grown to be harvested before maturity and eaten as a vegetables, popular in Asia and Africa. The fruit of L. aegyptiaca may also be allowed to mature and used as a bath or kitchen sponge after being processed to remove everything but the network of xylem.
~

That is all the words I have for now, but I will look forward to reading any of your favorite words I have missed. Please post them in my comments and I will throw them in next time.