Abbie's Real Life Blog

I’m sitting here looking at one of my new calendars for 2010, and realizing that I haven’t blogged about my holiday adventures at all!  So hello, and welcome to 2010!  I am going to go with “twenty-ten”, and try to forget the clumsy “two thousand” thing we had going on for so many years there.  Never did that ever not seem clunky to say.  ”Two thousand three”, “two thousand six”.  Ten years, and it felt unnecessary every time.  ”Twenty-ten” is all brevity and smart and easy-breezy, and I recommend you join me.

New calendars!  I look forward to picking out new calendars every year.  I never like to get the same one twice, even though they often sell them.  I used to buy them at the bookstore, and then I would get them for very cheap at Daedalus Books online, but this year I paid full price at Amazon because I am now being specific.  Ever since I got into photography, the photo calendars I’ve bought have generally frustrated me as the year went on.  Not usually so much the black & white images, and if they’re vintage, they’re usually fine as well.  But the color photos start to irritate me.  I sit there and stare absentmindedly at the picture, especially the one that I keep in my cubicle, and then I criticize the image, so by the time I look back on the year’s worth of calendar pictures, I’m generally irritated by the whole thing.  So I go out looking for another photo calendar, and I inspect the back with all the images to be sure that I won’t be screwed again, and then I am!  Years this has gone on.  Years!  So this year, I decided to nip this in the bud by paying full price for a calendar by a well-respected, renowned photographer.  I started with Galen Rowell, because he does wonderful work, and the idea is that it will inspire me rather than cause me to be critical for the whole year.  I finally remembered to bring in my new calendar today and I put it up, and there is a lovely purple image of Grand Canyon National Park for January.  Cool and beautiful.  And the horizon is just a smidge off.  Damn.  But, on the other hand, if Galen Rowell can publish a gorgeous photo with a horizon that is just a smidge off, then I should probably be a little less critical of myself.

The other calendar I picked out, which goes in my office at home, is a calendar of works by Mark Rothko.  I like to have one calendar that is not photographs, or is more educational or informative, so that I can learn about different styles of art or artists.  I really should have taken an Art Appreciation course in college.

So!  Anyway!  The holidays!

The holidays were pretty great this year.  I took Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve off work, which made for two nice four-day weekends in a row.  We are in our second year of doing family Christmas on New Year’s, and it was much easier this year than it was last year.  Last year, the time between Christmas and New Year’s stretched out and felt less merry because everyone else was over the whole Christmas thing, and we hadn’t even done it yet.  This year, I appreciated the extra bit of time, especially as a gift I bought online was cancelled by the seller, and I had to improvise at the last minute.  Amazon Prime to the rescue!  The replacement came in time, and it all worked out well.

On the day before Christmas Eve, I procured an aluminum Christmas tree complete with color wheel.  I am very proud of this.  I wasn’t going to do it, and then I saw an ad on Craigslist for a lovely one in Jefferson City with a rotating stand.  It sold, but it whetted my appetite enough that when I saw another one, I jumped on it.  I’m very pleased with it, though it didn’t have a rotating stand (which is fine, really).  It’s only 4′ tall, but it’s really cool looking, especially with the color wheel.  And it didn’t look right in the back corner of my living room, where I’ve kept my tiny fiber optic tree for the past couple of years, so I had to rearrange things.  It’s now in the corner of my living room between the TV and the fireplace, and I enjoyed getting to look at it while I watched TV over last weekend.  (Picture at left, one of my 365 images.)

On Christmas Eve, I wrapped gifts and cleaned the house up, and after dinner with my grandparents, my family came over to my house for hot cocoa and ice cream while they admired my new aluminum tree.  and did some baking preparation for Christmas Day.  We spent Christmas Day making cookies and treats, all day long.  My sister, who is the gourmet chef of the family, was sick, so we kept her out of the kitchen, and those of us who do not fancy ourselves pastry chefs had to do most of the pastry chef-ing.  I was on a kick with almond bark.  My coworker brought in cake balls for Christmas last year, and I thought they were so good that I started scheming to make them myself.  When she brought them in again this year, I asked her a bunch of questions about them, and she gave me some instructions.  I followed them to the point of getting about twice as much almond bark as necessary, so after I finished three boxes worth of cake balls (each box makes about 40 cake balls, so we had a literal ton of cake balls in the house), I still had leftover almond bark, and I proceeded to use it to cover Oreos as well, and later make peppermint bark.  I still have a lot of leftover almond bark.  I’m sure I’ll have some more fun with it after the sugar coma of the holidays has worn off.  We also made regular cookies of various types, and I made fudge.  We were making treats from morning to night, literally.  We split them up to give to some friends and to eat ourselves, to take to other family events, and then there was still plenty of leftover for our New Year’s celebrations.  It was an enormous amount, and baking was an excellent way to celebrate Christmas Day while interacting with each other and not watching too much television.

Tracy came in on Christmas Eve (through blizzard conditions, of course) and spent Christmas Day with us.  She stayed through the day after Christmas, entertaining my sister while she was sick, and after I got back from a family event in nearby Fulton, she and I drove over to Kansas City together.  We got a little snow in Columbia on Christmas Eve and early on Christmas Day, but Kansas City got a lot more, and I was excited to drive Tracy’s All-Wheel-Drive Subaru through the mostly-unplowed city streets while looking at lights.  I don’t know that Kansas City really has the best light displays, but they are certainly magical in my head: the Plaza and Crown Center, of course, but also the drive down Ward Parkway to 69th Street, where people do big neighborhood displays.  Those streets down there are never in good shape.  Last year, I was in my Honda Civic and we slid around a little, but with Tracy’s car, I was having a great time going through the streets.  I made Tracy drive around for a couple of hours before I was ready to stop.  Kansas City holiday lights are a tradition for me.  On Sunday, there was another family event.  I got to see nearly all my cousins this year, which was pretty exciting because they’re all such great people with interesting lives!  I know I get loud and talkative, but I just like talking to everyone.  My parents drove in on Sunday and I went home with them.

Three days of work later (and I did post to this blog, but it was my Decade Wrap-Up entry), and then it was New Year’s Eve and time for more family stuff.  On New Year’s Eve, I ended up getting up really early to go to the gym (I am very impressed that my sister and I kept up a steady gym routine even through the holidays) and then I did some cooking and went to the frame shop and generally ran around town like a lunatic for a few hours before I got to my parents’ house (late) to watch Mizzou get annihilated by Navy in the Texas Bowl.  That wasn’t much fun.  By the time the game ended (mercifully), the family and a few friends had gathered at my parents’ house for a New Year’s Eve party, complete with the requisite enormous amounts of food.  Besides the cookies and treats that we made on Christmas Day, we also had four crock-pots going!  Four!  And there were only nine of us!  My contribution to the food was a crock-pot of vegetarian meatballs in a grape jelly/chili sauce combination that turned out really well!  The meat-eaters got Little Smokies, and I wanted an equivalent.  I will totally make those again.  But there was plenty of food, and lots of board games, and we had a really nice time ringing in 2010.

On New Year’s Day, we reconvened (it’s nice to be adults so we can sleep in a little) with breakfast pastries and juice and elaborate coffee-making rituals (my brother’s tenure at Starbucks makes coffee-making a huge production with coffee grinders and French presses and special fancy coffee beans) before we opened presents.  We tried to cut back a little this year, and I think it took a lot less time to get through everything.  I had a wonderful year because my family decided to go vintage on me, which was awesome.  In addition to my Amazon wishlist, I sent out a link to my Favorites on Etsy, and it was really cool to receive stuff from there.  My brother and sister-in-law bought me a little drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge that I had Favorited, and my sister found me a vintage Beacon camera with a flash on eBay since the one I’d Favorited on Etsy was sold.  That made for some pretty cool and unique gifts.  And my parents are going to buy me a new pair of glasses, which is also awesome because my current frames are about four years old and I’m ready for something new.

After we finished gifts, we played board games for most of the afternoon.  I am not usually into board games, especially the ones that I consider boring like Monopoly or Life or Sorry or one of those that I’ve played a million times since childhood.  But we played new games like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone, which are really excellent German board games that are fun and strategic and new and interesting.  So that was pretty cool.  I intended to go home in the evening, but ended up staying at my parents’ house until almost 11pm on New Year’s Day.  We had a great time.

And then I had two whole days with not much going on!  I cleaned the house so that my brother and sister-in-law could stop by and admire my new furniture before they got on their way back to Kansas City on Saturday afternoon, and I took Martha to the dog park (she insisted that she needed some fun, but after twenty or thirty minutes in ten degree weather at the frozen park, she was ready to go home), and I did many loads of laundry, and I watched movies.  I watched several movies, including Ben-Hur (which, clocking in at four hours worth of Charlton Heston wearing various togas, is a crazy time-suck, but, it must be said, an excellent movie) and Anatomy of a Murder and I can’t remember what else.  I made a special effort to go to a movie on Sunday night (Sherlock Holmes, which was ok) because I hadn’t been out to a movie for awhile.  Then the stars aligned and I ended up going out to movies on both Monday (Red Cliff) and Tuesday (The Road) nights this week as well, so it’s been a week of movies, which is never a bad thing in my mind!  I love going to movies!  I might even have thought to go to another movie tonight if I wasn’t playing trivia at a bar later.  (Bar trivia is my new thing.  I put together a few people who are playing regularly on Wednesdays, and I love it!  I am such a nerd, and I’m fine with that.)  But I have not ruled against seeing another movie later this week.  It’s just the time of year where good movies are in the theaters, unlike the months that go by where nothing of interest is playing anywhere nearby.  I can name half a dozen movies still in the theater that interest me, but they’ll all be gone in a few weeks and I can go back to my sitcoms and Netflix and AFI movies then.  (Though I’ve been pretty proud of myself for keeping up on the Turner Classic Movie lineup lately, recording everything that sounds interesting, and watching a lot of it.)

And now it’s today!  January 6, 2010.  (Twenty-ten.)  Epiphany.  Lots of people turn off their holiday lights today, which is okay by me.  I don’t like it when people turn them off before today, but after today is fine.  I am hoping that the Magic Tree down at Cherry Hill is still on this evening after trivia, because I have not yet taken a picture of it, and would like to do so for today’s 365 photo.  I will see if I make that work, as we are supposed to get some snow.  (Lovely snow!  We’ve had a lot of it in the past few weeks, which is awesome after a fairly mild 2009.)

I hope you had wonderful holidays and all the best for a happy 2010.  I think this will be a good year for me.  Well, I’m intending to make the most of it, anyway.