World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska

Thank you, Shannon, for sending fun pictures of the ice festival! For those of you not keeping up with things, I posted something about it a couple posts ago...I promise that someday I will come and visit. And yes, I realize I've been saying that for years.

Just Shoot Me

I had fully intended to update my blog over this past weekend with new pictures and new stories, but unfortunately Friday night's dinner gave me food poisoning and left me incapacitated for the rest of the weekend and a whopping seven pounds lighter. Today is the first day I've felt any semblance of "normal". At one point, I was lying on the floor, half my body in the bathroom, half in the hallway just hoping that by some stroke of benevolence I would be struck dead and put out of my misery. Yes, it was that bad and I'm not generally given to exaggeration. (I don't think.) So now that I am back to the land of living, I'll be posting again real soon. Hope your weekend was better than mine!

Valentine's Day

I hope your Valentine's Day was fun!

Fairbanks, AK I'm talking to you!

I have a 1,000 Places To See Before You Die desk calendar - you may be familiar with the book of the same name. Each day spotlights either a travel destination or a travel experience and causes me to spend the first ten minutes of my workday daydreaming about far-off places. Yesterday had a winter wonderland theme, with a picture of ice skaters on the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottowa, Canada. (Yeah, I’d never heard of the canal, either.) Also on yesterday’s page was a list of four other cold-weather cities and the winter festivals for which they’re known. One caught my eye - the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, I know this blog has a reader who calls Fairbanks home. You know who you are. Have you been to this festival? More importantly, do you have pictures you could share with the class? Email them to me and, with your permission, I’ll put a couple on the blog. We’ll call it a little ode to winter weather and the beauty it possesses! Of course I can wax poetic about winter weather because, unlike a lot of you, I don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis. So bear with me!

Happy Feet

I want these boots:

Or these ones:

Or even these ones would work:

Working (Wo)Man Blues

I haven't posted in a while. I think I've been waiting to see if something noteworthy or exciting happened. And then, said exciting event would elicit its very own, "Hey! Look at this exciting thing that happened. Want to hear about it?" post. But, alas. That doesn't seem to be how my life works. I'm too tired when I get home from work at night to do anything but be lethargic and lazy. Work has been trying lately because I don't really respect my boss and yet have to find a way to work with him. I used to look forward to the days when he would be out on vacation but now I almost dread them because inevitably I'm going to uncover some mistake on his part or something that he has swept under the rug as no one else holds him accountable and I end up having to take care of it so it doesn't look as though the fault lies with me. No one monitors him so he can pretty much do what he wants. It's extremely frustrating given that I was raised with a pretty strong work ethic and when a customer calls me with a problem or an issue, I hate discovering it was due to something he did (or didn't) do and I'm left having to calm them down and clean up his messes. I don't get paid enough for that! I keep biding my time, knowing that his retirement is soon and I'm the logical person to step in and take over his responsibilities. Heaven knows I already do most of them.

This one and this one and this one...

Generally speaking, I don’t look forward to getting the mail. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t avoid getting it but long gone are the days when I’d eagerly anticipate the arrival of the mailman. Nowadays, he just brings me bills and catalogues for random mail-order companies and several esteem-building credit approval notices. What other pieces of mail cheerfully proclaim “You’re pre-approved!!!”? But yesterday, I received a catalogue from Barnes and Noble.com advertising their warehouse sale with pages and pages and pages of sale-priced books. It’s like a grown-up version of the Scholastic book orders I drooled over in elementary school. Well, except without the 75 cent posters of puppies and kittens curled up together. I sat on my couch and drooled over every single page, seriously considering circling every item on my mental wish list. But then I wondered what would I do with it then? Do like the old days and give it to my mom so she could decide how much money I’d be allowed to spend? And then face the arduous task of whittling down what I want to what I can feasibly spend without feeling luxuriously guilty? My dinner was ready to eat when I finished my perusal so I never did get to circle my wishes…But I’ve got some free time tonight!

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I'm home putting the finishing touches on my dessert contribution to Christmas dinner. I hope you are all having a warm, safe, and memorable holiday. Can you believe it's snowing in Portland? Yep! It's been coming down steadily for the last three hours. As significant snowfall rarely happens in my fine city, it is quite the exciting event! It's perfect snowball snow, wet and extremely pack-able. I'm grateful I have nowhere to be tonight when the temperature drops further and all this wet, slushy snow freezes. Those of you in places that get considerable amounts of snow would laugh if you could see how Portlanders react to even the tiniest bit of snow. It's not unusual to see cars abandoned on hills and people "unable" to make it to work when there's just a light dusting. It's not the snow I'm cautious about, it's the other drivers on the road!

Enjoy the rest of your holiday!

Coming Soon!

Somewhere between Christmas cards and wrapping presents and last-minute shopping I promise to update my blog soon!

Watch this space for developments...

Holiday Rundown

Even though I'm not responsible for Thanksgiving dinner, preparing for the holiday takes time and energy a single day doesn't usually require. Here's the rundown on my Thanksgiving week:

11/19 – Put on my game face and strapped on the elbow pads before venturing out to the grocery store. I knew if I put it off another day, the lines would only get longer and the shoppers would only get crankier. I completed my ingredient list for the yummy Apple Cider Spice cake I was baking for my Thursday contribution.

11/20 – Began cleaning my apartment, knowing how nice it is to come home to a clean house after being away for a few days. I had barely begun before being distracted by a book I wanted to finish. Next thing I know it's 11:30 p.m. – way too late to use the vacuum, run the dishwasher, and start laundry. But I'd finished my book!! The evening wasn't a total waste.

11/21 – Tonight I bathed my dog, Abby, in anticipation for her visit to my parents house. A clean dog makes a much nicer house guest than a dirty one. She's a very tolerant bather, but even without her resistance, she's still 62 pounds of dog and is hard to strong-arm. Not to mention how hard it is to suppress her urge to shake! I accomplished a lot Wednesday night, bathing Abby, packing, cleaning, and baking my cake.

11/22 – Happy Thanksgiving! I drove the 110 miles south to my parents' home in Springfield, dog in tow. Our group was small this year, just my parents, my younger sister Jaylyn, and a friend from her church ward, Jenny. Oh, and two dogs. Abby and my sister's dog, Maggie, got along fine. Abby desperately wanted to engage and play with Maggie but Maggie didn't want much to do with Abby. I was worried that part of the visit wouldn't go well, but the dogs were completely fine with one another. Dinner was delicious! Thanksgiving was everything I wanted it to be. Lazy, relaxing, and low-key. No family gathering is complete (no matter how small the group) without playing games. We played Catch-Phrase after dinner and had fun teasing each other about our clue-giving skills!

11/23 – We observed Black Friday with some early-morning shopping. Jaylyn and Mom were out-of-control and out of the house by 5. I met them a little after 6 as I am utterly unable to rise any earlier. Though, my older sister gets the crazy award for leaving to shop with her sister-in-law before 4. Granted, when you have kids I imagine it's even greater incentive to take advantage of all the sales. But why even go to bed? After shopping for a few hours, I returned home to shower and recharge before picking Jaylyn up at work so we could catch an afternoon showing of Enchanted. She and I hit another couple of stores after the movie, got home in time for dinner and I was asleep on the couch by 9. Upstairs in bed by 10. Such excitement!

11/24 – Tried to sleep in, but when Abby heard the rest of the house waking up she became restless. Sometime during the night she jumped up on the bed with me where I found her curled up at my feet the next morning and I knew it was silly to think I could ignore her and continue sleeping. After breakfast, I watched a little football with my dad before the two of us began working on my car. Well, really he did the work and I held the screws and observed. I needed to replace some lights which ended up requiring the dismantling of a large portion of the dashboard. But thanks to my dad I can now see how fast I'm going when driving at night! Thanks, Dad. It was with great satisfaction we put it all back together without any leftover parts. After that we watched a very disappointing Oregon game and then I drove back home to Portland.

All-in-all it was a very enjoyable holiday! I hope yours was good as well.