Just back from a really nice family Thanksgiving dinner, up at my Grandma's house. Food, yum. Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, beans, rolls... it was all there, except for the sad omission of pumpkin pie. No pumpkin pie! I am scandalized! T did make tasty brownies and some excellent soft gingerbread cookies, though, so I am pleasantly stuffed with dessert. But I think we may have to rectify this situation and make some pie for ourselves this weekend.

Even more important, of course, was the company, with the special addition this year of oswulf, who was in town with his wife for the holiday. Most of the local family were there, too, and it was good to see them all, but D isn't just my cousin -- he was my best friend for many, many years. So the opportunity to hang out with him for even a few hours is precious. I am lucky to have a family I enjoy spending time with.

I'm lucky in so many ways, really, and it's good to have a day to reflect on that. It's been a tough year for me and mine, but that doesn't negate the many things I have to be thankful for: solid marriage, financial stability, steady job that I mostly like, good relationships with co-workers and family, and so many good friends, including those of you reading this entry right now. You've probably all noticed by now that I don't tend to get emotional on people, but that doesn't mean that I don't love you all. And so here's a round of Happy Thanksgiving, all around. I'm grateful to be a part of this community.

Happy birthday lassarina!!!

I hope you have a wonderful day. :)

Belated birthday party: accomplished. It was a small group, but in its own way, that's just as good as having a cast of thousands -- everyone got to talk to everyone else, and it was actually possible to have the whole group in a single conversation. Last year I did brunch, so this year I went the other way: dessert. T made his signature chocolate cake, SE and SF made cookies and brought *homemade lemon curd* (oh so yummy), and R and S made chocolate cream pie. Tasty stuff. Add a smattering of nuts, fruit, and cheese, and you almost don't need dinner.

I may have a dessert party and a brunch in alternate years from here on out; both strike me as very civilized ways to celebrate a birthday. But in the future, I should probably decide to have the party more than a week in advance. Today was just a little on the crazy side, in terms of running around to get everything done. Worth it, though.

Happy birthday angeltaisha!!!

Even with everything going on in your life right now, I hope you take some time to celebrate, because you deserve it. All my best wishes and thoughts are with you. *hugs*

Happy birthday, lucil_luzzu!!

Hope you have a great day planned. Stay warm!

For as long as we've been together -- over ten years now -- T and I have made it our custom to cook dinner and eat in for Valentine's Day. So after a quiet day at home, which included breakfast, reupholstering the downstairs cat tree, and watching "V for Vendetta" (which was pretty good, very style-over-substances, I really ought to read the graphic novel), we went to the store and picked up some steaks, cooked them up, and had a nice dinner together, nothing fancy, although we did pull out some candles. A low key celebration, as usual, but that's what works for us. It's been ten good years; with luck, we'll have ten more, and then another ten after that.

I hope everyone else had a lovely day as well, whether you celebrate or not. :)

It is my sad duty to report that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, thereby predicting six more weeks of winter.

Admittedly, we could use a little more winter here in San Francisco -- we're seriously off the pace for rainfall, and if we don't get a lot more, and especially more snow in the Sierras, we could be in for a nasty summer. But I have a feeling most of you out there are more than ready for winter to be over.

Also, pity the poor meteorologists, upstaged annually by "furry forecasters".

Title: Options
Fandom: FFX-2
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 640
Characters: Nooj, Rikku
Spoilers: None
Notes: I left this off the JaNoWriMo to-do list, but only to preserve a little surprise; I intended from the beginning that this would be the first thing written and published. Happy Birthday yesterday to bottle_of_shine!! Written to the prompt "Rikku, Nooj: change is the law of life", one of her unfilled requests from "Trick or Treat 2008" and chosen in part because it gave me the opportunity to use a line that's been floating around in my head for years now. Hopefully they are a good fit.

( The last thing he'd expected to see was Rikku, greeting him with a cheery wave as she clambered up onto the barstool beside him. )

We still have three hours (and one second) to go, but I'd like to take a moment to welcome everyone in the time zones ahead of me to 2009. :) I'm probably going to watch the foggy fireworks later -- T is out on a photo shoot, and he's going to pick up me around 11.

I'll wrap up my year in another post soon. For the most part, though, I can't say I'm too sorry to see it go. Here's hoping for a better future. Cheers!

Quick update from San Diego... I'm writing this from my in-laws' study, where I can look out the window and over the valley, a lush green hill covered with avocado trees across the way. A nice setting for a little LJ. Monday it rained, the clouds cutting off our view; yesterday was sunny and beautiful. The big family gathering was yesterday, and it was good. Tasty food, some good conversations with T's cousins, played a trivia game with the group and got to show off my superpower. Now we're mostlly having a quiet day at home. It's overcast and a little chilly -- I've spent much of the afternoon curled up by the fire, reading an old Newsweek, the one with the complete presidential campaign coverage. Interesting read, although a lot of it is old news to me, the blog junkie.

Tomorrow we fly home, hopefully -- another rainstorm is blowing in. Wish us luck.

Finally, we turn the corner into longer days. I hope you are all safe and happy and (relatively) warm.

We take off for San Diego in a few hours, and I'll be mostly offline until we get back on Christmas night. So I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy holiday, of whatever sort you choose to observe. See you in a few days!

A few days ago, we decided that the library needed a total shelf-read by library staff. Ever since, I keep finding excuses to spend time doing it. You know, instead of my real work. Or today, staying longer than necessary after an Open House on a Saturday. But it's so satisfying, putting the shelves in order. I spend half an hour on a bookcase and it looks so much better when I'm done. The other day, I even found a book that had been so badly mis-shelved for so long that the system had marked it as lost.

I like shelving for the same reason -- it takes minimal brain power, but it's not totally mindless, and the effects are both noticeable and immediate. Instant gratification! I don't get a whole lot of that in my job, so sometimes it's nice to go for the quick win.

Sometimes I say that I knew librarianship was my calling because I actually enjoy shelving, and shelf-reading, and shifting (another project that should be undertaken soon).

In other news, T's work had its unofficial holiday party today. T made a chocolate cake *and* creme brulee, which made him everyone's favorite person for the day. And because no one thought to bring matches, he got to use his blowtorch to light some candles. The visual on that was, to say the least, amusing. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture; I'll have to see if anyone else did.

The party also included a white elephant gift exchange. My contribution? My copy of Twilight. The guy who opened it had never heard of it, although his wife recognized the title from hearing about the movie; the CEO, who was acting as master of ceremony for the exchange, pretended to read the back and made a joke about it being an erotic novel, and that theme carried through the rest of the exchange. If only they knew...

Raise a cup of tea (pinky extended please) and leave your best haiku in the comments.

(If you don't know what Moose Day is, click here.)

I hope everyone who celebrates the holiday had a lovely Thanksgiving, and that everyone else enjoyed their Thursday off.

Ours was fairly typical -- drove up to Santa Rosa for dinner at my grandma's. My uncle roasted the turkey, and it came out great. Potatoes, veggies, gravy, rolls, pumpkin bread and two kinds of pie for dessert. Tasty all around. The family has had a pretty good year, as these things go, so it's nice to get together for a low-stress celebration. It's especially good to be able to gather at Grandma's; for awhile it looked like the inevitable downward slide of aging was going to take her, but not only has she stabilized, it seems that her health has actually improved over the last couple of years. It looks like family gatherings will have to be at her place from here on out, though, because traveling is hard on her, so if it's not in her home, she can't be there. Fortunately Santa Rosa isn't too far -- maybe an hour and a half to two hours, depending on traffic.

I am a bit jealous of everyone who got to cook their own Thanksgiving meal, though. T and I talked about that on the way up: that we haven't ever pulled together a big holiday meal of our own, and it doesn't look like we'll have an opportunity in the foreseeable future (see above re. Grandma and inability to make it down here -- she couldn't even get to my wedding). For the most part, I love Thanksgiving food, and I'd love to plan the menu to my own tastes and then undertake the feat of making it all work. Of course, the potluck route is certainly less work, and it's nice that I didn't have to shop during yesterday's rush or spend any time yesterday or this morning cooking (we're typically responsible for bringing beverages to our family holiday meals). There are definitely advantages. But I still want to give the whole shebang a try sometime.

Very warmest birthday wishes to kunstarniki!! I hope you have a wonderful day, and many more to come.

GBP = Gratuitous Birthday Post

Since I worked last Saturday, I took today off work and so far have managed to have a nice, lazy time of it. I started my morning in Panera, where I drank lots of coffee and worked on my FF in Space story (which *might* be done by the end of the month, at least for certain values of "done"); when I ran out of battery I came home and poked at the story a little more, and then I wandered off to the Ferry Building for lunch and to finish reading Red Seas Under Red Skies, the second Gentleman Bastard book, which sucked me in just as completely as the first book and left me almost as heartbroken, and now I am cursing that the next one isn't going to be out until February. Just what I needed, another series that will tempt me into buying all the books in hardback.

So all in all, I'd say that reading the adventures of Locke Lamora and working on a story that's threatening to turn into a Crimson Squad space pirate AU was a worthy way to spend this particular day. Avast, me hearties. Have some grog on me.

Happy birthday still today for me at the time of posting but yesterday by the time you see it iamleaper and lassarina!!

I hope you both had, have, and are having wonderful days, and fantastic years ahead. :)

Besides being 8/8/08 (I wanted to post at 8:08, but the pesky work thing got in the way), today is also Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day, which as anyone who's ever grown the stuff knows is a key day to observe.

I had a zucchini muffin for breakfast to celebrate. Warm from the oven. Tasty stuff! (Also the only way I will eat zucchini.)

Also, my aunts are having their (30-years-overdue) wedding reception tomorrow, and if that's not a reason to celebrate, nothing is.

Happy Birthday letters_to_ed!!

Hope you have a great day. :)

Happy Birthday concertinette!!

Hope it's a great one. :)