Long Time No Post

[angua9]

You would think that my New Years resolution was "don't post on LJ," so negligent have I been. It wasn't - I have no excuse.

In the absence of anything interesting to say, I'll ramble a bit about what's been going on in my life:

• Last weekend we went out to West/Central Texas to celebrate my husband's aunt's 85th birthday. This was pretty emotional for all of us because she's almost exactly a year younger than her sister, my husband's mother, who went into her final decline the day after her 85th birthday last year and died three days after that. But this aunt seems in good shape despite some health problems, and we had a good (though very short, considering we drove there Saturday morning and drove back on Sunday) time.
  
  We were amazed on the trip out at the generous profusion of dead critters on the road (especially skunks) and on the drive back we kept a list (at first mentally, then on a sheet of paper). We counted ... *takes deep breath* ... 52 dead skunks, 22 dead deer, 10 dead raccoons, and an assortment of many other animals, of which a red fox, a rabbit, and a wild turkey were the most interesting. I blame/credit the unusually wet summer of 2007 - there must be way more wildlife than usual ranging about seeking food to survive the winter.
  
  We let my son stay home by himself for the first time ever, which he greatly appreciated, even though he spent most of his time doing the surplus of homework that was the cause of us allowing him to stay home.
  
  
• My daughter and I have tickets (but not guaranteed entry - first come, first served!) to the Obama rally in Houston this Tuesday. I got my son an invitation too, but he didn't RSVP fast enough and now he's on the "standby list." You snooze you lose!
  
  Since I enjoyed being an author-worshipping JKR acolyte so much, I'm happy to be have the opportunity to join another cult.
  
  
• I spent most of the month of January coding essays for Scribbulus. I spent so much time on it that I totally failed to accomplish my two personal goals for January - arranging books on my new bookshelves and putting music on my new iPod. On the plus side, I greatly improved my html skills.
  
  We've had a terrible fall-off in the volume of essay submissions since the completion of the HP series and will be pathetically grateful to anyone who wants to send us a nice essay.
  
  
• A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Houston Museum of Arts with some of my Heyer-reading friends to see an exhibit on Batoni (an artist I was shamefully ignorant of before). I enjoyed the exhibit quite a bit (for anyone interested, it moves to the National Gallery in London in three days), but what I enjoyed more was that we accidentally stumbled into a symposium on the subject the museum was hosting. This was absolutely fabulous and free, with terrific speakers and eye-orgasmicly lovely slides on screens at least 30-40 feet tall. Apparently the visual quality of art history lectures has improved quite a bit since I last took classes three decades or so ago. Anyway, I'm determined to keep an eye out for more of these TOTALLY FREE symposiums and go to some of them. And I won't have to take notes or take tests on them either!
  
  
• Oh, another thing I intended to do in January but haven't is write up a trip post for the terrific cruise we went on to celebrate my parents' fiftieth anniversary. I hope to still do this (friends-locked because it'll include pics of my kids and other relatives) but in the meantime here is a picture of me (I give myself much less privacy than I give them) and my new BFF Atena:
  
  
  
  Isn't she a beauty?
  
  
• ETA: I know I've missed approximately 87 trillion very important birthdays. :( I don't even have time to catch up right now, only to apologize.