I am going home for Thanksgiving this year. That's a bit of a change of plans, as my family has come to my house for the past few years, but I guess the price of not having to clean is having to travel. It's a bit complicated, involving trains and handing off my car to my brother, but I'll be there for a few days. I haven't been doing so well ( Read more... )

I don't know where this came from all of a sudden. It's not exactly seasonally-appropriate. But a little Hawking scene popped into my head tonight, and I scribbled it down in a few minutes just for amusement's sake. It's probably never going to fit into any of the plays, but it was an opportunity for some cute character moments, and one really fun ( Read more... )

My favorite Christmas memory, possibly my favorite memory of my childhood-- of which I honestly don't have many --was from this one Christmas Eve party my parents threw when I was small. It wasn't from the party itself, but from the preparation during the day preceeding ( Read more... )

My mother loved Halloween ( Read more... )

My family came to my house for Thanksgiving again. It was nice, a low-key day spent with my dad, my brother, and Casey's girlfriend Sarah. It was also the first Thanksgiving since my mom died. They say that the first round of holidays without the lost person is the hardest. It was certainly strange; she's been in my thoughts even more so than usual ( Read more... )

Valentine's Day doesn't mean that much to me, one way or the other. I like it well enough, I think it's a nice idea, especially if you don't have the time or money to do special things more than occasionally. And I certainly don't hate it. But it's never been important to me. I wouldn't mind not doing anything for it ( Read more... )

I am at home in Pennsylvania this week to celebrate Christmas with my family. It is lovely to be hear, and we spent a low-key day today hanging out and cooking. We made our Italian seven-fish dinner, including cheats like shrimp, smoked salmon, crab cake, fried calamari, and our special lobster bisque that we make every year. It's our way of ( Read more... )

I am a filthy piglet who does not clean well enough, as evinced by the fact that I did not sufficiently scrub the insert in the silverware drawer.

My cheap-ass dishwasher soap is doing a really lousy job on my glassware. Significantly better results from more expensive stuff suggest I ought to just bite the bullet and shell out.

My oven runs hot. To ( Read more... )

My parents are driving in from Allentown today, to spend their first-ever Thanksgiving at my house instead of me coming down to there. With my new job I couldn't get off the time to travel, and my brother has to work Thanksgiving proper, so they figured they'd just come up here and get the chance to see us anyway. They'll even be staying with me at ( Read more... )

Now that we are officially in October, that means Halloween approaches. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, for the food, for the celebration, and of course, for the costuming. It's funny, though, as much as I love making costumes and having the chance to dress up, I rarely end up coming up with anything all that amazing for Halloween. Last ( Read more... )