beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...
Saturday, David and I went to see the Nutcracker at the Pacific Northwest Ballet. It's their 25th anniversary of this particular production, and it was wonderful. I've had the children's book Maurice Sendak made that includes a lot of his costume and set designs, so I had one of those weird "I know I've never been here before but it feels so familiar" feelings every time a new set was revealed. I have now seen 3 different versions of the Nutcracker--the more traditional William Christensen version at the San Francisco Ballet (which I believe is being replaced with a version by a new choreographer this year), a videotaped version of Mark Morris's Hard Nut (set in the 60's and QUITE untraditional!), and now Kent Stowell's collaboration with Maurice Sendak (which aims to be more traditional than tradition, by going back to the original story and skipping things like the Sugarplum fairy entirely). All quite good. I love the music and the elaborate costumes... and this year it was snowing when we left the performance hall! Quite lovely.
Sunday, I had my annual Christmas Cookie Party. This year I totally botched the pre-planning and sent out a frantic invitation email approximately 6-2 days ahead of time (depending on when I found the person's email address). I missed a lot of people and invited some new folks on a whim because I happened to be talking to them... so we had my cousin Anna and her husband Rob (they're expecting!), Colleen and Josh (who brought something called "Apple Pie" that was made with Everclear, yow!), my old friends from The UPS Store, Linda and Bill (who gave David a lovely penguin tray, so cute), Adam and Kelsey, Mike Spiz (brought nummy banana bread and took photos with too-awesome camera), old coworkers Adam (brought carving tools for the gingerbread house!), Tony, and Cherylyn (who brought her daughter Amber & hubby Dan...and apparently was sorority sisters with Kelsey...small world!), and me, David, and Greg. I was pretty impressed with the turnout considering how bad the roads were. Actually, I was floored. So there were LOTS of cookies, but everyone took cookies home with them so we ended up with just a few more than we needed left over. This year I made actual dinner -- risotto with butternut squash and peas -- which was roundly hailed as an excellent idea and seemed to combat the sugar well.
There were lots of gingerbread masterpieces: traditional adorable candy-coated cottages (me, Kelsey, Linda & Bill), a brick walled wonder with the Hawkeyes logo on one side (Colleen and Josh), a simple home coated in what would end up being about 4 feet of snow (Spiz), the "House O' Boob" by Greg, which was...very complete..., a crime scene of epic proportions including a gummy bear hanging and a car through one window (Mike), a creepy run-down shack with textured, falling in roof and bare tree out front (Tony and brought-artist-tools-Adam), and Adam's 'house monster' with cookie arms coming out of each side (with fingers even!), four candy-cane legs, angry eyes, and Boston Baked Beans in a ridge along its back. Spiz got photos, which I can't wait to see.
It's still icy cold out. I've finished roughly half of my Christmas gifts--including wrapping and (in some cases) packing! I need to ship them out, and finish up the Christmas cards, and figure out how to deal with a couple of annoyingly content people who apparently have no hobbies or weird tcotchkey fetishes and must be given some sort of generic... uh... food! and nice dish towels! NOBODY doesn't need those things. Bwahaha. Excellent. David and I are "giving each other" a HD TV and Blue-Ray player, so our tree might be a little empty this year. I'll stick a bow on the TV or something.
At work, we're 1 day away from our first Gold Master candidate submission, so work has been a lot of play-testing and polish and fixing teeny little bugs. I'm cool with that.
The weird part is, 'beginning to feel a lot like Christmas' has yet to start 'feeling a lot like abject panic'. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but at the same time, boy, this is pretty darn nice. :D
Sunday, I had my annual Christmas Cookie Party. This year I totally botched the pre-planning and sent out a frantic invitation email approximately 6-2 days ahead of time (depending on when I found the person's email address). I missed a lot of people and invited some new folks on a whim because I happened to be talking to them... so we had my cousin Anna and her husband Rob (they're expecting!), Colleen and Josh (who brought something called "Apple Pie" that was made with Everclear, yow!), my old friends from The UPS Store, Linda and Bill (who gave David a lovely penguin tray, so cute), Adam and Kelsey, Mike Spiz (brought nummy banana bread and took photos with too-awesome camera), old coworkers Adam (brought carving tools for the gingerbread house!), Tony, and Cherylyn (who brought her daughter Amber & hubby Dan...and apparently was sorority sisters with Kelsey...small world!), and me, David, and Greg. I was pretty impressed with the turnout considering how bad the roads were. Actually, I was floored. So there were LOTS of cookies, but everyone took cookies home with them so we ended up with just a few more than we needed left over. This year I made actual dinner -- risotto with butternut squash and peas -- which was roundly hailed as an excellent idea and seemed to combat the sugar well.
There were lots of gingerbread masterpieces: traditional adorable candy-coated cottages (me, Kelsey, Linda & Bill), a brick walled wonder with the Hawkeyes logo on one side (Colleen and Josh), a simple home coated in what would end up being about 4 feet of snow (Spiz), the "House O' Boob" by Greg, which was...very complete..., a crime scene of epic proportions including a gummy bear hanging and a car through one window (Mike), a creepy run-down shack with textured, falling in roof and bare tree out front (Tony and brought-artist-tools-Adam), and Adam's 'house monster' with cookie arms coming out of each side (with fingers even!), four candy-cane legs, angry eyes, and Boston Baked Beans in a ridge along its back. Spiz got photos, which I can't wait to see.
It's still icy cold out. I've finished roughly half of my Christmas gifts--including wrapping and (in some cases) packing! I need to ship them out, and finish up the Christmas cards, and figure out how to deal with a couple of annoyingly content people who apparently have no hobbies or weird tcotchkey fetishes and must be given some sort of generic... uh... food! and nice dish towels! NOBODY doesn't need those things. Bwahaha. Excellent. David and I are "giving each other" a HD TV and Blue-Ray player, so our tree might be a little empty this year. I'll stick a bow on the TV or something.
At work, we're 1 day away from our first Gold Master candidate submission, so work has been a lot of play-testing and polish and fixing teeny little bugs. I'm cool with that.
The weird part is, 'beginning to feel a lot like Christmas' has yet to start 'feeling a lot like abject panic'. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but at the same time, boy, this is pretty darn nice. :D