Updates and Belated Happy New Years (and B-Day greetings)
Hola all around and all apologies for my long absense from the LJ world. I have been running around a lot over the Holidays and was online very little. Once I got back home after New Years I've been ill with some funky strep-like virus and so too miserable and worn down to really get on the computer much. So A Late Merry Christmas to All, Late Happy New Year to all... unless you live in China... in which case I'm actually EARLY in wishing you Happy New Year. Very Belated Birthday wishes to darkbeauty73 and kimmer1227 and to spn_seakat , though ironically I happened to actually be catching up on emails on your B-day and was able to send you a brief shout out. Still owe you a purple nurple though!
I had a pretty good Holiday this year- though sadly as sick as I still feel it's hard to remember what all I did...
The first part of it, I mostly spent chilling at home and drawing bad fan art. I've been wanting to get back to writing. Many fanfics I started need finishing- but drawing relaxes me more even though I'm not very good at it. May post some of what I did later. My friend Margaret was out of town and so I went to look after her kitties a lot.
I spent the Winter Soltice standing outside in the snow watching the lunar eclipse. Sadly there was no other way to do it as I don't have good windows for watching the moon was not visable from my porch. I live in the mountains and so it's easy for the moon to be blocked at certain angles. Standing out in the snow near the garbage cans was really the only good place to see it. I still don't think my boots are completely dry from this. But cold and wet at it was it was pretty awesome, so I can say I was wrong to do it. The only problem was once the moon went away, I waited too long outside in the cold for it to come back... and it didn't come back! That was freaky. The rational part of my brain finally told me that it had just gotten too cloudy in my area for me to see the moon anymore- especially coming out of eclipse as it was. But the primitive part of my brain (probably overactive from lack of sleep and from standing out in the snow for too long) was really worried that is was not coming back and that I needed to wait until I saw it to be sure. Finally rational brain took over and got me back inside where it was warm. I did get to see the moon rising the next night and so was reassured it hadn't actually been eaten by some giant.
Christmas was pretty low key. I spent it with the 'rents and my mom's sister. Then ran around the rest of that week with Margaret and Carol until New Year's Eve when I went down to visit Holly in Amelia.
New Year's Eve was a blast. Ti Anna showed up and we played Rock Band which I'd never actually played before. I'm pretty good being the singer (I actually got 100% on "Man in the Box" which shocked me) But I am the suckiest drummer who ever existed. I can keep a beat, sure, but I keep forgetting which drum is which (to be fair, it's pretty dark in the room we were playing in) so I kept hitting the wrong colors all the time. And we were playing "Carry on my Wayward Son" then, you wouldn't think that would be so hard... well it is when the drummer keeps hitting the blue drum instead of the yellow drum and messes up the whole song! D'oh!
About this time Tiffany who I haven't seen in YEARS came and wanted to play some too. She picked "Eye of the Tiger" to sing and Ronnie raised up his hands and said "And what does that make you all think of?" We ALL said "Supernatural" and he was like "Huh? You're supposed to say "Rocky!" Nope Supernatural! Even Tiffany said so. We had no idea she even watched. She said "Of course- those guys are HOT!" Ahh, Tiffany! We really need to hang out more! MA HA HA!!
About this time Ronnie was so put out by our non-Rocky love that he left to go set up the real rock equipment. He'd been hoping some guys from his old band would show up but they didn't. So he was stuck with us silly SPN lovin' girls. We took turns singing the few songs we knew but it soon turned out that we didn't know the words to enough song that he knew how to play on guitar. If I don't know the words to a song, I always just make them up but aparently Ronnie's a purist about that too and wasn't happy with my improv. (Whatever!) So instead we gave up and plugged in the iPod to do Karaoke instead. We were singing Bob Marley's Three Little Birds which ironically everyone - including the kids knew. This seemed to be the way to go- find a song most everyone knew or could at least pick up easily so we could all sing along.
Then Ronnie plugged in Korn's version of "Another Brick in the Wall" which again, is not hard for everyone to sing along. But I couldn't help myself and shouted out near the end "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!" And Ronnie was all 'No! [GG] This is Korn's version" SO!?!?!?!! Ahhh, dude, I love ya, but lighten up! P.S. Eye of the Tiger is TOTALLY a SPN song now! MA HA HA!!
As the year was winding down the kids wanted to sing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" - the Guns and Roses Version with all the "Hey hey hey yeahs" I vowed I could never hear anything but Dylan's version after that fireworks scene in Dark Side of the Moon *sniff*- but I sang along "Hey hey hey yeahs" and all. 'Cause it's fun to sing with friends. No need for musical snobbery! But we ended the song just as the New Year was counting down WOOOO YAY!!!! 2011!!!
And what did we choose to ring in the year 2011??? Uhhh... 1999 of course!!! MA HA HA!!! I'm just glad no one called the cops on us, because we were being pretty loud at this point.
But the next day- oh I was surprised I still had a voice. But the girls all went to Red Lobsters for dinner. It was two days after Holly's Birthday so the waiter sang to her. Showboating all the way like he was auditioning for American Idol- but we told him he should come sing with us next time we rang in the new year. He was all for it until he heard that we rang in 2011 by singing 1999... then we were lucky to get any refills on our drinks the rest of the night- Oh well. What'd I say about musical snobs? There's no need for that! Sheez!
But we were all still pretty wrecked from the night before. We still got home and played Settlers of Catan. Logan (Stephen's cousin) wanted to play too, but we've never figured out how to play the expansion pack and were too tired to learn that night. Besides he's never played before though he's watched us play enough he probably would get the hang of it quickly, but again, we were too tired to teach another young grasshopper that night so he had to sit it out. But then when were rolling to see who went first he called out almost all the numbers before we rolled them! Brilliant! I said we should take this kid to Vegas! So Holly and I let him roll for us, and dang if he didn't roll some good numbers for us that night. I won, but it was a hard win because everyone ganged up on me the instant I got ahead. So the last two winning points took me forever to get. GRRRR! Still, hard won or not, I was the Queen of Catan! All hail ME! And Ti Anna! You will hail me with ALL fingers! Not just the middle ones dang it!!
So I went to bed that night victorious, but the next day we played again. This time a tight game and Holly won... sigh! So sad to lose the crown so soon. I won't tell you if I hailed her with all fingers or not ;-)
I went home and had Monday off still... but I just felt blah all day. I thought I was just tired from the weekend but then by the evening I got a really bad sore throat. I wondered if it was just from singing so much and being around a lot of smoke which I'm not used to- but it didn't feel like that. It felt like a genuine sore throat. So the next day when I had to go to work, I was SICK. I had a fever and could barely swallow and couldn't talk hardly at all. I felt bad for using sick leave on the first day back, but I had no choice. I thought I might have Strep so I went to the doctor the next day. It's not Strep, but it is some virus that's apparently going around. Unfortunately there isn't much that can be done about it but drink lots of fluids and have bed rest, so that's what I've been doing. This is the first day I've actually stayed the whole day at work- although I'm not all the way here mentally and I still can barely talk. SIGH! Hopefully will get over this soon.
Will be slowly trying to catch up on flists and emails. Might post my bad fanart later. But for now, off to get some more work done... slowly as much as my brain can handle... Is it the 28th yet?