1. Went on a weekend retreat with my dance troupe last weekend in Berkeley Springs, WVA. We snagged a sweet 4 bedroom cabin, about a half a mile off the paved road in woods full of pine trees and huge, lichen covered boulders. My troupe is always trying to find a way to hang out more often, so this was a great way to disconnect from the world and ( Read more... )

Despite the annoying mad dash to holiday prep, and Justin losing 4 hours of his Wed evening to trying to find the owner of a dog he found wandering in traffic*, Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. Well, the turkey took longer to cook than we expected until J pointed out that the 5# boneless breast we also had in the oven was slowing the cooking ( Read more... )

Whiling away some work time, added my own question at the end, feel free to grab (and adapt) if you'd like.

Eggnog or hot chocolate?
Neither really? But probably eggnog, alcoholic, and not too much of it. My Puerto Rican coworker gave me a bottle of his homemade coquito (coconut eggnog) I'm about to bust into.

Does Santa wrap presents or just ( Read more... )

Through a convoluted thought process one night I ended up looking up blogs about Norway. I have been reading the archived posts on this charming one written by an Australian married to a Norwegian, she posts lots of cultural information. On a post about Norwegian Christmas she mentions this part of the holiday season:

From Boxing Day until New ( Read more... )