And so this is Christmas
And what have I done? Rather a lot, actually, when I look back at this year. Most of it was things I'd rather not have had to do: I lost my sister to cancer. I had to move my mother into assisted living, and deal with cleaning out thirty-plus years worth of accumulated Stuff from her house. The City of Phoenix decided to revamp their employee benefits, so I had to scramble to get Mom signed up for new insurance. Work has been hectic and often stressful. I've spent a lot of time gloomily contemplating my own mortality.
On the plus side, I've managed to stay on top of the hectic and stressful things at work, and despite some problems, I think I've impressed my boss and his boss with my ability to do so. Fannishly, we started publishing the Sunnydale Herald on Tumblr (and we attracted some followers, woo!) I managed to get another chapter of POM out -- which may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's important to me that I finish it, and finish it well. Mom's house will go on the market in January. And Kathy and I are both employed and relatively healthy.
Christmas was pretty low-key; we had Mom over for a late lunch/early dinner (lamb roast, very yummy.) For a treat, we gave Bo a little bit of lamb fat. Only a little bit; couldn't have been bigger than my thumb. This turned out to be a mistake, as he barfed it up, ate it again before we realized what had happened, and then spent the next twelve hours in various degrees of digestive upset -- he had an accident while we were over at Kathy's brother's place for dinner, and then had to be let out twice again after we went to bed. The next morning I found four places in the back yard where he'd eaten grass and thrown up again. But he seems fine now, so we'll just be damned sure to avoid giving him any more in the future.
We didn't do a lot of gifts on Christmas (we save that for the New Year's get-together, mostly) but we went out on the 26th and meandered around looking at sales for awhile. There's a local consignment place, My Sister's Attic, which has very nice 'recycled' *cough*second-hand*cough* furniture, and we stopped there on a whim, because they sometimes have the sort of bench we're looking for for the front porch. They didn't have any benches that we wanted this time, but they did have this:
It's all leather, and really nice, high-quality leather, too -- but because it was a bit scuffed, I got it for less than a hundred dollars. We'd been wanting to replace Kathy's recliner, because it was starting to fall apart in places, so I bought this one and gave her my newer recliner. I gave it a once-over with leather cleaner, and it cleaned up really well. Since we had to rent a U-Haul to get it home (much cheaper than them delivering) we took the opportunity to get the stepladder from Mom's old place and took the little table and chair we'd been storing for her at our house over to her apartment. We managed to re-arrange things in her room to fit them in, so now she has a place to sit and eat if she wants to skip the dining room. She seemed pleased with it, so yay.
I ordered a new knife block on Amazon, one will will replace our two current knife blocks and have some room for expansion. It was on major sale, and I nabbed an eighty-dollar gift certificate by signing up for the Amazon Visa (which I promptly removed from the account and will never use) so I got it for practically nothing. Thus endeth the holiday extravagance.
Rants Talk to me
On the plus side, I've managed to stay on top of the hectic and stressful things at work, and despite some problems, I think I've impressed my boss and his boss with my ability to do so. Fannishly, we started publishing the Sunnydale Herald on Tumblr (and we attracted some followers, woo!) I managed to get another chapter of POM out -- which may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's important to me that I finish it, and finish it well. Mom's house will go on the market in January. And Kathy and I are both employed and relatively healthy.
Christmas was pretty low-key; we had Mom over for a late lunch/early dinner (lamb roast, very yummy.) For a treat, we gave Bo a little bit of lamb fat. Only a little bit; couldn't have been bigger than my thumb. This turned out to be a mistake, as he barfed it up, ate it again before we realized what had happened, and then spent the next twelve hours in various degrees of digestive upset -- he had an accident while we were over at Kathy's brother's place for dinner, and then had to be let out twice again after we went to bed. The next morning I found four places in the back yard where he'd eaten grass and thrown up again. But he seems fine now, so we'll just be damned sure to avoid giving him any more in the future.
We didn't do a lot of gifts on Christmas (we save that for the New Year's get-together, mostly) but we went out on the 26th and meandered around looking at sales for awhile. There's a local consignment place, My Sister's Attic, which has very nice 'recycled' *cough*second-hand*cough* furniture, and we stopped there on a whim, because they sometimes have the sort of bench we're looking for for the front porch. They didn't have any benches that we wanted this time, but they did have this:
It's all leather, and really nice, high-quality leather, too -- but because it was a bit scuffed, I got it for less than a hundred dollars. We'd been wanting to replace Kathy's recliner, because it was starting to fall apart in places, so I bought this one and gave her my newer recliner. I gave it a once-over with leather cleaner, and it cleaned up really well. Since we had to rent a U-Haul to get it home (much cheaper than them delivering) we took the opportunity to get the stepladder from Mom's old place and took the little table and chair we'd been storing for her at our house over to her apartment. We managed to re-arrange things in her room to fit them in, so now she has a place to sit and eat if she wants to skip the dining room. She seemed pleased with it, so yay.
I ordered a new knife block on Amazon, one will will replace our two current knife blocks and have some room for expansion. It was on major sale, and I nabbed an eighty-dollar gift certificate by signing up for the Amazon Visa (which I promptly removed from the account and will never use) so I got it for practically nothing. Thus endeth the holiday extravagance.
Rants Talk to me