Merry Christmas Eve!

It's 11:14 on Christmas Eve, and I'm cuddled up in my pajamas in my bed listening to Casey Kasem's Top 60 Christmas Songs Countdown on the radio. It's taking me back to my childhood, when we'd listen to his Top 40 each week on the radio in the car after church. We always had to get out of church and through lunch at least in enough time to hear the top ten.

Our Christmas Eve plans have been postponed. We were supposed to go to hubby's family today and celebrate with them, but his mom is sick. No fun being sick on Christmas! So we decided to just stay home, and not even go into town. Mark, himself, is fighting off a cold, so being lazy is a great idea right now.

With so many family, and this year, with so many family spread so far out, we had to plan our Christmas celebrations over the whole week, pretty much. Monday-Tuesday was my family, Wednesday-Thursday was Mark's family, and Thursday afternoon is Mark's extended family. Of course with sickness, that hasn't exactly panned out, but where as we were looking at a solid week of driving to all of these places, we now have 2 days of true vacation in the midst of the holidays.

We spent Christmas yesterday with my family, and what a Christmas it was! Our big present was new cookware - Caphlon! It's so awesome. There are eight different size pots - two skillets, 3 sauce pans, and a 6 quart. Plus, we got a dutch oven that came with the set as a freebie. It's beautiful. We have pretty good cookware right now, it was a wedding present, and has held up well for a Walmart registry item. But I'm excited about having some really good quality stuff to use in the kitchen. Now, if I can just learn how to cook a meal without messing up something...

Another present was The Tales of Beetle the Bard! I hadn't really been all that anxious to read it, for some reason. As obsessed with Harry Potter as I am, you'd think I'd have been in line, but just wasn't. But when we were shopping earlier this week, we passed a bookstore, and I saw it out on a display, and thought, I really hope someone gets me one of those for Christmas. So I was very excited to find it wrapped under the tree.

I am a little bummed that we're not doing more Christmas today. I'm really excited about some of the gifts we got Mark's family - especially the kids. Mark did a great job this year shopping for our soon-to-be niece and nephew, and our baby niece. I was so impressed! I can't wait to share our gifts with them. Maybe we'll be able to pick up our celebrations later this week.

I hope your Christmas is going well! Remember to celebrate, and not rush. Yeah...'cuz I'm so good at that.

Update on our lives

As many of you know, Mark and I have moved! Mark is working as the Associate Director for Choral Programming at the college in town. He is also serving as the Director of movie theatre on campus for his first year here. His schedule has been very busy this holiday season with choir concerts and movies. The transition has been good, so far. We are blessed with all of the pieces having fallen into place: I was approved to work from home three days a week. We are renting a house from some friends, which is a great situation for both us and them. Briscoe is adjusting nicely, enjoying the smells and sounds of a new place to live! As I said, all of the pieces have fallen into place, with the exception of one: we're still looking for someone to buy our house! All we want for Christmas... maybe Santa will pull through for us!

I'm hoping to post more here, as I am hoping to have more visitors. Maybe that can be my New Year's Resolution, instead of losing weight...always a silly idea!

Fun Stuff

I've been so busy lately, I haven't even had time to think about updating on my life. I guess I should do that... but until I get the chance, have fun with this snowflake site that my sister showed me. So much fun!

Proof

We saw an amazing play Sunday night! The theatre group here on campus did Proof, a drama about family relationships. Not only was the play itself really well written, the actors did a great job. I was very proud of my fellow thespians.

The play is about a girl who has been taking care of her mentally ill father for several years. He was a mathematician, a genius, well known in the field. The play revolves around her questions as to just how much like her father she is - she's also a brilliant mathematician, but left school to care for him. She worries that she is going crazy, as well. It's an ensemble cast - the girl, her father, her sister, and an old student of her father's. The exploration of family dynamics is so intriguing, and very compelling. And the way the scenes are juxtaposed together, it keeps you guessing about her sanity the entire play.

The actors did a fantastic job, too. I got so pulled into their world. The way they balanced the humor with the drama was perfect. You could truly see their struggles, and how they dealt with them through humor, as anyone does. It was very natural, just very well done.

I love theatre. I'm so excited to be back here, hoping I get the opportunity to act again sometime soon. I love that the group here does plays that affect you - not just the "popular" plays. It's truly an intellectual experience, always challenging some part of life.

Twilight: The Movie

I went to see Twilight last night. My sister took me as my birthday present. I took her to see Sex and the City for hers, so it was a good trade off. And it enables us to spend time together, which is fun, ‘cuz we don’t do a whole lot together, just the two of us.

Note, I'm really talking about the movie ahead. Spoilers for the movie (and the book, too, I guess) will follow.

It was okay. It just wasn’t...realistic. And I know, vampires, not realistic, but that’s the whole idea of a movie. It makes you think that it’s real. And this one just didn’t do it for me. The special effects were almost too much. Special effects are supposed to look like they could actually happen. They help you suspend belief, but these just looked like special effects.

The whole movie was angsty teen. I thought the books had a lot of lightness and humor, and while a lot of the lines in the movie were funny, they were all said with a dark, ominous feeling, like at any moment the world’s going to come crashing down. The actors just couldn't lighten up and enjoy their own humor. They really were funny!

The movie did follow the story of the book very closely, quoting it often, but they left out some of the most important parts, to me. All of the questions and details about being a vampire were mentioned in passing, but never really discussed, as they were in the book, as they deserved. And the whole hotel scene...that’s where Bella and Alice’s relationship was really established and developed, and it was completely left out. I think they could have spent a lot more time on her developing relationship with the Cullens, and left out a lot of the process of her finding out what they are.

There were good parts, great parts, actually. I LOVE Charlie! I think he was amazing. The actor did a great job with that character, and the things they did with his character in terms of lines and direction were a perfect representation of what I think of when I think Charlie.

And I really liked Rosalie, too. I didn't really have a strong opinion about Rosalie from the books, one way or the other, but I really liked hating her in the movie. The actor just seemed to convey a lot of Rosalie's emotions in her few lines and just through her visual looks.

I am glad I saw it, and I will see the others. (Summit announced today that they're moving forward with New Moon.) Maybe it’ll be like Harry Potter - the movies only got better. And I do still love the story. It’s a love story at its heart. And a good one at that.

Twilight is for Lovers

For my birthday, I received the first three books in the Twilight series. I read the books about 2 months ago, having checked the first three out from my sister's library. But when it came time to read the fourth, I was 118 on the waiting list at the public library, and somewhere around 20 at my sister's library. I wasn't waiting. So I bought it. In hardback, of course, because that's the only way it's available. And, loving the series so much, I knew I had to have the first three. In hardback. (See strengths at right, under Input for further explanation.)

So, I was very excited when my birthday present consisted of the first three Twilight books, beautiful and black, along with the first four Harry Potter books (in hardback), completing both of these collections for me. Yea!

And now, Mark and I are reading Twilight together. It's been fun reading it with someone who hasn't read them, because he has so many questions that I didn't allow myself to ask - I devoured all four books within about a week. But reading them aloud to one another, we have to take time, and we can only read when we're both present, which is more difficult now that we're working in different cities.

And every time he asks a question, my response is "that's a good question." Really because they are, and because if I were to answer them, they would give away something to come, because he does ask appropriate questions to the story. Some of his questions:

If Edward bites Bella, will it kill her?
Has Edward ever killed anyone?
How do you become a vampire?
Why can't Edward read Bella's mind?
Does Edward's family hate Bella?

See? All very good questions. And I can't wait to read him the answers.

Twilight is truly for lovers, because when I first read them, it took me back to the early stages of our relationship, when everything was new and exciting. And it made me fall in love with him all over again. It's fun, reading them together now, because we get to fall in love with each other, all over again, again.

Sorry for the extremely personal post. Maybe all you married/dating people out there can do the same! And it doesn't have to be Twilight...just find a good love story, and read it together. It does wonders for your heart.

Halloween

I really appreciate the person who took this picture of me on Halloween. 

And in response, I offer this from lolcatz: