All posts by jenipurr

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In with the same as before

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I have now decided that, should I ever be required to drive in rush hour traffic, or in the sort of nasty rain and wind we’ve been dealing with in this area again, I must always remember to bring my new Haley Westenra CD. Months ago I heard a review of her latest album – Pure – on NPR and liked the snippets they played so much I put it on my wish list. Richard saw it listed there, so it showed up under the tree for me, and today we popped it into the CD player in the car as we headed up to Napa for our New Year’s Eve gathering. She has an amazing voice and an incredible range and she makes hitting those nearly impossible high notes seem effortless, and most of all, her music is the sort that just flows over you so that you cannot help but just relax and think happy thoughts. It’s perfect for stressful driving. We listened to it all the way up last night, and all the way back today, and I think it will definitely have to live in my car now. Richard is already making plans to rip it all to MP3 and add it to his iPod clone, since he liked it just as much as I did.

We were headed up to Napa to do a family sort of New Year’s Eve, for the first time in quite a while. Since my family never drinks, we made it our tradition decades ago that instead of gorging on alcohol and getting drunk, we would instead gorge on leftover Christmas cookies and all of our favorite flavors of ice cream as we watched the stupid ball drop in Times Square on TV. As my mom puts it, by stuffing our faces with all these calories until we feel uncomfortably full, it gives just enough added incentive for us to get back into exercising and healthy eating in the new year.

Since I got off work early we somehow managed to avoid any traffic at all on the way up to Napa. My nephews positively exploded with glee when we walked in the door at my sister’s house and Richard and I were dragged off in a million different directions to see everything that Santa had brought. The K’nex ferris wheel we got for the oldest nephew had made quite a hit, and he also showed me he was already picking out tunes on the ukulele he got from his paternal grandmother. The youngest nephew babbled mostly incoherently at me about all manner of things, but mainly we had to be shown the inflatable spears with which they could bap each other over the head and without danger of injury, and the racecar track where the cars leapt through a ring of ‘fire’ and, if you turned the speed up high enough, would sometimes leave the track entirely and crash in random heaps somewhere else in the room.

My parents arrived a little later bearing all of their leftover cookies and containers of ice cream. We all gathered around the table and made homemade pretzels (well, the adults did – the kids mainly watched and did their best to mangle the dough they were given). Richard opened more of his birthday presents and we ate dinner while watching The Court Jester, which is still one of my favorite Danny Kaye movies of all time. Richard and my dad and Bil-1 and I all hunched over the little joystick controller and did our best to beat each other’s high scores on PacMan and DigDug and some other game that was deceptively difficult, which none of us remember seeing when we were younger but which my nephew was getting the hang of a lot quicker than we adults.

Later the kids went to have their baths and went to bed, and then it was time for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (which I had never seen, and which had me laughing hysterically throughout most of it. Also I suspect that there are more than a few couples who watch this movie and then, at some point in their future, gift each other with a ‘love fern’, just for the humor potential). We all brought out the ice cream we’d brought with us and sat in front of the TV with birthday cake and containers of ice cream which we ate with spoons right out of the carton until we were almost too full to move.

By the time the movie ended it was only a few minutes until midnight, so my sister went to fetch my oldest nephew, since he’d wanted to see it, and we watched some strange news personality walk around New York with a head on a stick, trying to get a date to kiss at midnight, and we listened to another announcer say that the ball dropping over Times Square was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and I wondered what exactly he was smoking and why he wasn’t sharing with the rest of us. And then the stupid ball dropped and we all cheered Happy New Year rather weakly because of all the ice cream and cookies, and also because we were all very sleepy and most of us not used to staying up so late any more. Just like that, it was 2005 and just like every year at this time, it was absolutely no different than it had been minutes before.

This morning my older sister made a marvelous coffee cake with streusel and frosting and we drank copious amounts of coffee to try to recover from being up so late the night before. Then Richard and I hugged our goodbyes and loaded in our Hayley Westenra CD into the car again, and set off for home. We may or may not have made a few stops along the way to search for the game controller that has PacMan and DigDug and all the other cool games that I may or may not desperately need now, but alas, we could find it nowhere. So instead we came home and collapsed on the sofa to watch Jabberwock, which earned its reputation for being the most forgettable of Terry Gilliam’s films quite well (yawn), and I was immediately overwhelmed with five cats (the sixth was probably still lurking in the linen closet and did not come out until much later). We had leftover birthday cake and leftover New Year’s Eve ice cream for lunch and I did some knitting and started a list in my head of all the things I want to get done on Monday because I have the day off from work, and it has been really quite a lovely way to start a brand new year.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Celebratory

Today was Richard’s birthday. Since I had to go to work and he had all this week off, I left this morning before he ever woke up. But I did have time to bake his birthday cake, and wrap, or otherwise set up, his birthday presents so he would find them when he came downstairs later. Since we are, after all, nerds, I gave him another domain (a nerd can never have too many domains, right?), a very goofy spirally stuffed dragon (who we have decided must live in the library on the new library chairs which arrived Tuesday and they are gorgeous and perfect!), and the extended edition of Return of the King, which apparently he promptly sat down and watched in its four-hour entirety. I expect that at some point in the near future we’ll be doing a marathon session to watch all 13 hours of the extended editions of all three of the movies. Mmm. Legolas. And also the movies were pretty good, too.

The office was quiet today, since pretty much everyone else had the day off (we get our holiday on Monday instead). So instead of fielding calls from clients, we all focused on getting work done. I had files to scan for disk storage (all those boxes we brought back with us from San Francisco) and some minor updates to do on the databases for each of the offices (hooray for some end-of-year coding). We all did our best to stick it out as long as we could but by 3am there were only two of us left, and I gave up and decided that anything else I could do could just as well wait until next year and left work early. Although that last coworker pretended to be hard at work as I walked out the door I have no doubt that he was only minutes behind me for leaving.

Richard and I had our own New Year’s Eve celebration a night early, since the special holiday menus offered at the restaurants we’d considered did not in the slightest sound inspiring. So instead we decided to do dinner last night instead of tonight, thereby avoiding crowds and lack of parking and traffic and all the other joy that comes with holiday dining. We went to a fondue restaurant in Sacramento, where we ate far too much of the swiss pesto walnut cheese fondue starting course, finished almost all of the main course (which included cuts of filet mignon, salmon, tiger shrimp, among others) and finally had to leave a small amount of the turtle chocolate fondue behind when we were done. Oh, so very good.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Coming undone

When we first moved into our house we rather quickly discovered that the front door bolt was a little unusual. Not only does it latch in the normal manner, by sliding a deadbolt into the wall, it also has a super special secret lock, which can only be triggered by accidently turning the knob inside one extra twist to the right. This has the unfortunate advantage of essentially ‘freezing’ the latch on the outer side of the door so that it cannot be depressed, which means that even if you happen to have your key with you, and attempt to unlock it, you will be unable to do so.

In the first year we each managed to lock ourselves out a time or two, but luckily it wasn’t ever too much of a problem – the other person was always home (although there was one incident when Richard went outside to the backyard to do something rather quick on the front porch in his bathrobe and pulled it shut behind him, and then had to sit on the front porch and wait because I was in the shower and oblivious to his frantic ringing of the doorbell). And since then we’ve been mostly pretty good about always double-checking the latch when we pull the door closed behind us, just to make sure we were not trigger the super secret lock. I will admit that I have become almost paranoid about this. Apparently Richard had not.

At about 2 or so today I received a rather sheepish call from Richard. He’d gone outside to help someone load a computer into their car (a computer we were given from one friend to overhaul and give to another friend, except the second friend ended up getting a far nicer computer beforehand, so instead we offered it up on Freecyclers, and the woman came to pick it up today), pulled the door shut behind him to make sure the cats wouldn’t get out, and then realized a split second too late that he had forgotten to check for the super secret lock. As I sat on the phone with him he ran around the house checking all the other doors, but we’re fairly good about making sure all doors and windows are always kept locked, so he was out of luck. I eyed the time, pondered various possibilities, but everyone who has a key to our house was out of town. So if he was going to get back in the house, I was going to have to come home to let him in.

I had to let a pile of files download from the main server to my email because I knew if I left them on the server over the weekend I would hear about it from our IT guy, so I was impatiently waiting for them to complete when the phone rang again.

We’ve been in this house nearly four years now and we always figured that the super secret lock feature was sort of permanent and could only be undone from inside. Desperation had never before been a factor. Turns out there *is* a way to get the door latch to release, if you fight with it long enough. So now we know. Heh.

All my coworkers got a huge laugh out of the whole ordeal, however. And I am sure, once back inside and not having to lurk on the front porch for half an hour while I drove home to let him back in, Richard probably found the humor in the whole thing too.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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The sound of dinner

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Another day down in the old office in San Francisco, sorting files, lugging boxes to the dumpster, clearing the storage room not so affectionately nicknamed ‘the bilge’. This room goes on forever and ever, curving around narrow little pathways in between and underneath and behind the huge ventilation pipes in the basement garage, and everywhere, in every nook and cranny had been stuffed boxes that we had to go through and then cart away. We filled the huge dumpster to overflowing and finally, somehow, it was done. My car and my boss’s were stuffed with boxes of files to bring back to Sacramento (I sense a whole lot more scanning and archiving in my future).

When I got home, Richard had started dinner – a head of garlic in the oven and burgers ready to be put under the broiler. Unfortunately, the burgers were a bit juicier than we’d expected – a fact which was discovered when all the drippings started to smoke, followed shortly thereafter by the oh-so-lovely sound of every single smoke alarm in the house going off at once.

Here is when we discovered a very important thing. We have no idea how to turn the damn things off. Richard went racing for the stool and fumbled around at the closest one, looking for some kind of button, but nothing was there. Next I dragged the crate of owner manuals and warranties from the cupboard and frantically dug through it, hoping we might find the paperwork that came with even one of the darn things – something that might tell us how to turn them off – but no luck there either.

And then, as abruptly as they started, the alarms finally shut themselves off, all at once. So even though we never did track down any information on how to actually turn them off manually, at least we can be reassured that, should this happen again, at least we only have to endure about five minutes of ear-splitting screaming from half a dozen little machines attached to the ceiling in all the most inaccessible spots in the house. We turned on the exhaust fan and finished preparing our dinner – thick layers of roasted garlic and slices of cheese over burgers which had shrunk dramatically during the cooking / house-smoking event. Despite the slightly smokey cast to the house, dinner was delicious.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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My own version of Boxing Day

Christmas was over too quickly. But I suppose that’s to be expected when it comes on a weekend. Today it was back to the normal thing – or at least as normal as things get in my job. I got up and met my mom at Curves to work out, but then instead of heading off to the office in Sacramento, my boss and I instead headed down to the office in San Francisco. That office moved a week ago, leaving behind piles and piles of old files for us to go through. A few months ago my boss had brought back several dozen boxes of files, which I’ve been slowly scanning to disk so we could dispose of the paper copies. Now that the San Francisco office moved, we had to either take all the remaining files, or throw them away.

So while my boss’s son and his friend dragged load after load of boxes and random trash out to a dumpster in the parking garage, I rummaged through boxes with a thick stack of papers listing every project for which we still didn’t have an original copy. Considering there are at least 5000 projects for this particular office, that was a lot of files to flip through, one at a time.

Driving there and back we had the radio on, mainly to listen for traffic updates. With the rain and the wind, even though there were fewer cars on the road there were enough nasty accidents that we had to take a few detours to avoid them. So as we listened for road conditions we also listened to the updates on the situation in Indonesia and India and Sri Lanka. And every time they discussed the story, the number of dead grew by the thousands.

We’ve had horrible earthquakes and tornados, hurricanes and tsunamis, everything that Mother Nature can throw in our direction in this country, but the devastation has never come close to what they are facing over there. So many people have died that they may never know the true number.

The story that touched me the most tonight, driving home from San Francisco, was of the little two-year-old boy who had been found. No one knows who he is, or where his parents might be, or even whether they are alive. They weren’t even sure what language he speaks. And there are thousands more like him – little children, old men and women, mothers and fathers – who are suddenly alone.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Christmas and the after

Since this is the year my sisters and I do Christmas with our respective in-laws, and since Richard’s family does Christmas Eve instead of Christmas as the annual day of family gathering, this year’s Christmas was extremely low key. I’d pondered getting up and making gingerbread pancakes for breakfast, but at the Christmas Eve service my mom made a random comment about when she might get up to stir up the dough for the sticky buns and I rather unsubtly invited us over for breakfast. I suppose I should feel guilty but I cannot, because I only get the chance for homemade sticky buns twice a year and they are so very, very good.

So we got up when we felt like it, and curled up on the couch with the cats and our laptops and opened our Christmas presents to each other. Since we got home after midnight last night I managed to talk Richard into opening one present then (because 12:15 am is, technically, Christmas), but the rest waited until a more traditional hour of the morning.

Richard proved once again that he is good at shopping for clothes for me, surprising me with two lovely sweater tops and two skirts. I now have, among other neat stuff, a pile of books (including a knitting book), two magazine subscriptions that I very much wanted, and the newest version of the only computer game to which I have ever been addicted (Civilization). I have not yet installed it because I very much need to be doing some work for my Photoshop class, but I am not sure how much longer I will be able to hold out.

We went over to my parents’ house for breakfast, and to exchange gifts with them (they got me a yarn ball winder, which may not seem exciting if you are not a knitter but trust me, I really needed one!), and then came back to have a very lazy day. The afternoon was spent lounging around the living room – me with books and knitting, and Richard with his laptop and a box full of tiny parts, which slowly were put together to become a robot with a computer brain. The Lego’s Mindstorm set had originally been intended to be his big birthday present, but I decided since he has all next week off from work he’d probably appreciate having lots of time to play with it. Considering how much time he has since spent happily poking about on his computer and constructing the Legos into various robotic forms, I think I made a wise decision. Plus I figure he can plow through another of his presents – the entire collection of Monty Python on DVD – while I am off at work, thus saving me from getting to enjoy the strangeness of British humor except in only very small doses when I am actually home (heh).

My parents came over for dinner later – grilled steaks, roasted garlic, homemade rolls – and brought pie for dessert – chocolate pudding filling in a traditional shortbread-type crust that my dad still makes by hand like he was taught when he was a little boy. They very nicely left us with half a pie when they headed back home, and I had a small piece for breakfast this morning because what better way to fortify oneself for the after-Christmas sales than with pie?

My older sister and her family came by later in the evening so we all headed to my parents’ house and exchanged gifts. Remember how I said I worked best with a deadline? I finished the sweater for my sister about one hour before we headed over to give it to her. But at least I got it done and it was absolutely gorgeous – the yarn I chose is a soft washable wool in shades of pale blue and watery green that make me think of serene pools and spring days, and I did tell my sister that if she, for some reason, doesn’t like it I will gladly take it back and claim it for myself.

This morning started quite early for me, since it is tradition in our family to hit the after-Christmas sales. I met my mom and my older sister at the first store while it was still dark outside and we spent the next few hours going from store to store, stocking up and saving tons of cash. We’ve discovered that since everyone tends to go to the malls, the stores in and around the Vacaville outlet mall tend to be nearly deserted, so we can rummage through bins of cards and wrapping paper, gift bags and stocking stuffers, and shop to our hearts’ content without having to contend with stress and crowds. Plus this year, since sales weren’t as high as stores had been hoping before Christmas, most of the places we went had things marked down up to 75% off.

We timed it perfectly – getting back to town with just enough time for me to zip home, show off all my bargain finds to Richard, and then dash to the church to meet the rest of the recorder ensemble for practice. By then I was pretty tired – up since 5:30 and not a drop of coffee – so it was a challenge keeping my eyes open during the sermon. But my older sister and her family came to church with us and my nephews proved just how shy they are not by piping up during the children’s time to tell the pastor all manner of things (they had the entire congregation laughing at one point), and there were friends to chat with and hug, and there were paint colors for the chancel to discuss (thereby starting my stint as chair of Board of Trustees a wee bit earlier than planned), so it was for the best that we were there.

After church we went out to lunch and then headed back to my parents house to play classic arcade games (PacMan! DigDug!) on my nephew’s new toy (which he very sweetly allowed us to play). There were cookies and there was more pie and then we all hugged our goodbyes and Richard and I came back home, where I promptly staggered upstairs and crawled into bed and took a much-needed nap.

For the rest of the day I foresee more lounging and companionable silence as we each work on various projects. Richard is busying himself with his Mindstorm robots, which have the added incentive of thoroughly enthralling the cats, and I think that I shall crack open my book for my Photoshop class and see if I cannot get through at least one more lesson before the evening is over. I am pondering possibilities for dinner and wondering if I really want to try to cobble together something healthy and well-balanced, or whether we should instead just use this as an excuse to finish off the remainder of the Christmas cookies and pie. Right now, as I type this and feel particularly lazy, the idea of pie for dinner is winning, hands down.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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But to me heard afar

Noel, Christmas Eve, 1913 *
— Lyrics by Robert Bridges
— Music by Lee Holdrige

A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining,

I travell’d forth alone where westward falls the hills.

And from many, many a village, in the darkness of the valley

Distant music reached me, peals of bells were ringing.

Through most of the year, being agnostic is not really something I even think about. My continuing search for faith, in some form or another, is just a part of who I am. Throughout the rest of the year I attend church because it is my sense of community – something I was raised with; a place where I have found people who are willing to accept me as I am, doubts and all, because even though they may not understand how I cannot believe, they at least understand that it is a journey that is mine, alone, to make.

Then sped my thoughts to olden times, to that first of Christmas’

When shepherds who were watching heard music in the fields.

And they sat there and they marveled and they knew they could not tell

Whether it were angels, or the bright stars a-singing.

It has been incredibly foggy this year; so much so that coming home at night on any evening is a test in faith, especially as we get closer to our little neighborhood. In the dark and the mist all that is often visible are the lights on the houses, shining for all they are worth through the gloom, as if to try their best to chase it away. This is one of my favorite parts about this season – the night and the silence and the lights. Sometimes when I am alone in the car I will open the window to let some of the fog in – that crisp smell of clouds in the air all around me. There is magic in fog; there is wonder. At this time of year the fog can make me start to believe in things – that there might be fairies lurking under the bushes as I pass by a house, and that mystical creatures might truly exist in the shadows when the fog rolls in.

Of any other weather, fog can make me suspend my belief, even just a little, and I can let my imagination wander. And I wonder about stories – myths and legends – and how they came to be, and whether they were born at some point by ancient people telling stories of things they could not explain, or were born instead out of imagination, as a way to draw people in to a story that might just have been large enough to not need the embellishment, but which has now become so inexorably entwined with the magic that people firmly believe it to be true.

But to me heard afar, it was starry music

The singing of the angels, the comfort of our Lord

Words of old that come a-traveling, by the riches of the times

And I softly listened, as I stood on the hill

And I softly listened, as I stood on the hill.

Most of the rest of the year I do not question my lack of faith. Most of the time I remain silent during prayers, and I do my best to focus on what is good and right and how it seems the world should be, and I use that as my guiding light. It is at Christmas, however, that I wish that I could somehow find what I am missing. I know that it is not amid the mad rush to the mall, or the greedy clamor for presents, or the tacky decorations on lawns, or the in-your-face Jesus/God mania that is shoved down our throats by sad, close-minded people who always seem to forget that Freedom of Religion applies to everyone, and not just to them.

I do not know if there really is anything out there to believe. I do not know whether some single omnipotent being really sat down and crafted out some huge plan that involved causing bushes to burst into flames when old men climb mountains, or parting seas, or claiming babies as its own offspring/clone/whatever the trinity really is, or sending its hosts to visit a bunch of rather startled shepherds over 2000 years ago. Most of the year I cannot find it in my heart to believe. But at this time of year, driving home in the fog, letting my disbelief be suspended for even a little bit, sometimes, deep inside me, I listen. And I wish.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

* Recorder – my dad
Guitar – a friend
Vocals – me

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All is calm, all is bright

This morning, after sleeping in as late as we could stand it, we got up and gathered all the presents together and headed down to Richard’s parents’ house for the traditional Christmas Eve festivities.

We are lucky –he and I – that because our families live so close we are able to spend time during the Christmas holiday with each of them. His family always does the extended family bit on Christmas Eve, and for this and last year we started doing it during the day instead of in the evening, which has made things even better.

It is usually quite a relaxing day, and this year was no exception. Their adorable border collie puppy had grown at least another few inches in the two weeks since we last saw him, and a stint in puppy boot camp had him a little less prone to leaping madly at people in glee (although once Richard sat on the floor later in the day all bets were off from the puppy, and leaping in glee commenced in earnest).

We sat around the living room and talked. We ate Chinese food, and drank root beer straight from the bottle. We sampled too many different types of cookies to count, including spicy ginger cookies, and silly sugar swirls shaped like snails, with cloves for the eyes. We drank coffee and hot cider, and opened our stocking gifts to each other, one at a time, in unison (which means that I can now link to the goofy penguin that I knit for Richard for his stocking stuffer), and then moved on to the family gifts. Everyone in his family draws one name, but his parents have lately taken to getting everyone something fun and just a little goofy as well, so there were two boxes for everyone to open, and apparently this was the year of the electronic cat toy. I’m sure the manufacturers probably didn’t think they were making cat toys, but what else do you call a hovercraft and a giant hockey puck that scoots around the floor on a cushion of air but cat toys?

Richard and I headed back at a leisurely hour, with more than enough time to stop for dinner along the way. I played through the hymns a few times to get my fingers reacquainted with the songs. And then I headed over to the church early, through the dark and the fog, to practice the songs again on the piano there, since I’d yet to even touch the baby grand the church got on loan for last week’s cantata.

It was a small and quiet service, as the 11pm services usually are. I played the hymns as well as I could with improvised lighting, and my dad and I did a duet on alto and tenor recorder. Later, as we sang Silent Night, Richard and my dad stood behind me with their lighted candles so I could still see my music, and in the last verse I played only the lower parts and let the congregation carry the tune by themselves, because Silent Night is a song that was really meant to be sung in harmony, with only voices to echo out the refrain.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Eve eve

Because when Christmas time rolls around each year, secretly I am actually only six years old and have no patience at all, we tend to string out our gift giving to as many days as possible. To this end, Richard and I did our stockings tonight, on Christmas Eve Eve. Since I got off work extra early, I came home, corralled all of Richard’s presents into one heap on the floor of the library and commenced with wrapping. The cats poked their heads in from time to time, but aside from an experimental bap here and there at random bits of wrapping paper they mostly left me alone.

This is not, however, because they were being unusually well behaved; rather it was that Rosie had discovered the shelf on which I’ve been stashing various finished knitted objects, and was busily shoving them all onto the floor. I might have been a little upset about this except that the items in question were three hats and scarves knitted from an unfortunate yarn choice that (despite label claims to the contrary) felted and shrank in the wash. So they’d been sitting there while I pondered various ways in which to (try to) salvage them, and I figured if it was a choice between the cats chewing on a few slightly ruined hats and ‘helping’ me with the wrapping paper and the scissors, the hats would have to win.

Of course, I did not realize exactly what Rosie was doing with the things she was industriously dumping onto the floor until much later, as I was getting ready to go to bed, and noticed a familiar color behind the chairs in the bay window. It turns out Rosie had very carefully severed one of the pompoms from one of the hats and had carried it off as a prize. I have no doubt that she has similar intentions for the remaining two hats and their pompoms as well. Yes, some cats catch mice and bugs, but Rosie hunts bigger prey. Stuffed dragons, green beans, and now pompoms. I am almost afraid to find out what is next.

But I digress. I got all my wrapping done just as Richard was walking in the door, so I busied myself getting dinner finished while he headed upstairs with boxes and scissors and worked on wrapping his own pile. We ate dinner and then sat on the couch in the living room while the cats milled around at our feet and emptied our stockings to each other.

There were traditional stocking stuffers – socks for me (Richard got his socks earlier), a chocolate orange for him, paperback books, little toys, a handful of super balls supposedly for me, but which I know are really for the cats, and so on. And then we sat on the sofa and watched random shows on HGTV and ate early Christmas candy and it was a lovely start to the season.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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A little stuffing for Christmas

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This morning on the way to work I dropped off a little early Christmas present. I posed him carefully on the porch, rang the doorbell, and then dashed back to my car and drove off. It wasn’t until after I’d arrived at work that I got the phone call to tell me it had been found.

Isn’t he just the cutest thing? He’s very huggable and I knit him up in just two evenings. Really, how can you not like a squishy snowman like him?

We will just try to forget about the fact that underneath his fuzzy purple hat and red scarf he looks like an albino butternut squash – much like if Mr. Lunt from Veggie Tales had a close encounter with a blood sucking vampire. I *knew* there was a reason I found him so gosh darn adorable. Heh.

This has been a Holidailies entry.