On the way home from work yesterday I stopped by the yarn store, and after imposing on the very helpful clerk, I managed to find green and gold yarn. Then I went home and while I waited for Richard to get home I started on one of the little hats.

The instructions weren’t kidding when they said these things go fast. By the time we left for my company’s holiday dinner last night I had finished half the hat and today not only did I finish hat number1, but I also whipped out hat number 2. They’re very cute hats – all bright green with sparkly gold tops and little rolled brims. I felt almost as if I was cheating somehow because it’s only one stitch – really no pattern at all – so it went incredibly fast. Granted my hands feel permanently cramped into little knitting claws and I have interesting pains in my left hand from holding the yarn, but I’ve only got one hat to go. This means that I might possibly be inspired to make a few adult-sized hats as well. I am making no promises, however. Three may just be my limit.

The holiday dinner was fun. There are only seven of us in the Sacramento office so it was a small group, even with some of us bringing spouses or boyfriends. We went to Mace’s, which is a nice and expensive restaurant in a rather snooty and expensive little shopping center. We (the entire group) split a seafood cocktail that came in a martini glass big enough to float someone’s head, and then there were salads and there was chicken and steak and salmon and Kobe beef, and finally there were desserts. Half the group had a caramelized banana torte, but considering my feelings on bananas, I opted instead for a marvelous apple crisp that was covered in brown sugar streusel. I don’t think there was a single one of us who didn’t eat far more than we should have, and by the end of the dinner we were all leaning back in our chairs eyeing our unfinished desserts blearily and looking forward to going home to try to sleep off the excess.

As for today, it’s mostly been about the hats. The one exception was the arrival of the pet sitter to get a key and a tour of the house, and to meet all the cats (or at least the ones who would come out to say hello). And I got the second hat finished just in time because this evening we’re finally restarting the old AD&D game that had been on hold for the past six months. I zipped upstairs to scribble out this entry but now it’s time to rejoin the little group and enter the world of sorceresses and feline familiars and searches for arcane artifacts, and all the laughter and fun that accompanies these games that we have missed so very much in its absence.

Now that I am done with the sweater for my nephew I find myself antsy to start something new. I’ve got this book of patterns for some truly gorgeous sweaters for adults (male or female) but last night on a whim I got online and started poking around looking for patterns for hats. I found this really cute pattern for making little hats for kids that look like Christmas ornaments. Naturally I immediately fired off an email to my sisters asking for the general circumference of their children’s heads, because I am going to hold to the fact that the pattern says the hat can be made in a day. I figure with my skill level and time limitations I should multiply that by at least a factor of three, but that still means I could maybe get these done. This does mean, however, that I am going to have to make a trip to the yarn shop in Davis because the pattern specifically calls for metallic yarn. Gosh. Darn. A trip to the yarn store. Heh. I’m not sure yet how quick these will go, even despite my guestimates, nor am I sure exactly how they will turn out. But I’m going to give it a try because apparently I am just insane.

While I was sending emails to my family, I included one asking about the cookie situation. Our family has a list of cookies that we make every year – some of which require more time and preparation than others. Since we’re all flying up to Seattle to spend Christmas up there it made sense to try to divvy up the baking so we each can just do only one or two kinds. I immediately volunteered for gingerbread men (see above reference to the fact that I am insane) because I make them every year and I would hate to miss my yearly purchase of a box of raisins, which I only ever use as gingerbread man eyes and then promptly pick off the baked cookies before I eat them because I really cannot stand raisins. But traditions are important and besides Richard doesn’t mind getting random pairs of gingerbread man eyes dumped in his hand for snacks so it works.

Speaking of holiday baking, it’s that time now when people start bringing in random goodies to the office. Earlier this week there were Reese’s peanut butter cup bells in the candy jar in the kitchen, which usually only ever holds Tootsie rolls. Tootsie rolls I can usually avoid, but Reese’s peanut butter cups? Bye bye willpower.

Luckily the supply of Reese’s had been depleted by Tuesday and now there is nothing left in the candy jar but Hershey’s Hugs. Those I can avoid easily because they are mostly white chocolate, and really, what is the point of white chocolate except to make you *think* you might be getting the good stuff, only to sorely disappoint you?

And finally, apropos of nothing else in this entry except that I took it at work, I leave you with this picture. So many times I’ve seen a gorgeous skyscape while driving and by the time I have searched frantically for, and located a safe place to pull over and drag out the camera, the clouds and the sun have shifted and it is gone. This one, however, stayed around. It looked as if there was something hovering over downtown Sacramento, spilling through, and I could barely believe that I managed to capture it on film.

I am not usually a fan of canned vegetables, but I make the exception for green beans. I prefer them fresh, of course, but there is something almost comforting about canned green beans – the way they smell and taste. It’s good that I like green beans – really good. This is because one of the mainstays of lunch these days is a can of green beans. I open the can, drain the liquid, dump the beans into a container, and then at work I pop them in the microwave and eat the entire thing. One whole can of green beans, to fill me up so I’m not so hungry during the day. Oh, there’s the added benefit that one can of green beans provides three servings of vegetables and we’ve been trying really hard to eat more fruits and vegetables anyway, but still, the whole point of the darn things is to fill me up so I am not starving again by 3pm. It doesn’t always work because I think my brain is wired to be hungry every two to three hours no matter *what* I ate for the meal, but I continue to make the effort anyway.

The whole reason I am telling you about this is that every day when I take my first forkful of beans I take just a moment to pause and remember the dog.

Back when I was still going to graduate school a friend asked if I would watch her dogs while she went out of town for a few days. They had three at the time – all of them extremely large, and extremely boisterous and friendly. I have never been any kind of a dog person, preferring to watch dogs from far enough away that they cannot jump on me, stuff their noses in my crotch, or try to slime me with their tongues. I am, admittedly, a dyed-in-the-wool cat person, so three dogs was more than a bit overwhelming. But she had no one else, and so I agreed. It wasn’t too much work – I just had to swing by the house twice a day to let them out to the backyard to run around and such, and give them their food and water.

It was the food part that sticks with me the most about this whole experience. One of the dogs – the largest one – had hip dysplasia and so was on a diet. To keep him from being too hungry while getting such a small amount of food, they were feeding him a can of green beans with each meal. It would never have occurred to me to feed green beans to a dog, but he adored them, and would inhale them out of the bowl within seconds of me dumping in the can.

I cannot help but think of that dog every time I sit at my desk and eat my daily can of green beans.

Last week we were all sitting around talking about what comfort means to us, and of course the discussion naturally drifted to food, and since this week’s theme for the class was Comfort, we decided we’d all meet an hour early and have a potluck dinner, with everyone bringing their own ‘comfort food’.

I had to think about what to bring for a while. Pop tarts and ice cream are one of my favorite comfort foods but I wasn’t sure how well that would go over with the rest of the group, and I didn’t want to have to do anything (like grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) that would require any cleanup later. So I finally decided to make potato cheese soup, which is one of my favorite things in the winter. It’s thick and hearty and it’s delicious and it would also be a way of having at least one vaguely nutritious entrée at the dinner because let’s face it, comfort food is *never* good for you.

The only problem with this little plan was that our blender died weeks ago during an aborted attempt at making peach yogurt smoothies, and we have yet to replace it. The potato cheese soup is a very simple recipe – you cut up potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions, toss them into a pot with some water and then boil them until they’re soft – but it does require the use of a blender to puree all the veggies into something that looks less like a regurgitated squash and more like something you might want to eat. And while potatoes, carrots and celery can all be more or less pureed using a regular kitchen mixer, this does not work for onions, no matter how well cooked they might be. After trying – and failing – to improvise this morning, I finally sent my mom an email begging for the use of her blender for one night. And then I had to leave work early because I had to somehow manage to get home in time to not only feed the cats (darn special diets requiring separate meals, grumble grumble), but to zip off to my parents’ house, find their blender, come home, toss all the soup parts into the blender, and then stir in the cheese and heat it up, all within the space of slightly less than an hour. Luckily when I explained to my boss that I had to leave early for blender issues he was extremely understanding, although that may have had more to do with the fact that I’d managed to finish up all the additional data extraction and creation of pretty graphs by the time I wanted to leave than just that he was humoring me.

It was a dinner with good food and good friends, sitting around a long folding table in the unheated social hall at the church, laughing and talking and passing around the serving dishes and eating it all with plastic silverware and paper plates and bowls because we were trying not to make a mess we’d have to clean up later. It was a wonderful potluck dinner. There was a bucket of chicken from KFC, homemade macaroni and cheese, a taco dip, monkey bread covered in streusel topping and walnuts, and cupcakes made from scratch. An entire dinner of comfort food, with the only vegetable in sight hidden away in the creamy orangeness that was my potato cheese soup.

Sometimes it’s nice to just not think about how many servings of vegetables might be in the meal, or how many points are in each entrée, or whether I’ve calculated out the correct size for the portion. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and eat food that you know is probably bad for you, but it tastes so good you don’t care. Sometimes you just have to allow yourself to only eat comfort food, and not waste a moment dwelling on anything else but how nice it is to just, for one brief moment of time, let it be.

I nearly threw the envelope away, but then I realized what it was and opened it. Inside, a one page certificate. Our house has been approved for the state rebate. We have nine months in which to install our solar panels and qualify.

Oh yes. The solar panels. Oops.

Back in October, we had someone come out and evaluate our house for solar panels. We got our estimate and then we were told we would have to wait a few months to find out if we qualified for the state rebate (which, frankly, isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things). This meant, of course, that I had time to think about this. And think. And think.

The problem is that our energy bills are already extremely low. Because of the raised foundation, lots of good insulation, and the decision to splurge for the more efficient HVAC system, as well as watching the thermostat year round, we already use far less energy for most houses this size. On the plus side that meant we didn’t need too many panels; on the negative side it meant that it was going to take us nearly 20 years to see any kind of financial benefit. And yes, there is the environmental benefit as well, but that’s a long time to be waiting for something you’ve spent so much money on.

Making this whole thing even more complicated was the fact that with Richard’s car nearly paid off, we’re looking at replacing mine – and we’d already decided, back when we first heard about the Prius, that we were going to get a hybrid. In fact, ever since we got the chance to test drive one for the day, we knew what our next car had to be.

On a whim, a week or two ago, Richard called around to all the Toyota dealers in the surrounding few counties, and to our surprise, the Fairfield dealership had one in stock that we could look at if we could hightail it down there ASAP. So we went. We didn’t get to test drive it because it had, technically, already been sold, but they let us poke around, open the trunk, sit in the front seat, play with the buttons and even ride in the back seat from the back of the lot to the front of the lot. Naturally, we both fell in serious like with the car – a feeling that intensified as we sat in the dealership later with a pamphlet detailing all the information about the car. And all the while, in the back of my mind, I realized that we would have to make a choice – either the car or the solar panels. Which one was a better deal for us financially? Which one would make a larger impact on the environment?

In the end, we chose the car. For one thing, it will cut our gas bill significantly, but more importantly, we are firm believers in supporting this kind of technology. The more people who buy the car, the more the demand for it will grow, and the more varieties of vehicle will be designed with the hybrid concept in mind. Less gas used, fewer emissions produced, and eventually the environment will be much better for it.

As for the solar panels, they are not cancelled entirely from our goals for the house. Instead they are merely postponed. Technology being what it is, I fully expect that the field of solar energy will improve quite a lot in the next five or ten years. They’ll make the panels smaller and more efficient, and also cheaper. And in the meantime I am poking around online, checking out green energy certificates. As near as I can figure, these things are tailor made for people like us, who live in areas where the utilities company doesn’t provide a green energy option for consumers. It’s not quite as environmentally ‘good’ as the solar panels would have been, but I figure at least they’re a good step in the right direction.

But I think I’ll hang on to that certificate just in case. After all, it’s most likely going to be a few months until our Prius arrives. Which means there’s plenty of time for me to think about this.

And think.

And think.

Yesterday I got up and busied myself with feeding the cats and checking my email and reading the latest Holidailies entries. And then I woke up Richard and we swung by the bakery in town for coffee and pastries and he dropped me off at the church so I could get things set up for the recorder ensemble.

I’ve mentioned this group before in this journal. It’s a group of us, all with about the same level of skill and confidence in our own ability, still diving for the fingering chart every time a flat or sharp creeps into the music. With the legitimate group leader (my dad) out of the country for months on end, the rest of us decided we at least wanted to try to play together a few times, so as to keep it going until he got back. I got this yen to actually play during a service, and with Christmas coming I thought that “Carol of the Bells” would actually sound pretty good when played by a recorder ensemble.

The rest of the group didn’t share my enthusiasm, but I’d asked my dad to arrange the song in a key with as few sharps and flats as possible, and the two most difficult parts had two players each, so each pair set up a system where they would trade measures or phrases back and forth, and I and the other tenor player divvied up the tenor and bass parts. And by the time we’d figured out who was going to play which notes, the group decided that maybe we were ready to perform after all.

It wasn’t as fast as I might have liked it to be; “Carol of the Bells” really should be played at a quick tempo. But we sounded pretty good, and we had fun doing it – enough fun that I think they’ll be a little surer of themselves next time we give this a try. And at the very least I’ve kept the group alive a little longer until my dad is finally home from Germany and can take it back over himself.

By the time the service was over I could feel my energy ebbing away, but we’d decided we were going to get our tree that afternoon, and prior to that we needed to hang the lace panels on the windows in the bay window downstairs. So Richard drilled and pounded and screwed the rods into place while I threaded the panels onto the poles and tried to keep from falling asleep on the couch, and then we drove to the tree farm to pick out a tree.

We always get either a redwood or an incense cedar, so we know exactly where to go in the farm. For whatever reason, those two types aren’t as popular, so there’s a very small selection of them. Nevertheless, we found one we both loved – and in record time too.

This year’s tree is a cedar, which means that although it was a little more expensive, the branches are sturdier. Finally, a tree with a top that’s strong enough to hold up our star! For that reason alone I may push to get a cedar every year from now on.

We got the lights onto the tree, and put out all the other decorations, and Richard put all the rest of the lights up on the windows, but by the time that was all over I was pretty exhausted and we decided to do the rest the next day – today.

Today the reason for the exhaustion became clear. I woke up feeling slightly nauseous and when I got to work I discovered I wasn’t the only one. One of my coworkers was out sick; at least one more wasn’t feeling too good. Ah, the joy of the winter’s first 24-hour bug! I finally gave up and went home at lunchtime and curled up on the couch and took a nap.

It truly does seem to be only a 24-hour bug, since I’m feeling a lot better now. The power was out at Richard’s office so he ended up coming home early too. And since we were both home we managed to get a lot accomplished. We spent a few hours sitting at the breakfast nook table with piles of letters, cards, stamps, and our PDA’s as we addressed, signed, and stuffed all the remaining Christmas cards. And then we turned the lights on the tree and hung all the ornaments, making sure to hang the soft, nonbreakable ones near the bottom. It was a good thing too, since the instant an ornament was hung within paw reach Azzie went nuts, wrestling it into submission until he was finally distracted with something else.

There are a few cards remaining that are in need of addresses, and emails have been sent to procure that information, but other than those few, the only thing we have left to ‘do’ for the holiday is the baking. It’s kind of a heady feeling to realize just how far ahead we are this year. For once.

Our Christmas tree, complete with star – for the very first time!

Our house, with lights

The best thing about the Thank God It’s Over party is that anyone who took part in Nanowrimo is welcome to come, whether they made the 50,000 level or not. Last night, after we’d finished with the cards and the lights and everything else, we headed off to Sacramento, through the rain, to join the others in the area. One of the participants hosted the party, and very thoughtfully stuck a sign in the window so we’d recognize the place when we drove by.

There were stuffed lemurs swinging gently in a circle, hanging from a ceiling fan. There were marvelously spicy chicken enchiladas, baked Brie with slices of french bread, cookies, and pie. There were also far more bottles of sparkling cider than any party should ever have. We all brought a page from our novels, and a few of us read them out loud to the group. We talked about our experiences – our favorite techniques for procrastinating on the writing; whether or not we thought we’d ever finish what we started in November; whether we would do it again.

To get ready for this, of course, we had to provide that one page from our novels. And as I opened the document I realized that the last time I actually worked on mine was the 25th of November – the weekend before Thanksgiving. I’d managed to get almost to 35,000 words, and I suppose if I’d really tried I could have churned out the remaining 15,000. After all, two years ago when I did Nanowrimo the first time, I finished the word requirement by the end of the month (barely). Of course, by the time I choked out the final few words I was sick of the story, and well aware of how truly horrid the final product was. I sent in my document for the word count and the instant I got back the official response, I deleted every piece of it from my hard drive, and did my best to erase it forever.

This time around this has actually been a story I want to keep. I didn’t want to end up hating it so much by the end of the month that I would have no choice but to delete it. And by the time I finally stopped writing the story had become seriously flawed. My main character may have to drop in age up to 20 years. The main premise of the story started to splinter into at least three different scenarios, none of which worked with most of what I’d come up with so far. And for a novel based on a series of letters, I was having a rather difficult time with the fact that I couldn’t seem to write any more than the first one.

It was fun though – more fun this time around than the first. . I imagine that it will most likely be quite a while before I pick it up again and try to fix some of those problems I mentioned, or even give it a good preliminary editing. But I’m not really worried about that. Early in the month I decided that it wasn’t so important any more to finish. What was more important was to try to at least get started on this story that’s been lurking in my head for quite a long time. And now that it’s down on paper (or at the very least, in a file on my computer), maybe I’ll be able to get the next part done with a bit more ease.

It’s been foggy and slightly damp all week so far, and when I was driving home a night or two ago, there were patches of frost and low-laying fog on the ground. Okay, so it’s not snow, but it’s the closest to a white Christmas we get around here. I’ll take what I can get.

It actually started raining Thursday, and continued on and off on Friday. I listened to the weather reports a bit grimly as they insisted that the rain would continue through today, because Richard had declared today Hanging Day and if it was raining there was no way he was going to go hang out on the slippery roof just to put up lights.

I’d mapped out our morning and afternoon yesterday, figuring out just how we’d get everything accomplished, but when I woke up this morning and realized that the promised rain had not yet arrived, that schedule was thrown out the window, and as soon as we’d eaten breakfast, Richard commenced with the hanging of the lights. There were a few sprinkles here and there over the morning but nothing serious enough to deter him.

While he hung the lights outside, I addressed and signed and stuffed all the cards for the card exchange on Cyberkat (an email list for cat people like myself), and then wrapped up all the presents for my family in preparation for shipping them off to Seattle. This is because this Christmas instead of having everyone come to my parents’ house, we’re all flying up to Seattle to spend Christmas at my little sister’s house. And because I don’t want to deal with trying to bring all those presents with us, I made sure we had every single present purchased so we could ship them up to Seattle ahead of time and not have to worry about lugging them onto an overcrowded plane with us on Christmas Eve. This had the added benefit that we now are completely done with all of our Christmas shopping – not just for my family but for Richard’s family, and for our friends as well. I am still a little in awe of how organized we managed to be about it, but really, all the credit goes to the existence of online shopping. Amazon.com is my very best friend at holiday time, yes it is!

We ate lunch and watched little brown sparrows flit around on our newly planted trees in our backyard (never fear, there will be pictures one of these days when they’re all done with the planting and the laying of ground cover and so on), and then we headed out, first to CostCo to return a present which didn’t get to be a present after all because we got something far cooler instead, and then to the fabric store so I could pick out a button for The Sweater (a very cute little pale green dragon). I simultaneously sewed on the button and had an argument with two cats over which one of us was allowed to ‘play’ with the needle, the thread, and the button, and then we did a hasty gathering of names for the regular Christmas cards, and Richard worked on the yearly Christmas letter while I zipped off to mail all the presents. I was also supposed to pick up stamps for all the aforementioned addressed, signed, and stuffed cards, but I forgot. I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon, after church and lunch and getting the tree, and addressing and signing and stuffing a bazillion more cards, and everything else we have planned.

So instead of pictures of our house all in lights (because it is raining and dark outside now and I am not willing to go get soggy just for photographs), or pictures of our yard (see excuse for that mentioned earlier), I will leave you with lesson number one in what not to do when pondering holiday decoration. Please, if you care at all about your neighbors’ sanity, stay far away from the inflatable decor. It can only lead to bad, bad things.

It’s done. It’s finally done. Okay, it’s not exactly done since I still must purchase and attach a button to the neck, but technically, the knitting part of it is over, so humor me while I do a little happy dance. Done, done, done.

I chased my nephew around the house last week when they came down for dinner just to make sure it wasn’t going to be too small, because that would have been just my luck. He’s going to be three this January so it’s not like he’s really going to care one bit about how disgustingly proud I am to have made this for him (and in fact if he’s anything like his older brother, he will open the package, look at the sweater, and then promptly discard is as ‘boring’), but that really isn’t important. What’s important is that it’s done, and with plenty of time to spare.

Oh, and yes, it *is* lying on the floor in this picture. I needed a flat surface that was light colored for the photo. Tangerine (the orange nose), Rosemary (the black nose), and Azzie were all being *so* helpful in the process.

For the past two years we’ve spent New Year’s Eve in the little theater in Davis, watching a play put on by the Davis Musical Theater Company, followed by mountains of mostly bland Chinese food. We suffer through the mostly bland Chinese food only because we know that after that is done, there will be pie and cheesecake to make up for it, and also because once the food has been consumed and we can truly eat no more, they bring out a live band and pass out hats and noisemakers and sparkling cider, and we all get out into the aisles and dance ourselves silly until we collapse in one of the theater chairs and finally drag ourselves home. And for the last two years it’s actually been a lot of fun.

This season, however, we’ve been a bit hesitant about spending yet another New Year’s Eve with the DMTC. This is because the offerings so far this season have been more than a bit disappointing. In fact, when it came time for intermission during Music Man, we all decided that we couldn’t really handle any more of the lackluster performance, and so we snuck out and went to Bakers Square for pie a lot earlier than we usually do. Of the three plays we’ve seen this season, only one of them showed any promise at all – and that was the one we saw this past weekend. They did a fairly good job with Fiddler on the Roof (and I have almost managed to exorcise “If I Were a Rich Man” from my head, three days later), but one out of three isn’t the best of odds.

So…this year we decided to live it up a little bit and we’re going to do a fancy schmancy dinner that night, followed by fireworks in Sacramento (if the rumors are true), and then we’ll head home before things get too crazy and probably end up toasting in the New Year with sparkling cider while we watch the stupid ball drop on the TV.

And now that I think about it, this year it just may be time to resurrect that old family tradition of a blowout ice cream feast. Since my family doesn’t drink, and there were always a few metric tons of cookies leftover from Christmas, we replaced the usual ‘drink til you can’t stand straight’ tradition for New Year’s Eve with an all out dessert feast, buying any kind of ice cream and toppings we wanted, and then doing our best to suck down as much ice cream and cookies as we could stand. It was a marvelous tradition, and really, the only difference between that and getting drunk is that – while we probably all take in the same number of calories, our tradition never gave anyone a hangover the next day.

So I’m thinking that this year, after dining in style at one of the nicest restaurants in Sacramento, and after wandering Old Sacramento and oohing and aahing over holiday decorations and fireworks, we may just have to swing by the store on the way home and stock up a few pints of all our favorites. I’ll drag out all the leftover cookies and fudge and any other goodies that might still be lingering, and then we can toast in the New Year with all the sugar and calories at our disposal and it’ll be just like old times. Auld lang syne, and all that.