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Our friend Larry not only took care of the fish over Thanksgiving, but he left us a gift: a poster of the Olympics with all of the peaks labeled!

I’ve been wishing for something like this for ages. There are just so many peaks in the Olympics, and such depth that it’s impossible for me to translate the standard map to the actual view. This method is perfect. It’s been living on the coffee table (I’m trying to relax the roll a bit) and I’ve been studying it when I walk by.

Rumours have already started that we’ll be moving offices in Feb/March, and I’m sure that this will go perfectly on my new office wall.

It’s so nice to finally have names for those mountains!

At this point we have a semi-long list of furniture for the house that we’re keeping an eye out for. We still have money from wedding gifts that we would like to spend on it, but the problem has been finding furniture we like in the proper dimensions. I cruise the local furniture stores pretty regularly, but keep not finding the perfect kitchen table, cabinet to store games and puzzles for the family room, side table for the family room, DVD shelf for the hallway, or cabinet/dresser for our closet.

In a change of fate, we found two Craigslist items off the list in under two weeks. First of all, a cabinet for our bedroom:

I was having a hard time envisioning what could go in the space. A dresser would be more traditional but we don’t need dresser-style storage. The combination of one drawer and then the adjustable shelf inside seems ideal for storing sweaters, blankets, pillows, etc or things in baskets. Nice and flexible and while the color isn’t necessarily what I was picturing initially, it fits perfectly with the shelves in the closet and looks surprisingly coordinated.

Our second find was a kitchen table. We were pretty set on white legs and a blond top, with matching white and blond Windsor chairs. I’ve been just missing perfect examples on Craigslist for months. This table was a little bit smaller that we were hoping for (38” vs. 42”), and it has folding sides, but it only cost $30 and we’re quite pleased with it.

That big window is one of the brightest spots in the house in the afternoon, and it’s nice to have a spot to sit and work and soak in whatever light is out there. The stools and side table were already there, and we’ll leave them for now.

View of the Christmas lights from my computer desk.

I’ve been leaving my curtains open in the evenings so that I can see them glowing away as I work. It’s a small but happy bit of consolation for the short, short December days.

(We were both rather impressed how very blue the LED lights are once they were strung up again. They’d kind of whitened in my mind over the course of the year. It’s interesting to walk around the neighbourhood, since you can really see the difference between last year’s LEDs and this year’s. Perhaps we’ll wait a little bit longer and then upgrade ourselves…)

At work, we are building collages. (A long blog post in itself.) My group already had plenty of cooks making layout decisions, so I decided to make a mosaic of our logo out of chopped-up clippings from magazines.

It’s fiddly (each of those blocks are about 4″x4″, and the paper bits are usually less than a quarter inch per side) and wonderfully colorful. Still have the blue panel to go!

Between work and evenings, I probably spend a good 6-15 hours in front of a computer (and sometimes more than that) on any given work day. On weekends I make a concious effort to abandon the computer, frequently turning my desktop off and solely relying on my work laptop, which cuts things down to a blissful hour or two online per day. (All bets are off when I sew on the weekends, since I listen to npr online or watch TV online while I work.)

Obviously, most of this is not productive — you get some work done, and you spend an awful lot of time zoning out and combing the internet. I feel like there are huge sinkholes (youtube, many blogs and news sites, etc) that I ignore, but every now and then I stumble across things that I think are so neat. The Obama “yes we can” video was one example. I generally don’t post them on my blog, but I think this dancing guy is neat. (The story, as far as I can ascertain, is that he is sort of a drifter, started videotaping himself dancing in all sorts of different spots, posted it all over the web, and then people became enthused and joined him.) If group events (national politics, sports, etc) move you, it’s a fun four and a half minutes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&hl=en&fs=1]

I won’t make this regular fare, but can you imagine seeing some of these places in person? How cool. And the Seattle moment was filmed in Gas Works Park. 🙂
The world is so wide. Yay, internet.

We decided to fly back on Friday, mostly due to cost, and then stupid Continental moved our flights up by three hours so we really only had time for a leisurely breakfast before we had to head for the airport. This is the third time in the last three months that our flights have been changed for the worse – I’ll have to start being more vigilant. We both felt bad to have to leave so early.

The one upside is that we had a three hour layover instead of an extra three hours in the air. Our first flight was Philly to Newark (which I knew was in New Jersey, but otherwise I was vague), on a teeny nine-row propeller plane that flew about 100 feet off the ground. Great views of the countryside the entire trip, but I was shocked when I looked out the window and saw New York City. Huh! We found seats in our terminal that had pretty city views for our long wait, and I called my brother to let him know that we were within “seeing” distance.

Luckily we see him again in just a few weeks, or I’d feel like we truly squandered an opportunity.

For Thanksgiving, we went over to (family friend) Stacey’s new townhouse. It was gorgeous, and it was fun to see all of her family again. After getting psyched up about it for many months, people decided to deep fry the turkey. (I wasn’t totally on board, especially given the explosion factor, but I also knew that I didn’t have a vote. I felt better after Kevin and I went out and at least bought a B-rated fire extinguisher.)

Sample photo, with my father-in-law in a turkey hat and smoking a cigar (he appears to have put his drink down), a boiling vat of oil, lots of propane, Kevin wearing oven mitts of doubtful utility, and the bird waiting to go in.

Scientific calculations:

An hour later: One cook in turkey hat, two back seat cookers, and a gorgeous field of waving grasses in the background.

Carving, and many in the kitchen:

It ended up being delicious. Debbie had asked for my family’s stuffing and yam recipes, so it was fun to have those on the table, along with all of the other great dishes. I had pangs of wishing I was back with my family, but this was the first holiday where it wasn’t wrenching to be away at Kevin’s instead of at home. I felt like I belonged there just as much – a big step, and nice to finally be at that point. 🙂

More rockband in the morning:

And Tucker hoping for another long walk.

Meanwhile, the computer died within hours of Kevin walking in the door. Apparently it had been on the fritz for ages – you have to wonder if it was just saving its last gasps until he got back. In any case, there was loud chorusing this time for a laptop instead of a desktop, and lots of decision-making about all of the options. Tucker ping-ponged around all of the decision-makers – he liked having everyone nearby.

We took way more walks this visit than our norm, which was wonderful. The weather was perfect – brisk but sunny, and we saw lots of wildlife. Sunday night we walked up to see the new huge houses up the hill and saw at least seven deer, grazing in the twilight. On Tuesday, I walked up the hill to see the hawks. There were two huge ones sitting in trees, snoozing in the sun.

And myriad birds circling over the hills.

The view is really getting winterish and brown, but that’s so pretty in its own way. Kevin’s parents’ area is still (despite increasing development) at that rural/exurb mix point and with all of the very old stone houses and pretty barns and covered bridges over creeks it is incredibly scenic to drive through. Add all of that, spread over rolling hills, to the fact that the sun shone steadily (in November!!) and our Seattle souls were sated.

After my bird walk, Kevin’s mom and Kevin and I took Tucker (their golden retriever) up for a nice loop around an old orchard and by a cut corn field. We were just coming down the hill and Debbie was mentioning that they sometimes see foxes when we saw a big red tail bounding away out of view! How cool. Lots of little, bright blue birds, too. We got back, and got to do some raking until it got dark and cold. A great afternoon.

We were about a week shy of Neen’s birthday, but we celebrated early, in part so that she could unwrap the joint gift (Rockband for her Wii) and everyone could start playing. Assembly started nearly immediately, and we traded off spots for over six hours.

I’m usually a “three songs are plenty” video game music person, but the evening ended up being a lot of fun. We all played all three instruments many times (though I seem to have timing issues with the guitar??). Kevin’s mom’s rendition of “Ballroom Blitz” was particularly fun – extremely energetic vocals. 🙂 By the end, Stacey could barely drum she was laughing so hard. This was the general-consensus favourite photo:

A brief break for a delicious dinner (crab cakes and steaks):

Strawberry basil martinis and the almost-birthday girl:

And Kevin and I were surprised to find out that we were celebrating our birthdays, too! (Especially since we thought we’d already been quite feted back in July and August!!)

The gifts were perfect (beautiful scarves for both of us, a great knit bag for me, Phillies gear for Kevin, and Dunkin Donuts coffee and Christmas ornaments to share) – though neither of us had ever received winter/holiday items for our birthdays before… perhaps a little bit of a hedge against the promised “smaller Christmas” this year? 🙂

The four birthday people and the cake: