It's a miracle!

A miracle, I tell you!

I actually got Mom to help me clear the table. I was shocked at the time - still am, a bit. Of course, I'll be absolutely /astonished/ if it /stays/ cleared....
Next on the agenda - make cards. AFTER Thanksgiving - Monday, perhaps.

Again - if I know you and you'd like me to send you a nifty Yule card, let me know where...

In other news: Andi has finally got his work permit and whatnot and we went Tusday and got him an Oregon Driver's license and whatnot. Now we're waiting for.. hm. The Interview. Grah.

In the meantime, he's scattering job apps all /over/ the place - and starting to get responces. I just hope he doesn't have to call anyone /back/ any time soon, because our phone has been screwed up and Sprint is being a pain about it. Mom is furious, naturally.

Yule will be fun. My Uncle Leslie is going to come and spend it with us - which promises to be exciting. And crowded - that'll be six of us for a minimum of two weeks... This is a large house, but I'll probably wind up going stir-crazy at least once before the month is out. Hope there will be good things showing at the 'local' theatre..
As you may've guessed, I'm not the most social of critters, even towards my own family....

Seasonal *splat*

*sigh*

Gift shopping going about as anticipated.
I have to go by someplace in the next few days and get another armload of decorative paper, rubber stamps and cardstock to make nifty cards out of.

Anyone who wants a nifty Yule card from me ought to email me a snail-mail addy - I make no promises, but if I know you and you want one, I'll try! ^^

... There will also probably be baking and crap going on - there's some sort of bug going around, naturally, so I don't know how much of anything I'm going to get done (Other than taking a bulldozer or a flare or something to the dining room flat file-ca- ... pardon me. The dining room table before Thanksgiving... also known as 'that day after which the commercial season goes bonkers'..)

Don't get me wrong, I /love/ Christmas. Or Yule - whatever. What I do /not/ love is the commercial 'buybuybuybuygimmegimme' thing that pops up. That goes on the list, along with the plastic animatronic santas/trees that sing/dance that always seem to pop up in malls - usually alongside the giant singing teddy bears and the live 'Tell Santa What You Want For Christmas!' thing.. (Which was neat when I was ten, and is fun to /watch/ ...) but... ARGH!
Get off it, already! What do I want for Christmas? I want the godsbedamnned commercialism and the buy this, buy that, gimmegimmegimme thing to go away!
Times like this I wish I had the /time/ to knit and /make/ gifts. Hand knitted socks are always nice. Hand-made nearly anything is always fun - one reason I've been making cards for birthdays and stuff of late, just so the commercialist yaps don't get /all/ my money.. and I can usually get more than one card out of a few sheets of deocorative paper! ^.~

Am I nuts? Maybe.
But I'm /really/ tired of the 'buybuybuy' 'partypartyparty' 'gimmegimmegimme' thing that Yule's become...
I mean, I remember when I was a little girl - some of the best Christmas' were waking up at the crack of dawn (after spending the day before decorating the tree) and having oatmeal (/real/ oatmeal, with heavy cream and honey or turbinado sugar..) after diving into a stocking full of goodies, like those loose-skinned sweet oranges you can't seem to find here anymore. Not to mention the chocolates.. ^^
Then, after breakfast, opening presents. That was fun... and it was simple. Quiet, even. And then off to Nanny's house, where there would be more presents and lots of food and sausage rolls and other pastry goodies, and crackers.. the kind you pull, not the kind you eat. *wry grin*
Often, someone would talk someone else - usually Mom - into dragging out an instrument and we'd sing carols. Mom played guitar (plays, I guess - although I'm sure she's rusty - it's been a /long/ time...)
That was fun. Some of that, we still do, of course - I still like to have oatmeal for breakfast before getting into the serious present opening, there are still sausage rolls and crackers to pull before eating dinner... but it wasn't the presents. *smirk* Not that that wasn't fun. My favorite thing has always been to watch the looks on their faces when they got the paper off and saw something they had been /wanting/ ... and of course, watching the cats kill the wrapping paper after!
For me at least, that's what the season is. (Well, that and the little sweet oranges... ^.~)

(Now, spending the time on the shortest night of the year having a wild party in the hopes the Sun will come back up just to see what all the ruckus is about.. which is one version of Yule, also sounds like fun - but I think I'd rather do it the other way and ask nicely, with proper ceremony, if I'm going to go to all that trouble... ^.~ )

Ahhh... So nice and quiet...

Or something. ^^

Actually, it /has/ been pretty quiet, and save for the odd appointment, promises to /stay/ that way. I'm slowly accomplishing my Yule shopping (*sigh* Earlier the better, given how soon the commercial Christmas decends onto everything... *grump*). I'll have to go back out, of course - I can't find /everything/ on one trip.
Maybe I can get it all done before Thanksgiving this year....

And, I've got some commissions to do, too. ^^
Shouldn't be hard to do that - just burn a few tracks from Legend into MP3, add 'em to the list and tell it to randomly go through it until I tell it to shut up ... ^.~

*shiver*

Temperature has dropped like a boulder off the top story of the Empire State Building - and I'm cold. Mind you, I'd rather be cold than overheated - for the simple reason that cold can be dealt with by simply putting on more layers.
When overheated, there's only so much you can take off and still be publicly decent. And the alternative - spending half the summer swimming - is only good if you have the fundage to do it. (Gods, I /wish/.)

Lookout - political rant upcoming ...

And it happened. Proof that there is no God - the Shrub has been re-elected. *sigh*
Well, I tried. Over half of Oregon tried. Over half of several other states tried. And we're still stuck with a warmongering shrub with pretentions of glory and ... something.

What /is/ it with people? This guy has dropped the country into the toilet! We're in debt past our ears (After having a record surplus, under Clinton..), have next to no jobs available and have apparently broken the record for unemployed people, have a fucking /war/ on our hands - that he started on lies and deceit - and gods only know how many people dead because of it! To add insult to injury, we've lost a whole /bunch/ of basic freedoms, the respect of half the world, not to mention their support - and people want four more years of this?!
Gah.

I'm an artist, a gamer - a writer, occasionally. I have a wretched temper, and I /hate/ people as a general rule. (With good reason, I think - particularly after /this/ demonstration of mob intelligence..)
But I would /very/ much like to think that the country I call my own is a /good/ place to live. We can cuss out our government freely, rant and rave about the injustices dealt us, complain endlessly about policies if we care to - things that most people can't do. Women have the right to vote, have a good career, raise their kids and throw their husbands out on their ears if they behave like cheating bastards.
There are people of every size, shape and colour out there, with hopes and dreams and desires - and /this/ is what those people do with their vote? Feh.

Don't get me started on the measures. I /still/ can't believe people are so terrified of the gays and lesbians that they would add a note to the Constitution - the Constitution! - saying that they cannot legally enjoy the same rights and freedoms that a married couple enjoys. (Okay - maybe not /religious/ marriage - but damn it, they should be perfectly free to have a civil union! And hell, if they /want/ a religious marriage, who the hell are /we/ to stop 'em?)
We don't need that in the Constitution - it doesn't belong there.
And yet, they put it in. To 'defend' marriage. You wanna defend marriage? Outlaw divorce! Make it punishable by death to be an adulterer. That makes slightly more sense than forbidding men to marry men, or women to marry women.

Gah. *kicks the soapbox under the bed*
Sorry. I think I've had that rant saved up since the elections...

I'm behind on updates again - one of these days, I have to get back on a web-cycle...

*thud*

Gods.
Thankfully, I haven't got a problem with hiking all over Portland to /get/ to these places - you nearly always see something to make a note of for later reference/visiting....

However, I strongly object to beereau-crap. You can tell - I can't even figure out how the hell to spell it. Well, that works....
Anyway. We hiked down to the INS office to collect Andi's work permit. Not sure how long we were waiting, but I got through at least a few chapters of my book before they hauled him out and got the stuff they needed for the card. Once we had /that/ we hiked down the to Portland Social Security office to get his Social Security number.
He found out there that some dumbass at the INS office couldn't read the way he writes numbers, and futzed his birthdate. Oh, shit.
Fortunately, the person he was talking to had functional brains, and decided to take the majority of the documentation with the /correct/ date seriously, and now we wait to see how long it'll take 'em to get him the card...

Man, I /hate/ gummint beereau-crap...
Gotta admit though, up to here, it's been pretty smooth...

Now all we gotta do is find him a job. /THAT/ shouldn't be hard - he's only got a list of certificates as long as my arm - and my Dad is gunning for some bright kid to train, since he's been dropping hints about retiring left and right.. Hm. *chuckles* Well, it's a hope...

As for /me/, I'm just hoping I won't have to drive him out to Portland too often - since I'm pretty sure the gummint won't reimburse us for the gas/train tickets.. o.O (Shame, too...) on the other hand - all the walking will probably do us both good.. Heh.

I just hope this commission thing starts picking up ...