Merry Christmas!

A day late. Bite me. ^.~

I spent yesterday at The House, with three hounds, two cats and my family - and damn it, it was fun. We opened presents and oohed and aww'd (and Mom 'bout dropped her teeth when she opened one of her boxes and saw "I, Claudius", which she's wanted for the longest time.) at the contents. I was quite pleased - the Man Who Is Impossible To Shop For has been decoded - give him socks and clamps and he's got it made - I threw in some clamp-pads and he was all sorts of pleased. *grin* Mission Accomplished! Heh.
He also got a set of security cameras from Mom (to keep an eye on the Hell-hounds in the yard. Really.) and some nifty rocks from Santa. I forget what Uncle Iain gave him, but I'm pretty sure it was something he wanted. ^^;
Andi got a box of sox. Thick, heavy sox. With hand-warmers and some other goodies cunningly concealed inside them. And from me, silk undies. Heh. I love Wintersilks....
I got a new backpack (thank the gods - the straps on mine are starting to part company with the rest) that will hold Circe and has more pockets than I know what to do with! Contained within said pockets was more handwarmers and, ohh! Gloves! Fleece gloves! Eeee! Warm hands.. *purrr*
We got a FoodSaver (yes! I can zip-pack leftovers! Eeee!) biiiig hints on my wishlist for one of these. ^^
And Andi gave me the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended edition - with the little city-sculpture that is actually a little box - t'was the Gift Set. *thud* Ooh.. ^^ And a plastic dragon that flaps its wings. And looks quite fierce. I'm thinking to see if I still have any barbie-dolls lying around that I can dress up as Shadowhunters (or random adventurers) and stash on its back.... What?! ^.~

And then, there was Dinner. Oh, /man/ ... Mom had a fifteen pound standing rib in the oven (this is the woman who frets over a twelve-pound turkey), brussel-sprouts, carrots, and plans for yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes (and I brought sausage rolls and dessert) and pickled beets (heh. I /knew/ there were some) and little pickled onions...
And crackers. Heh. This year, I have crackers I conspired with Joules to acquire (she gets hers a year early to take advantage of the sales and last year she mentioned this and I said something wistful and the next thing we know, we've conspired to get Real English Crackers on the table at The House this year, and I sent a packet of goodies over for her. There was much boinging on both sides this year. ^^) This time, Mom suggested we pull the crackers before serving the meal - so the meal would be eaten hot - rather than during. This suggestion was met with approval by all, so that's what we did. There was a resounding *crack* that startled the dogs and sent the cats racing for cover and toys and hats flew in all directions. For the first time in a long time, all the crackers cracked on the first pull. That's never happened to us before. ^^;
We found all the toys but one and all the hats - and the paper hats FIT! Well, everyone but Andi - and giggled at the jokes (so why /do/ bears wear fur coats?) and cleared up a little so there was room for The Feast.
And feast it was, with all the dishes. And it was /so/ good. I brought sparkling juice for Andi and I (I had a glass of wine, but I reverted to juice after that, although it was excellent wine, made by a friend of the family from his own grapes... ^^) as well. ^^
Gods, I was /stuffed/. Andi was the only one who had two helpings (The rest of us had MEABTMB* syndrom and could only manage one), but oh, /man/ it was good.
And the pie (had while discussing cameras and camera parts) was excellent. It has been unanimously agreed that I make good pastry. ^^

We got to discussing cameras after dinner and I came out of it with one of Mom's old camera bags, a flash, spare lens and filters for the Canon I'm borrowing. I wandered around with the Canon (after putting FILM in it... *sigh*) and took a bunch of pictures of this and that and the hounds. We'll see if anything comes of it...

*My Eyes Are Bigger Than My Belly - too much food on the plate.

All in all, it was an excellent holiday and we had a really good time. ^^
Yay for my family being completely and utterly nuts. Hee. ^^

Of Yule and holiday baking

One pie, a small batch of sausage rolls and a batch of brownies later (pie and sausage rolls scratch-made, brownies out of a box. A good box, though - Ghiradelli does excellent boxbrownies..) and I have completed my holiday baking.
Actually, technically, the sausage rolls are in the fridge in a tin - we'll take those and bake them on-site at the House. But I'm done! *thud*

Given that I slept in until nearly one in the afternoon, I feel I have accomplished something. ^^

Presents wrapped, if not packed, goodies baked (the pie and the rolls will go with us to The House - I said I'd bring goodies) and while I might be lacking a bit in Holiday Cheer (and the Christmas 'music' on the radio is /not/ helping... Grrr commercials..), I am damn well ready for Yule!
What?

All of that having been said, I do like this time of year. If I could avoid all the commercial bullshit, I'd enjoy it considerably more, but I am thankful that I can still go back to the little girl I used to be and get all bouncy and excited about Santa (I am a fantasy artist, I am allowed to believe in magic. Including Santa Claus) and presents and all. Ah, and oatmeal. I have to remember to set up the oatmeal before we go to bed.

Mmm. Oatmeal. With raw sugar and ... I should get Andi to leave some of the heavy cream so we can have that with it instead of half and half ... Mmm... good, hearty breakfast. ^^
And I don't use those measly little 'quick oats', either (by the way, anyone who tells you you can't do real oats in the microwave is putting you on. You /can/, and I have. Helps to soak 'em first, though). Real, rolled oats, out of the organic bins. Mmmn... *purrr*

Okay, I'm making myself hungry. Need to shut up about food. ... damnit, ain't gonna happen. Mom's got a roast beast from the butcher (well, meat-packer, anyway - she went and ordered it custom and I guess she got the whole damn thing - /with/ the fat on it.) and I'm looking forward to yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes and carrots, possibly pickled beets, brussels sprouts with butter... Gods, I really /am/ making myself hungry!
Who needs turkey, anyway? ^.~

BTW, I have the scanner hooked up to Circe and the interface is working nicely out of Corel - AND I have the FTP toy hooked up and ready to rumble, so updates should start up again once I get off the Yule thing and quit yoinging around freaking out about school.

Yes. I'm still yoinging around freaking out about school, even though I have /finally/ gotten all my grades back and am running a 3.76 GPA (I got a B in Writing - and frankly, I was astonished to get that! - and As everywhere else). For the next term I have Writing (different teacher and times - this class meets three times a week), both Arts classes (same teacher), Math (*sigh*), and a PE class. This all adds up to twelve credits - last term I had thirteen. (Comp Basics was a 4 cred class. Everything else was 3. This time, everything but math and PE is 3 - Math is 2, PE is 1. Shakes out nice, eh?) Now I'm looking at scholarships and muttering things best left unprinted because out of several hundred, I qualify, maybe, for all of six.
*/sigh/*
Thank the thousand little gods for Fastweb - and I need to spend a weekend hitting them and doing much whaling about with the Gimme Money! bat... Or pen, as the case may be. Lots of these require you to write essays.
This would be more fun if I could pick my topic. *grump* SoP, I suppose. Ah well.
I'm going to shut up now and go find something to eat - thanks to all that talking about Yule Dinner, I'm starving! (having slept through breakfast and lunch would probably have something to do with it too. Heh).

Whee! Merry Christmas!

Of weather and tarot cards...

Snow's gone off and the temp's come up some. Still a storm warning in effect, though...
TriMet is still on snow routes and chains (excuse me?) and I am pretty sure that the snow's long gone by now... :/
Hopefully, the temp won't go down to freezing while there's standing water on the roads.... >.<

Quiz snaffled from Joules.

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

... The High Priestess? Huhn. Interesting...

I have this deck, btw. It's a beautiful deck. ^^

Of weather and a post-poned night out...

.. It /snowed/. Admittedly, it's dry, powdery crap that the wind's been blowing around in nice drifts, but it snowed. And the last time we looked, it was 29 degrees!

We were going to go to the Melting Pot and have fondue for dinner, but there was no bus (I guess the 12 was put up for chains, even though there was barely an inch of powdery crap on the ground...) and the taxi cabs were all busybusy. .. *sigh*
So, no fondue for us. *whinewhinewhine*

Andi was /not/ willing to settle for cansoup instead, so he went and bought steak (and brought me home a nice leg of aussie lamb) and I've got a batch of Infamous Potatoes in the oven.
Sigh. Damnit, I was looking forward to fondue. Fucking Murphy!!!

I just hope it's not bad NEXT Sunday, because damnit, I want to go spend Yule with Mom and Ladd!

Of a couple of quizzes and math..

*sigh* I sense a round of Phone Tag. Guess what my least favorite activity in the world is? I'm guessing this will be necessary because the advisors can't help me get out of Math 10. My options are basically two (three, technically..); talk to the teachers and get one of them to agree to take me into their class, or take the math portion of the test again and hope for a better score.
The third option is take Math 10 (or 11b, as they're now calling it) and hope for the best... *sigh* Don't want to.
I seriously resent having to pay to relearn stuff that I forgot a month after passing the GED (I /did/ pass the GED, even the math portion) because it's a requirement just to get into a place.
I'm an artist, for cripes sake! There's a /reason/ I forgot all that stuff a month or so after cramming it into my head - I never /used/ any of it after that! Never! And, of course, as you do when you aren't using it, you forget it.
I resent it, and really, I can't /afford/ it! Credit classes cost money. And college is already fuckin' expensive as it is! >.<
So, yeh. We're not amused.

Quizes. Snaffled from Shusu and Lutra, respectively.

What's your Classic Anime Series?
brought to you by Quizilla

I do what, now? Never heard of it ...

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Cool!
Damn near landed in Ravenclaw, too. Nifty. ^^

Of Grades and no more classes til January!

YAY! I'm free! I'm free! ... well, at least I'm free until January. ^^
Already signed up for most of my classes - ART 231 and 116, a PE class referred to as 'swim conditioning' - sounds like it'll be all the stuff I /really/ hated doing on swim-team - Writing 122, with a different teacher, and I'm trying for Math 20, but I may have to put the numbers off until Fall term... What? We don't /get/ FinAid for Summer Term, at least, I don't /think/ we do, and if I'm taking classes then they'll probably be no credit. Ooh. Maybe I can find a good belly dance class... ^^

Anyway. If I can't do Math 20 this term I'll have to find something else - maybe take Speech 111 .. O.o
Or some German. Heh.

Got Corel loaded and the tablet drivers installed on Circe, although I should probably put the UMAX drivers on Circe as well so that I won't have to fuss with Andi's LINUX box. Soonish - like, after I get 'em BACK! - I should be able to scan some of my better results in drawing class. In the meantime, I may remember to scan some of the stuff I did in Basic Design.

And I'm almost done with my Yule shopping! Just bits and bobs to deal with now. Yay! ^^

Of random quizes

Just one, actually, but I liked the result. ^^

Rohirrim


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Eee! Horsey! ^^

Of Corel and final tests...

Well. I was getting ready to go and debating cold pizza for breakfast when the phone, aka the doorbell, goes off. I answered it, and lo and behold, it's DHL with a package. Okay. Out I go to pick this thing up. I sign, he hands me this box that is huge but weighs nothing and I come back in.
I tend to check mailing labels when I get a parcel, so I knew before I got it in the door that it was my Corel package. YES! I spent the next minute or so literally jumping up and down and Eeeee!'ing like a japanese school girl after her first tentacle .. wait. That's not necessarily a good thing. Anyway. Jumping up and down and squee'ing.... So I tear open the box, which is like a foot wide, a foot or two long and about three inches thick and get a slightly smaller box and a CD. Inside the smaller box are four more CDs and a registration number.
Lots of fuss and bother for five CDs and a hunk of thin cardstock.... *wry grin*

So, anyway. I have Corel. It has CorelDRAW, CorelPAINT and CorelRAVE - not to mention CAPTURE and TRACE - gah. More Corel than I've ever really /used/ - but DRAW has some useful Vector graphics toys and makes business cards and neat stuff like that. ^^
I dunno 'bout RAVE - it's an animation toy of a sort, I think, that might be fun to mess with... or not. We'll see. ^^

Finals. Hee. Went in early - am always there early, but the teacher showed up early too, so I didn't have to sit around in the cold waiting like I normally do. Had enough time to practice the aspect of the test that I didn't manage last night before it was time to actually take the thing, so I did that and figured out how to make the bastard work, then it was time to take the test.
Basically, it's Word, Excel and Access - we didn't cover Basic basics, Internet or Powerpoint, or, for that matter, integration of Excel and Word - and he had part of the Word file already typed up for us. So. I blast through it, with only a little hesitation here and there and one stop when I was done to double check everything before handing in my disk.
Not only did I get an A in that class, I passed the final in record time. For this term, anyway. ^^ The previous record was fifty minutes - I passed it in forty. YES! Bonus points! Heh, heh, heh...

So, yeh. Good morning for me. ^^
Still freaking about the writing though, although I'm thinking to work on that later today and evidence some of my disgust with the political crap surrounding the subject...

Of boredom and a shift in blog-templates...

Basically, I got tired of the damn thing being screwed up and shifted my template around a bit.

I'll have to find a different background ... something with leafies ... but I like this set up. ^^

Of holiday baking and suchlike...

*/sigh/* Okay. Next time, omit the water. It worked a hell of a lot better without the water.
Granted, this is a recipe I haven't used in a year or so and the cookies are great. But they're /fragile/ and they /stick/! Parchment paper ... and omit the water for the next batch.
Oatmeal cookies. Made half a batch without raisins (I don't mind oatmeal cookies with raisins, although I prefer my raisins raw), and half a batch with. I'm going to box them up in a pretty tin, stuff the tin in a box and send the whole shebang to my other uncle. I love to do nice things for my family. ^^

The most recent pie is excellent - the combination of braeburn and fuji apples was a hit and I clearly used enough cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to make the filling do what it ought. I suppose it's possible that letting it sit for a couple of days after mixing it also helped. ^.~
The crust was excellent - it's crunchy on top, flakes into layers (which makes it a bitch to cut, but the texture is worth it) and is soft and subtley sweet inside. Yum! Time to do another batch of pastry, methinks. ^.~ It can sit in the 'fridge until the pie-pan is free again. ^^

Lemme think. What else? Ah - school. I'm signed up, more or less, for next term - got two credits shy of a full load and I'm going to go brow-beat them into letting me into Math 20 (I tested into Math 10, but damnit, I know wtf to do with whole numbers!). I /can/ add, subtract and multiply - it's anything beyond that where I have issues (not that I see much point in spending money to relearn stuff I forgot two years ago, but no one asked me if I wanted to waste money relearning stuff I never used!) and anything beyond that that I never /have/ used after I passed the test with enough flying colours to get my GED.
Anyway. Finals for my last two classes are this week - I'm not fussed much about Comp Basics. Only Writing has me in a fluster.
... damnit. This teacher has managed to take something I actually enjoy doing most of the time, and turn it into a chore. A chore I dread. How did she do this? She took our final project and had us write an argumentative essay on a subject that we would get into groups and choose. Most of said subjects being heavily political, contraversial and downright /difficult/. I don't mind that aspect. That might have been fun, with the right subject. But do I get that subject? No. My group (with hesitant agreement on my part - at the time, I didn't think it would be that hard to write on) decides to write on medical marijuana.
I happen to think this should be legalised (hell, there are more potent drugs out there), but posing this in a fashion that makes sense? And finding sources that back me up? Good luck. I finally dragged my husband, who's a native German, into it and he tracked down a bunch of sources and translated them for me so that I would have something other than the mostly biased American sources that I and the teacher could find.
I am /not/ looking forward to the final part of this - we're supposed to do a group presentation on our final essays and I am supposed to talk a little bit about my take and then conclude our spiel. I am not looking forward to that. Not at all; and not just because I really don't like talking in front of people, even after a couple of years of light acting in church plays.
I'll manage, I guess. But I figure I'll be lucky to get by with a pass in that class. :/

*sigh* Okay. Gotta go see if the cookies are cool enough to pack up...

Of emergencies and damn lucky cats...

You know that 'one in a million' chance that everyone talks about? We had one of those today, practically first thing in the morning.
So, there I am, reading the paper, when I realised that Omen had been going 'round and round the laundry hamper in an increasingly frantic fashion for entirely too long. I watched him for a second, then got up and went to investigate.
It took maybe another half-second for me to realise he had gotten himself tangled into the handle of the hamper and his thrashing around had twisted said handle tight around his neck.
I panicked in a constructive fashion and grabbed the nearest pair of scissors to cut him loose. By then, he'd gone limp and I panicked yet further and did something like Rescue Breathing on a cat. Basically, I blew in his nose.
That revived him and he bounced around the apartment briefly before going and hiding under the bed. There was a very brief discussion of 'now what'? before I went after him and realised he was breathing 'wet'.
We batted options around briefly, then sorted out a vet who could look at him on a Sunday (thank the gods for Emergency Vet clinics..) and a way to get there. Bus would take too long, so the Andi went to get something to pay the man with and I called a cab, stuffed Omen into a crate and off we went.
The vets looked him over, weighed him (nine pounds /exactly/) and stabbed him with a needle for the purpose of clearing the liquid in his lungs. Otherwise, he is pronounced 'fine' and so we brought him home via the bus. All in all, about two, three hours of AAAaaack! that I could have done without.
Who needs adventure?! I have cats! O.o

However, we now have a recommendation for a vet clinic on Barbur (I knew he was there, I just didn't know how /good/ he is) and an idea of what Omen now weighs.

... Now we have to go shopping, as we do on Sundays. Gaaahh...