Last Post for 2005
Geez, two steps forward, three steps back. For every item I manage to put away, 3 more come through the door. Not just fun stuff either. I'm not griping about gifts. It's everything: mail, fresh laundry. I went out to the garage to stash something and noticed there is a mountain of empty boxes. We need to break a few of those down and gift them to Mr. Recycling Man and I'm not clear on this but he's coming tomorrow? Sunday, Jan 1st instead of Monday the 2nd? Maybe I'm dreaming.

I had a good birthday although it got off to a rugged start. Both Bob and I are fighting colds. I think Bob's a little worse off than I am although neither or us is in very bad shape. But it's the thing where you wake up feeling gross and once you've moved around, drank some tea and showered, you're at about 90%.

I knew I wanted to see a movie and I knew where I wanted to go for dinner, Roots which is completely on the far east side of Vancouver, technically Camus. This made the location of the movie matter and somewhat also the timing. Brokeback Mountain wasn't going to work which left my other choice: King Kong. Did you know that movie is 3 hours long?

That made me cranky (see above about just woke up and cold symptoms). I checked out a few other movies but really the only other thing I might have wanted to see was Chronicles of Narnia, which I've already seen once. I whined a bit and Bob asked me what I wanted to do and I said, "I want to see King Kong and I want it to be shorter."

He indicated that this was 1 birthday wish he could not make come true and after some more consulting of the movie times, we decided to see an early King Kong and then go to dinner.

Other than being too long, King Kong is an excellent and thrilling movie. It took about 10 years off my life. (It also made me cry.) Wild, scary stuff. At one point, during the Skull Island part, there was this endless scene involving huge bugs. I squirmed in my seat for about 5 minutes and then leaned over to Bob and said, "We're NEVER going there." And unless they have a hippie jam band festival, I think he agrees.

Dinner was fantastic. We hardly ever splurge on a super deluxe meal and this was worth every penny. We shared a crab and avocado appetizer and a beet salad and our entrees were filet mignon with some sort of bleucheese butter (!) and grilled wild salmon with greens. For dessert we split a Kahlua creme brulee. I must learn how to make this dessert.

Great day. Great year. A couple more days off to clean up and more Photoshop and updating my iPod with new tunes and playlists. I'm also big on cleaning things out at new years. Like the bathroom cupboard. You know you always find about 4 bottles of sunscreen with 1 tiny squish left or some bath gel that you forgot you had. And I'm going to take down the tree and put away the holiday stuff. And I'm going to process Mr. Pumpkin. I will most likely photo-document it for you here so stay tuned.

Happy New Year.

Today's post is about clothing (bottoms) and high waistbands.

I never had a problem with high waistbands. Not even when the style was to have a waistband that was so low, special extra-short zippers had to be invented and the full-monty down low wax became a common procedure. (In some circles. I haven't gone for it myself, but if I do, you can be sure I'll share all the details here.)

Pretty soon even clothes for people like me (meaning old and without style) started to lower the waistband. Not to that scary, omigod how does that even stay up Ana Lucia from Lost low -- but below the navel. And once I got used to it, I kinda liked it.

Then I had to buy new underwear because all my underwear came up around my armpits and stuck out over the waistband

But still, the high waist haunts me. All my winter tights come up around my armpits. My silk longjohns: armpits. It's not a crisis because I'm usually wearing sweaters and shirts that hang over the waistband anyway - but not an overall sexy look to have the waistband of your underclothes hanging out over your waistband.

My Mom got me some really cute new sweats for xmas and I love them and their low waistband. Except now my yoga pants stick out. *sigh*

Die Fat Free Cheese, Die
I accidentally bought Fat Free Feta Cheese.

I tasted a sliver and was like, "Omigod, what is wrong with this cheese? It's nasty." Then I saw the package.

uck. Completely inedible.

It should be illegal to make a product that is called both "fat free" and cheese.

50 Book Challenge - I'm a winner
I finished book #50 yesterday. You can see the entire list here.

I'm going to keep a running tally of my books next year, too but I'm not going to aim for 50. I have some other projects I want to put some time into and I don't want to get sucked into that overachiever thing where I get all panicked if I haven't finished a book in a couple weeks.

Holidaze
Great holiday this year.

We picked up Priscilla and drove to Fort Jones (near Yreka) to visit a longtime family friend of both the Hughes family and my grandparents. John Jenott worked for the Forest Service in both Happy Camp and the PAC NW and that's the connection with both families. This had nothing to do with Bob and I getting together. We found out about it later.


We visited John at the Marble Rim Gallery which features a number of wonderful local artists, John included. I tried on a beautiful handspun, handknit sweater and fell in love with it before I even saw the price tag. Priscilla bought it for me for my birthday and I've barely taken it off since. I'm going to send the artist some pictures of us at the gallery and tell her how much I love her work. We left Fort Jones and took off for Orleans.


This was Priscilla's first visit to Orleans and we were able to show her around. We took a nice walk on the Go Road and had a great view of town.

Christmas day we opened presents at home. Well, most of the presents. A couple presents got, um, lost in the shuffle and appeared later including some great boots Erin got the next morning.

We had buckmeat and pancakes for breakfast. We kept calling it Bambi but Priscilla still tried some.


For dinner we went to BG & Curt's and I failed to get a real comprehensive photo of the scene. They had a spectacular tree. BG says with a tall tree you should decorate the top first and then stand it up. Everyone had plenty to eat and drink. Good time.

The Prism R.I.P.

It wasn't the sexiest car and it went slow uphill but how many cars take their owners over 240,000 miles? It will be missed.

Sundance Rentz R.I.P.

She wasn't the smartest dog and she barked a lot, but she was part of the family and we'll miss her.