Ok, so the charger thingy for my laptop melted. That’s right, it melted. I’ve spent a couple of weeks without My Beloved, but yesterday a replacement charger arrived from Hong Kong and HUZZAH! I can play on the internets again!

Christmas = excellent. Will write more when I get the photos transferred.

Visit from my family also = excellent, apart from the fact that the weather was total crap the whole time my brother was here. He spent ten days here and couldn’t even catch one glimpse of Mt. Rainier! My parents are still here though, so I’m crossing my fingers for some clear skies…ugh, they’re going to go home thinking that all the talk about rain in Seattle is actually true (ahem)! Speaking of Rainier:

Journaling: I remember it like it was yesterday – our plane landed at SeaTac Airport and I finally got to see our new home. It was a beautiful clear day, and as we drove from the airport I saw Mount Rainier for the first time. My jaw literally dropped. Towering majestically over everything else in sight was this huge, beautiful volcano. Since that day, whenever I see Rainier, I feel at home. The ultimate experience so far was watching the sunrise from Noble Knob. I had spent a sleepless night in the tent and was experiencing some, ahem, fear-of-heights issues, but seeing Mount Rainier bathed in that early morning glow was like getting an injection of pure serotonin. Getting a glimpse of her is the highlight of any hike! | 10.02.07

(Two corrections: the correct date is 09.02.07 – oops – and calling Rainier “her” just seems wrong to me now…I get a more masculine feeling from Rainier. Anyway…)

Seriously, I’m obsessed with this mountain. It is just so beautiful. Whenever I catch a glimpse of him (heh) I let out a little involuntary “aaah”. After reading Bruce Barcott’s The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier, I’m relieved to learn that I am not the only one to harbor such weird and intense feelings for this volcano.

Random bits of information:

1) Not scrapbooking drives me crazy. Therefore I am signing up for Lain’s January’s Layout-a-Day Challenge, and you should too (it’s free and there will be priiiizes!)

2) Dan in Real Life is a bloody great movie, and not just because Sondre Lerche made the soundtrack.

3) If you live in the Seattle area but haven’t taken the underground tour at Pioneer Square yet, get your bum over there ASAP – we went today and it was so cool :D

4) My personal soundtrack these days, not that you care:

Eddie Vedder – No Ceiling
KT Tunstall – Change
Paolo Nutini – Alloway Grove
Rufus Wainwright – Tiergarten
Eddie Vedder – Long Nights
Willy Mason – Oxygen
Gorillaz – Last Living Souls
Eddie Vedder – Guaranteed
Sondre Lerche – Modern Nature
Nick Drake – Northern Sky
BigBang – To the Mountains

5) I need to get some sleep. G’night and Happy New Year!

…to go vote for your favorite reader foot (or paw!) photo over on Tara Whitney’s blog – Bobby already found his fave, of course… :)

The Label Tulip kit is up! This is my favorite one so far – especially the add-on with the clear mini book! Here’s some of my stuff this month:

This is just about Tom being all cool and Gollum-like (hmm, a contradiction in terms, perhaps?) by the creek at Shi Shi.

I found it fitting to use Leonard Cohen lyrics on this page about Dagfinn and Marianne dancing…but I do so expecting to be ridiculed, since every time I ask them about the meaning of Cohen lyrics I like, they end up being about death or the Holocaust.

I used the clear album to make a sort of goal journal for 2008. Looking forward to filling this one out :)

…so, last time the stress and lack of sleep really got to me and I had a mini-meltdown of sorts. Luckily I have JK, so we canceled our plans and spent the night baking cookies and relaxing. I really needed that…we also decided to not make and send out Christmas cards after all (it would basically be too late anyway), and to just breathe and enjoy the holiday. I’ve been stressed out a lot this fall and I don’t want to slip into some sort of evil depression again.

Alright, enough about that. Now, cookies!

We made dog-safe gingerbread cookies for Bobby again this year – he loves them (well, he also loves used ear plugs). We couldn’t find the recipe, but luckily I was smart enough to take a photo of it when we made them last year. Thank you to The Bark magazine :)

I am really behind on emails and everything – I’ll catch up when I get some energy back..

…but there’s really no reason for me to be. The house is reasonably parent-ready for when my mom, dad and brother are coming next week and most of my Christmas shopping is over and done with (except some stuff I have to make, gaah). Still, I’ve been freaking out. Usually I’m pretty laid-back, but when my to-do list starts getting a bit long, I get such an idiotic stress-response – I’ll get a migraine so I can’t do anything at all. It is totally psychosomatic (but still *there*, so I don’t know what to do) and it’s a lovely remnant of my depression days…anyway, I’m trying to relax now by drinking some Christmas tea and blogging.

Liz (and the slanty-chinned Collin :D) tagged me, so I have to write seven random things about myself:

1 Can the stress/migraine thing be the first one? Why yes it can.

2 I think I might have mentioned this before, but I absolutely despise socks. I’ll only wear them for hiking or if they’re some sort of novelty Christmas socks.

3 I think I’m physically addicted to ketchup.

4 You would never know by looking at me now, but I used to study sports science in college.

5 My family lived in New Jersey for two years when I was in elementary school.

6 I have short, gnome-like fingers. Playing handball was a bitch.

7 Sometimes I’ll sniff Bobby’s ears, they smell really good. He’s my cocaine.

Alrighty, JK came home so we have to make some sort of dinner. But first: Label Tulip sneaks!

…and an older layout that was in Vi Scrapper:

This is about how insanely over-sensitive Bobby is and how he’ll freak out the second we so much as raise our voices.

…the good thing is that when I don’t blog, it usually means I’m actually out doing something. Also known as “living” – I tend to forget that sometimes. :)

We had a great weekend spending time with our friends, mainly eating, drinking and getting hooked on sweet, nerdy board games.

And just because I really love the new Starbucks commercial:

My brother is coming in just one week! :D :D Hmm, must get the scrapbook room ready so he’ll have somewhere to sleep…and we really need to get the rest of the presents soon. Gaah.