So now for a rundown of my favorite present of this year (well, ok, one of my favorites):

LINCOLN LOGS!!!  I love Lincoln Logs.  As a kid, I would walk to my parents’ office after work, where I would pretty much be stuck, bored and alone, from 3:00 p.m. until about 9:00 p.m. (often later), which was usually about when we ate dinner.  My saving grace during those long, tedious hours was my Lincoln Logs, which I would set up almost daily to make villages for the little plastic people that came from my Burger King Kid’s Meals (ok, now that I’ve done a search on them, apparently they were from Arby’s kid’s meals) – the Little Miss and Mr. Men figures.  They had amazing social interactions and daily fun, all scripted and directed by yours truly.  So, anyway, wrenching myself away from my nostalgic meanderings – all of these fond memories have made me yearn to have Lincoln Logs of my very own again, and in light of this, TBear presented me with these on Christmas:

The set included the little ponies and cow and everything.  *blissful sigh*  I’m such a child.

By which I mean, of course, “Catch Up” – yes, pointless and terrible pun, but “Catch Up” as a blog title sounded almost as bad as “Update.”

So, anyway, where did we leave off?  Oh, right, Christmas and the flood.  So, Christmas was awesome – the normal craziness of trying to be with two sets of parents at different times in the same day, rushing around and trying to do too much and see too many people, while also keeping firmly in the forefront of one’s mind the real reason for the celebration…  But it was a fun and crazy time and we enjoyed catching up with lots of people we don’t get to see very often (my parents do an open house in the afternoon/evening so all our family and friends can get together in one place and visit and enjoy the day).

My big surprise present to TBear was a three-day, two-night romantic Candlelight Christmas visit to Biltmore Estate, which is this a-freaking-mazing massive 250-room mansion built by George W. Vanderbilt in 1895 and still privately owned by his descendants (to quote the website - ”this French Renaissance chateau remains America’s largest privately-owned home…The house covers 4 acres, totaling 175,000 square feet. It consists of 250 rooms that include 35 guest and family rooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, and three kitchens”) .  It sits on 80,000 acres and has a winery, farm, formal gardens, conservatory, and restaurants.  We stayed at the four-star Inn on Biltmore Estate, which is actually located on the estate and is absolutely luxurious (and far nicer than anywhere we’d ever stayed before!).

We arrived at the estate with just enough time to check in to our room, then we headed over to the house itself to eat at the Stable Cafe - actually a nice restaurant (upscale steak kind of place, contrary to the name) that is in the converted stables attached to the mansion (and holy cow, these horses must have had it good!).  Then we got to do a self-guided tour of the (four-story-plus-basement) house itself, all decorated for Christmas and lit by the soft (electric-assisted) glow of candlelight.  There were also a ballet performance of sections of the Nutcracker Suite, a full choir singing carols, and story-telling and marionettes as part of the tour in the house.  Yeah.  AMAZING.

So, we spent January 1 – January 3 there, blissfully alone together in this incredibly romantic setting, and just took time to relax, rewind, and recharge while enjoying the house and grounds.  It was especially nice to have the time to ourselves after all the furor of the holidays. We did a daytime tour of the house, toured the winery, and went to a couple of the other fabulous restaurants.  We also took a special rooftop tour of the house that let us into areas not normally open to the public, including the roof.  Here’s a pic of one view:

That big building with the spires and gables there to the right of the big roof?  That’s the stables and courtyard.  Yeah.

So that was major fun and we actually ended up getting season passes so we could go back when all the gardens and grounds are in bloom – the estate is about 3 hours from where we live, so it’s a good weekend trip.

Ok.  That’s enough for now.  Since then I’ve been sick for three weeks, started a new semester of grad school, and suffered heinous deadline pressure at work (hence the lack of blogging).  Someday I’ll get around to posting all the amusing blogs about our other interim experiences that I composed in my head but never actually wrote down…

Oh, wow, has it really been over a month since I blogged?  Oh, the humanity…

Well, I was insanely crazily busy during the last part of November/first part of December, and since then I think it’s the sheer volume of things going on that have kept me from blogging - too much to say, not enough time to say it…  So this will be a fairly routine ‘update’ blog, just to catch us all up so I can start again with relevant, current blog topics.

The second week of December, TBear and I went to DisneyWorld with my parents – it doesn’t matter how much you’ve been, it’s still fun.    A-flipping-lot of walking – I wore a pedometer a couple of days, just out of curiosity, and was stunned.  They say that you should try to walk 10,000 steps per day for good health, and let’s be honest – given that I have a desk job, that doesn’t ever happen unless I really, really work at it (which I really never do, except on occasion when spurred by guilt).  The least walking we did was the day we shopped – I clocked about 8,200 steps that day.  The days we were in the Disney parks, though, I was stunned to find I’d walked over 22,500 steps.  And just so you know – that was with only putting the pedometer on when we were actually at the park, so I didn’t get false readings from the car/bus/ferry/monorail ride over or from the getting up/down/moving around while at the motorhome.

Right.  So, I have pics, but they’re not downloaded, so for now that paragraph is our vacation in a nutshell. 

We got back Sunday, December 14, and my final exams were Monday and Tuesday, the 15th and 16th.  That was not cool and I would prefer not to remember the frantic studying and preparation, so we’ll skip over that.  I did pull A’s across the board, though, so yay.

Um… let’s see… oh, right.  A few days after that, my parents’ house flooded (busted outside faucet flooded the main floor and basement and wasn’t discovered until it had been pouring full-blast for about 2 1/2 hours).  Did I mention this was less than a week before Christmas?  The hardwood floors (which had just been refinished about two weeks prior) were saturated on the main floor and had to be covered with these funky rubber mats and tubes, plus there were about half a dozen commercial dehumidifiers hulking about with their tubes, so the main floor looked like the Borg had invaded (yes, I’m a geek and just inserted a Star Trek reference into my blog).  In the basement, the carpet and (leather) couch were soaked and the ceiling tiles had disintegrated into wet white goo all over everything.

Amazingly, by Christmas day the flood-repair (?) company had everything looking almost normal, so my parents were able to have their normal open house so all our family and friends could stop in and visit. 

Sorry for the boring narrative.  More later.  Then we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So, we may or may not have bought a couch.  For the bonus room we don’t have yet.  (We do have a nice blue line drawn in our driveway, though, showing the space the bonus room we don’t have yet is going to occupy.  And we have a large and hulking yellow metal monster sitting in our yard like a big piece of modern sculpture, waiting to chew up big muddy holes next to our house.)

And we have a couch.  We didn’t plan to buy, we just went out looking… We were like Goldilocks and the Three Bears (except there were only two of us and… well, ok, the simile doesn’t work out, just let it go) – I would think something was perfect, TBear thought it was too soft.  He’d love it, I’d say, “Too hard.”  Fabric choice, color, style – nothing was ‘just right.’  Until the couch.  Verily, twas the perfect couch – not too dark, not too light, not too hard, not too soft…  But lo and behold, the couch far exceeded our price range – until we went in the other room, where sat the twin of the couch but at a bargain price. And we wondered.  And we asked.  And lo and behold, the twin was actually the couch’s older sibling, born the year before but exactly alike.  And then did the saleslady reduce the price yet more, and did she inform us that the couch did contain a sleeper section and a recliner.  And then were we hooked.  And then did she tell us she could hold the couch until such time as we deemed needful, at no charge, and couldst deliver the hulking beast to our domicile fair cheaply.

The color is technically “Toasted Marshmallow,” although I think my mom hit the nail on the head when she said it was kind of a “Mushroom” color.  It’s actually prettier in person – I never would have thought I’d like a couch that color, but when I saw it I thought, “Wow, what a cool color!”  Go figure. 

Did I mention that the saleslady threw in the four accent pillows, as well?  (Apparently they go for $85/pair, which I think is absolutely outrageous – I have a hard time spending $15 on an accent pillow!)  Did I also mention we got a steal?  SWEEEEEET!!!!!  I still can’t believe we scored a La-Z-Boy leather reclining sleeper sofa that will be stored for us til we need it and delivered to our doorstep – nay, to our very room - at minimal charge (we’re talking over an hour from the store to our house, plus the thing weighs a ton since it has the sleeper section, and they’ll deliver it and set it up for only $127 – plus, if they mess it up in delivery, they replace it).

Yes, I am aware that I randomly switched to faux-Middle-English there in the middle – I don’t know why.  It seemed appropriate at the time.  It’s my blog and I can do it if I want to.  So there. 

(This post is thanks to bythelbs, without whose timely intervention I might have slipped completely off the radar…)

Sorry, folks, things have been nuts (ha – ironic after my last post).  Whose brilliant idea was it to add a bonus room and garage to our house while simultaneously working and going to grad school?  Oh, right.  Mine.  Yeah.  And who’s the scheduling genius that decided all this should be done right around the holidays?  Oh, yeah, right – me again.

Add to that the fact that my professors decided to start piling on all the stuff they neglected to assign earlier in the semester and you have a recipe for a complete lack of anything resembling a social life.  Between the research cases, tax return projects, and presentations I may have forgotten what my husband looks like (jk, sweetie!), much less any of our friends.  (Although we did go see Quantum of Solace Friday night – .  Daniel Craig makes a great Bond, even if the Bond girls seemed somewhat in short supply).

The good news is, in a couple of weeks I get a break because we’re going to DisneyWorld.  Wooohooo!  Of course, then I have finals, so it won’t be a completely relaxed trip, but still…  Who even cares about finals when you’re on vacation?

I leave you with this complete bit of randomness that somebody with waaaaaay too much time on their hands came up with as a clever desktop accessory:

Yes, folks, that’s right – a USB-powered desktop pole dancer.  How is any desk complete without it?

In what location and situation would this even be appropriate?!

(Funny how this theme keeps coming up…)

 

This cracks me up every time I see it.

What is it with me and the blog-titles lately?

Anyway, I have a dilemma.  I need to get my hair cut – badly.  That is to say, I badly need to get my hair cut.  It’s waaaaaaaay too long right now – like, several-inches-below-my-waist long.  I meant to have it cut before the wedding we were supposed to go to in October (the one I was going to lose all the weight for?  yeah, that one), but never got around to it because the wedding never actually happened*.  Now we have a wedding to go to at the end of November, and I’m thinking I have to get a haircut before that.

My dilemma is – do I go to the hairdresser I’ve been using since elementary school, who always does a fantastic job on my hair and gives me a head massage, or do I try someone new?  It’s not a money issue - my guy probably charges less than just about anywhere else I’d go, unless it was to the $10 place in the mall (and that I’m not willing to try right before a wedding). See, the thing is, the guy I usually go to takes about two hours, and the whole reason I haven’t gone is because I don’t have that kind of time.  Well, a little bit of the reason is vanity – I hate to let people who knew me see me with the weight I’ve put on, but that’s kind of subordinate to the time issue.  So, should I try someone new and fast?  My guy’s getting up there in years, so at some point in my life I will have to find another option, but…  

What say you, gentle readers?  Suck it up, take the time, and go to the tried-and-true, or mix it up a bit and try something new?  Or just slodge along with my hair growing longer and longer and more and more unkempt until I begin to resemble my husband’s Halloween persona?

 

* Which I found out about while scrolling through my Facebook homepage – I noticed my friend’s status had gone from ‘engaged’ to ’single’, and at first thought it was a sick joke… until I clicked on over to his (former) fiancee’s page and saw that not only was she listed as single, but she also had added the following to her page: “Loyalty is the quality I hope my next relationship has.”  At that point TBear and I looked at each other in dismay and astonishment and waited for news from our friend, since we sure as heck weren’t going to ask crass questions and we already felt like nosy cyber-stalkers.  So, anyway, no wedding…    Sad because they’d been dating since high school and made it all the way through grad school together.

So, this Halloween my husband dressed up like a dirty old man and my sisters dressed up like hookers – thankfully NOT on the same night or in the same place.  However, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure:

Here TBear was posing with one of my sisters’ friends sitting on his knee to play up the ‘dirty old man’ angle.

Here is TBear with my youngest sister (who for this particular party had dressed as an old Texas tycoon)

My sisters at the same party as above – they came as husband and wife.  This was actually a 50th birthday party for a family friend whose birthday happens to fall on Halloween, so we all dressed up as old people in honor of the ‘Over the Hill’ party.  (Note that my sister on the left is 19 and my sister on the right is 16 – they successfully aged themselves here, I think)

“Allyson Wonderland” (19-yr-old sister)

Kat KanDo (16-yr-old sister)

And the whole gang – I actually am the one that gave them porn names, because I thought it was appropriate since their costumes were made by a lingerie company.  However, they were all supposed to be Alice in Wonderland characters – from left to right: the Cheshire Cat, Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts.  The Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts are friends of my sisters (and are sisters themselves, incidentally).

I still say hooker.  They DID, however, wear opaque tights/leggings/etc to minimize the ho-ish appearance of their costumes when they went out in public.  My father would have had a coronary if they hadn’t made some adjustments to the original costumes (the stripey tights really made the cat costume more ‘cute’ than ‘whore-ish’, and the Alice costume had skin-colored leggings on under the white stockings to minimize the sleaze factor.  I still think “Allyson” looked like some lecher’s dream-come-true, though).

I’m appalled.  What on earth have I said to earn such a scandalous rating?  This is all bythelbs fault.  Without her and her blog-o-meter I could have remained blissfully ignorant of the sewer that is apparently my blog.