the harmonious notes of life

We returned from Iowa late last night, and I worked this morning, so I haven't had much time to really think about everything since getting back. I missed everything here for the last week - if anything of import happened that people feel I should be aware of, please please please let me know here and I'll go back and read or ponder or vote or whatever is necessary. Think of the tickeh boxes.

Christmas was lovely - I spent the entire time away from the computer and with my family and friends. I did, however, receive a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with a copy of Brain Age, so I was obliged to get addicted and decide I like Sudoku and play for hours and run the battery down and and and, but! I still spent time with family, really. My aunt warned me to bring an extra suitcase for gifts. I shrugged and decided it'd be easiest to transport all the gifts for them in said extra suitcase anyway. Despite that, she's still shipping 2 breakable things that wouldn't fit in my luggage to me and I had to creatively pack to get everything home - including carrying on the fat cookie jar my sister in law (ok, ok, cousin in law) decided I needed along with all the treats she made to fill it. I also got a recipe um.. thing with cards of things I enjoy eating that she makes, so I can bake them myself! And I got baking supplies, because Brandi rawks. And a singing penguin, because it amused my aunt, and a stained glass penguin lamp (it really is cute, I swear) and other stuff. Like a suitcase full of other stuff. Steve got a Hawaiian shirt, which amuses me, and which he claims he'll never wear again (I did talk him into it to "be nice to everyone who thought it was a great idea - Steve can be a really good sport when he wants) and I've declared I'll claim I don't know him if he ever wears it in Europe.

The other large gift I received was from Steve (along with the DS, which was my super secret surprise Christmas gift that I accidently found shortly before we left for Iowa, oops). A new laptop. Her name will be Bastet. Skadi has had a good long life, and as much as I love her, she keeps trying to flicker and die, so, she will become a development machine, used only when needing to test on PowerPC. Bastet is a Lenovo Thinkpad with no trackpad (nipples, here I come!) and no disk drive at all (it's a scary world I'm heading into - if I need a USB one, I'll get one later). It's cute, and this evening will be spent wiping Vista and installing Ubuntu. I'm considering a ceremony, but, believe I will make due with candles and death chants.

I got to see Kathy's new house on her new acreage, and it was GORGEOUS. She has done a wonderful job with the whole thing. She has a blue guest room and a teal guest room, her bedroom is very very pretty. Her master bathroom is in a Mickey theme, her guest bathroom theme is M&Ms, her kitchen theme is Mickey parts and her Bev Doolittle and Judy Larson paintings dominate the living room. Her artroom, though. My god, that is a GORGEOUS room. Black and white tiles on the floor, each wall painted a different primary color, french doors outside, it's own sink for working, a huge closet for art supply storage and ... it's just amazing. =D Her stained glass work is featured everywhere in the house. It looks amazing. I'm so very impressed.

All 3 cats were ... delighted to see us last night, and none of them will let me be in a room by myself at all now. Apparently Pita was quite agitated that Steve and I left, and gave the pet sitter some fits. He was naughty, wouldn't be nice to her and hissed at her the whole time, apparently. He's getting old and grouchy, I fear. He's happy now, curled up and sleeping right next to me. Jazz put on weight again. Surprise. And has become quite the prolific poop machine. But he is so cute curled up on the other side of me, I have to admit.

We're talking about getting a new camera - one that takes a little better data storage than the Sony Memory Disk - an SD disk would be nice, and since my new Thinkpad has a reader, I think we'll go with that. We'll see, though. Steve thinks it's a rather frivolous use of money when we're talking about buying a house, but. Oh! House!

So, I've decided on themes for our new house's bathrooms - I now demand we must have 2 to pull this off. The first theme will be penguins, because I have way too much penguin crap stuff that will need homes. So, penguins. It will be nice. The other bathroom theme will be board games. I'm going to have fun with this! I think I'm going to paint a border around the top with the images off the monoply board game, tile the backsplash behind the sink with painted tiles to look like tiles from Settlers of Catan, etch a small checkerboard in one corner of the mirror, and in the opposite corner etch a Candyland theme, and maybe see if I can find other stuff from other board games to fill in. It'll be cool! Steve's not nearly as excited about it as I am, but I think it will kick all ass! (I'm also thinking about tiling the floor to look like a chess board - not black and white or black and red like checkers, but a couple of shades of tan or brown or blue or something, maybe ivory and white. I don't know.) Oh! And paint a chutes and ladders theme on the ceiling! (that's the part I'm not sure about).

So. Busy busy. Catch me up! What happened out there while I was gone? =D