January Adventures - When I last left off on the adventures part of my tales, it was December 27th, and a nice lady bought me my Starbucks drive-through breakfast. Since then:

Shire Twelfth Night - In the afternoon, my roomie and I started getting ready for the holiday party with my shire. I started a pot of rice and stir-fried some fresh veggies, she made a batch of cupcakes. Once we were all dressed, goodies packed in the car, overnight bags prepared, I drove us up early so she could catch a movie with a friend before the evening's feast. In turn, I got to hang out with Dayle and Ken (who I don't see nearly enough, and that's my own fault). We each got dressed in our garb, packed their car with all the appropriate musical instruments, feast gear, and potluck, and headed to the northern-most end of the county, up in the hills.

The Shire 12th Night party was absolutely wonderful. I haven't seen these friends often enough (again, because I live south 90 minutes of them now), but it's always like coming home to be there again. The potluck was very well-stocked -- not a store-bought roasted chicken in the lot! I was grateful that I made veggies and rice, since there was an excess of roasted beef this time (which I can no longer eat), but I made good use of the fresh horseradish (put out with the roast) and spiced up my plate quite a bit. I've never liked hot or spicy food, but I'm forcing myself to try a little more often, to expand my palate. Yippee!

I got to sit with Mywnen and Wilhelm, two of my very favorite shire friends, and next to Alexander (Brian) and Morgana, Rhieinwen and Umberto (Dayle and Ken). When my roomie and Sabas arrived, they filled out our table, and we had a splendid time together.

Master Sean led us in over a dozen Christmas carols, which brought back years and years of fond memories singing with my shire Madrigals. Of course, Sean and I are the harmony geeks, and without planned Alto and Tenor parts, he and I get to sing all over the map, trying to pick a line that's different from one another and yet still blends. We were probably 90-95% successful. *grin*

After the official party, the unofficial party reconvened at Dayle and Ken's house, where we opened some wine and some mead, nibbled chocolates, and generally chatted for hours.

Dayle and I, however, did expose our friends to the silliest portion of our memories and history together, by convincing everyone to watch an embarrassingly ridiculous early interview with Kate Bush, where she explains how she became a vegetarian. Some of the classic quotes include, "Well, I didn't really know what vegetarians ate, except that they didn't eat meat. So for the first week, I ate a lot of chocolate and tea..." Or when the interviewer asked about the little bowl of roasted seeds and nuts, she actually asked, "How do you eat that?" at which point, Dayle and I always fall over in gales of laughter. The whole thing is so darn funny!

After that, the classic "Hamsters of Rock" always has to follow, and everyone obliged us again. Of course, you couldn't really *hear* the Van Halen song track that goes with this "claymation" (ha!) video that Ken created in a college film class in 1988. All you can hear is Dayle and I laughing uncontrollably as we watch "hamsters" (or blobs) made from Play-doh, "dancing" around on a stage because the guy under the table is moving the coat-hangers attached to them. By the end, we've panned the camera up through the blinking Christmas lights hanging over the "stage," and it closes with the drum solo where the little play-doh drummer falls apart. Ah. We've got to get that video transferred to digital and loaded onto YouTube one of these days.

Project Day - Mel and I got up early, drove to meet Ismay to retrieve my forgotten camera battery and charger (thank you dearheart!), pick up some coffee and pastries, drive back to Dayle's for Mel's forgotten backpack, and hurry home for our 2nd monthly household project day.

This one was called "Linen Undergarments Day" and I actually worked on a chemise, but it was silk, not linen, just already cut out. For me it started out as "finishing the unfinished projects day." Then I got encouragement from everyone to start a new Turkish coat for BoC after all, so we pretended that it was an episode of "Project Runway" (from BravoTV), and I proceeded to tear apart the living room, stacking boxes and boxes of cloth until I found everything I needed. I put together a new jacket with black linen, appliqued with "trim" cut from a piece of black silk with gold metal-thread embroidery.

From the household, Jeff and Adrienne, Nate, Mel, and myself were all working from about noon on. Halfway through the day, Bruce and Ellen (friends of the household) called to see if they were able to join us. In the evening, Kim invited me to coffee, but since she's the brains behind "More String Better" and we keep putting Kim and Ellen in the same room for String Things, we invited her to join us. Soon we had Adrienne, Kim, and Ellen carding and combing out fleeces (wool for Kim and Ellen, alpaca for Adrienne), Nate, Mel, and I working sewing machines, and Jeff and Bruce gaming in the kitchen. It was a raucous and packed house. We made Jeff "Safety Manager" at the beginning of the day, and "Operations Manager" by evening. [He made sure that tipped over irons were righted, and that lunch and dinner were provided.] The house was at the limit of people, certainly, and the noise level was almost beyond what my roomie could endure. But I loved it.

New Year's Eve - Monday I was back in the office for work, which was weird, but nice to see my boss again and get caught up. I came in super early so I could really leave on time, and possibly beat evening traffic. I came home, put together carrots and celery for the potluck, and this time my roomie designated herself the driver for the evening. We headed up to the annual Poker Tournament at the Dudley's, where I had to forgo the poker game and just concentrate on sewing my Turkish coat. Mel visited with Alan and Theresa for a bit, the tournament wrapped up a little before midnight, and we enjoyed a wonderful night with friends. Teffan sent text messages back-and-forth with me from Wisconsin for nearly an hour, as we wished everyone at Michael's a Happy New Year, and they wished everyone here the same.

New Year's Day - In the morning I got up really early (again) to put the house back together after the 12th Night feast gear and dishes, the day long project party with dishes and sewing boxes and scraps everywhere, and all the general house detritus that gathers before your mother invariably visits. She hasn't seen my last 3 apartments, and I've been in this one for over two years. But once I got the vacuum cleaner fixed (the belt was broken before I even started), all the dishes done and the entire kitchen put back together, the living room completely reassembled, the bedroom cleaned, and my hair curled, just in time my sister phoned and they were pulling up at my place. Yea me!

I adore my sister, my nieces, and my Mom (although sometimes she can compliment with all the best intentions, and it comes out sounding back-handed). My poor roomie had been drying large pieces of cloth once, over a year ago, and water-stained the side of my coffee table. I told her not to worry about it, I'd sand and polish it sometime later. But of course, that was the first thing Mom saw when she walked in. Darn, I hope Mel didn't feel too bad about that.

Adrienne had come over to visit with Mel in the morning, so my family actually got to meet my fantastic roomie and one of my very best friends, which I considered to be a real treat. My dad also sent my Christmas gift to my sister's house (with the gifts he made for all those 3 girls, too) which was the other reason they all came to visit me: to deliver my present. He made me a large stained glass piece of a Scottish Thistle, which is just adorable. Of course, I've no idea where to *really* display the piece, but it's hanging from one of my bookcases now in my room. It's just gorgeous.

So after giving my family the nickel-tour of the place, chatting for a wee bit and opening gifts, we went to my favorite deli to stuff ourselves silly on yummy omelettes and pancakes, muffins and juice and coffee. Then we bought some extra treats from their bakery (yum), where the girls actually took some photos of the baked goods with their camera phones. All in all, it was a wonderful visit.

Back home, Mel and I packed up another set of potluck contributions and hopped back into her car to go back to Dayle and Ken's for a New Year's Day party. It was nearly the same set of friends who made it to the post-12th-Night party, with the addition of Mattea. The other excuse for throwing a party (besides the fact that they're fun!) is that they've been successfully de-cluttering their fabric stash and having friends pick over the donations before some charity gets them. I came away from the stash with a piece of navy and a piece of gray cloth, probably destined for the lining on boy clothing some day. I also took the copper dupioni silk, since I can actually probably pull off wearing that color. And the best find: A huge cone of silk thread, 10 colors layered one upon another. The big price will be unwrapping and rewrapping all 10 layers so that we have cones of separate colors. But I'm thinking that Kim and I have some silk weaving in our near future! (It's just dreamy!)

The Rest of the Week - I finished putting together the baronial newsletter late this month (not getting it out on the 1st like I wanted, but drafted on the 2nd and published on the 3rd). I joined the Wednesday after-fighter-practice pancake crew for a cup of coffee, and a little time to proofread. On Thursday the whole thing was put to bed, and then of course all the typos started to creep up, post publication. *sigh* They're actually kind of funny this time ("Caption of Archers" instead of "Captain of Archers") and I've got the Erratum started for next month's issue.

This afternoon, I had lunch with friends to "not" celebrate them getting civilly married this morning. (Not that we don't celebrate their relationship, but the marriage certificate was for health insurance since domestic partnerships are not offered to opposite-sex couples, even if they've been together for 15 years. *sigh*) So we had a fantastic non-celebration lunch, some very yummy Indian food, and great company.

And now tonight is the last big push to get ready for tomorrow's competition. My roomie has offered to cook me dinner (so I really should leave the office five minutes ago!), and Kim has offered to come over tonight and help me finish sewing. I love my friends! Tomorrow we carpool out to really-far-away-in-the-middle-of-nowhere and I'm sure I'll have more stories later!

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Finally, another note. Briefly on New Year's Eve, JournalScape was down. I emailed support, looked up the DNS owner, emailed him, and actually got an email back from the domain owner when the site was back up again. It reminded me that I don't have my writings backed up anywhere. So I've started working on a complete collection of "All the Writings" to keep on my local drives as a back up. So yup, some day all my journal writings will be available as a self-published book. *grin* So far, I've completed all of the December, November, and some of the October 2007 entries. I'll just keep adding the current posts to the end, and continue adding earlier archive posts to the beginning. I have three complete years on this journal, some private entries to myself, and possibly some older writings in my files. I'm happy with the collected works.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Rain is back! Yippee!