Weird to be back

Hey, y'all! (As Britney Spears would say. Or Britney Spears as interpreted by the Fug Girls. Which is actually weird of me to bring up, because I have only looked at, like, 3 blogs since I went cold turkey a month ago.)

All those asides aside, I seem to have survived my horrendous semester so far. I still don't have a grade back on my one exam, and I still have to study for and pass my second exam, so there is still plenty of time for me to crash and burn scholastically before the end of the semester, but for now I am not worrying about it. John and Hannah have toddled off for groceries, and I am trying to remember how this thing called "blogging" works while I have some time on my hands for the evening.

For xmas, John bought me a chocolate fountain, which I hope works as cool as it sounds. Hannah insisted on going with John to the store this evening--we normally have to bribe her to come along--so she could pounce on the left-over choco-Santas to feed into the fountain. We have unverified plans for company at New Year's, and we were thinking of using the choco-fountain as the dessert centerpiece, with fruit and such for dipping into the cascades of cocoa-y delights.

In other xmas-y news, Hannah hates the city's decorations downtown.



These lights hang over the middle of the street her school is on, and she calls them "Death Stars": "I am afraid those death stars are going to fall down and puncture my flesh." Yes, that is something we are all afraid of.

Another thing she hates about winter is the Winter-scented Charmin her father mangages to sniff out (ha ha! see how I did that?) each year and drag home by the car-full. "Great! Now bears are going to be attracted to my pine-cone-smelling butt." Not too many bears in this neck of the woods, but maybe Hannah should stay away from Bavaria and the Tirol.

We had a nice, quiet xmas at home this year. I color-coded the wrapping paper this year, and Hannah didn't manage to guess which color was hers before the big unveiling, so I guess I was successful. She was guessing blue, because there was a big package wrapped in blue under the tree. In kid logic, big=kid's, right?



What she didn't know was that the red package next to the big blue one held a Wii. The big blue one just held a Wii game--Rock Band. Unfortunately, the instrument pack did not come with the game software--I managed to not notice the large, red sticker on the package announcing that--so we had to make a special amazon-run yesterday. It should be here on Monday, and then we will rock!

Until then, we'll have to make due with Samba-ing.



At John's request, I made a goose. It was really easy to roast, and I made some delicious roast potatoes in the drippings, but it was a bitch to cut up and serve, and there wasn't really all that much meat on it. And it was rather expensive. It cost me about 8 bucks per person, which hurt my penny-pinching little soul. It was pretty, though, no?



At least we got some sunshine on xmas day.



Hannah thought that if we couldn't have a white xmas, we should at least have a dismal gray one that looked like it was trying to be white. I, for one, was glad of the sunshine, even though it only lasted part of the day.

After being extra good and loving for two whole days, Hannah was starting to show a few cracks around the edges yesterday evening. I called her Grumpy Smurf, and she replied, "No, Smurfette-on-her-period-grumpy." Hannah identifies so strongly female that she refuses to be called male in any form or fashion, so she had to come up with a grumpy alternative, even if it meant thinking about Smurfette in a completely new way.