We've only got about five or six inches so far, but I am happy enough to have all plans to go out canceled (even if it is wimpy). If it continues coming down like it is now for the next couple of hours, it will be pretty nasty going.

Besides, this is the first real snow of the season (sorry, firefly124, but the previous snows were too pitiful to count), and the first snow is always the most dangerous because people forget how to drive safely, or rather, they forget how to stop safely.

But, yeah. I'm happy enough to chicken out of any activities.

And happily, my ear doesn't hurt today like it did last night. It's still clogged and uncomfortable, but perhaps with enough lying around on my side (clogged ear up), it will continue to not hurt and maybe even get better.

It would give me the excuse to finish Anne of Green Gables. :-)

Anyway, I hope that those of you who do have to go out in the winter weather, be it snowy or just cold, are safe and warm.

Take care!

Not intentionally, but... well, the holidays beg for awkward social situations when you're single, because a lot of couples have this way of looking at you when you talk to them at, say, social holiday functions. Of course, I'm sure sometimes it's in our heads, at least a little - you know, we're taught from childhood that we shouldn't bother Aunt Mary and Uncle Gary or Mr. and Mrs. Smith at parties, so even when couples are actually our own age, there's still this Voice of Eternal Instinct telling us: "You've said hi, that's enough. Go find someone your age to play with - oh, wait..." It's hard to know when that couple really wants you to go away, and when you just feel uncomfortable and are making the situation even more awkward in your head.

I do think there's pressure to have a SO, both in society and frankly, human nature. I consider myself a feminist of sorts, but I still think everyone wants to be loved. Some more than others, but I think very few people don't ever look at other couples and wonder, don't ever wake up alone at night and think how nice it would be to have someone's arms to fall back to sleep in... humans were made to love. Sometimes human nature makes couples at parties act, okay, a little obnoxious. Other times, it makes singles uncomfortable over what was nothing more than a second of silence as the couple thought of what to say next.

Of course, there's ways to remedy the situation. When we go out to dinner for work, couples are often split up. Maybe it seems a little mean, but I think it works best when that happens. Last year we didn't manage to do that, and my coworker and his wife kept whispering to one another while other people were talking to them. And yet the previous years, when they weren't next to each other, they'd been more than pleasant. They are lovely people, but they are that couple who, when together, tend to forget there's an entire world around them.

On the plus side, I got all the bedclothes cleaned and the beds made well before bedtime.

On the minus side, my ear has become painfully clogged and if it remains painful tomorrow, I will have to see a doctor. Boo. This sinusitis thing is dragging on forever!

Now to bed. Nice, clean, soon to be contaminated bed.

the hole was too small. 2am, an unusual mild southerly, waves crashing on the beach, half a moon sliding behind dark knockderry castle, fuelled by half a bottle of hen's tooth, kantar i was going to make your day. but i just couldn't fit it in. our stasilike relationship has been foiled by the nation's outdated infrastructure. the royal mail saved by its own failings. kantar, you'll have to wait.

To anyone who intentionally sent me a free snowflake - thank you! :)


Apparently there was a glitch that sent free snowflakes from people on accident - if I understand correctly. So I'm not sure who actually sent me snowflakes here and who didn't, but if you did, again, thank you. *Hugs*

ETA: Actually, hold that thought - I'm confused because of things I am reading on the flist. Were the notifications that people sent free snowflakes a glitch, or was it that there never should have been free snowflakes?

Wow! Thank you so much for the lovely snowflakes, humantales, sshg316, septentrion1970, kribu, ayerf">, ginny_weasley31 and scatteredlogic!!! They make my profiule page so pretty, and my smile so much easier. Thank you!

*smooches* *of the germ-free variety*


Already I can tell this week is going to be better than last. =)

Thank you for the beautiful snowflakes, shiv5468 and morethansirius! They brighten my profile page (and my spirits) nicely!


Now to ignore the laundry in favor of bed. Happy and joy indeed!

In addition to the wish list meme (and give me links to yours if you have them!), I'm gonna send out Christmas cards this year! I have a very limited number of them (8), and four of them have already been claimed, so put your stake in now! Comments are screened so feel free to put in your address. I'd like to have your addresses by Thursday at the latest.

Oh, and if I know you IRL, you don't get one. Sorry! (you're probably getting an actual present from me, so yeah)

So, for those of you who haven't actually read Anne of Green Gables, I really, truly recommend you try to get your hands on a copy. You might even be able to find a free one online, I don't know. All I know is that this is a book that gets better with age. I don't think, prior to this current reading, I had realized just how funny it is. As I was reading it last night, I was giggling away like mad. I had forgotten how spunky Anne is. The abundant sarcasm on LM Montgomery's part also surprised me, as I did not remember that element at all!

Anyway, if you haven't read it, do. And do not replace the book with the movie/series. Not. The. Same!


( I'm slowly healing )


( Writer rec that even those of you who don't like Snape should enjoy )

( December already? )


( Happiness )


I think I'll end there. Oh, except that we had the first real snow of the season last night. When I looked out the window at 7:30, the sun was just peeking over the tree and rooftops, but the lower sky was still a golden pink that faded into icy blue as it went up. It was nice, but what made it special was that everything else was shadowed white. The trees were sugar-coated, as were the rooftops and the ground. It was wet and warm last night when the snow started, so the ice was there to hold all the snow in place.

It was worth waking up for, even if I do want a nap now.

Thanks for the snowflake cookie virtual gift! Happy Christmas and New Year to you as well. May 2010 be a much better year than 2009.

'
A holly jolly holiday season to you too. O_o

Jordan also had an epic dream this morning.

Jordan started out as an observer of events happening in the dream. There was a war involving two families. One used to be great, but it seemed like they had found it was better to be of the people instead of over the people. They currently lived in a shack on a ranch, but were still ruling their people. They just didn't want to be "above" the people. They accepted fae creatures into their house as well. The other family kept gaining power 'till the war broke out. The power family had a huge estate-- a house the size of a city, but one massive building where all the family had to live. Slowly, they were killing off the other family or enslaving them as servants to the house. Any fae creatures were also enslaved or killed.

When Jordan stopped observing, he was in the huge estate house. A strong, but frail looking butler of the Estate saw him and tried to kill Jordan, but Jordan beat him to death with his fists. It took a while. (Often happens in Jordan's dreams where something needs to be killed, but it just won't die.) As he was escaping the estate, Jordan jumped in the Venice, Italy-like water around the Estate-- there was on old city with houses surrounding the Estate where people were not allowed to live anymore. Some of the guards of the Estate popped out of the water on horses that could walk and run on water. Just as they got close enough to capture Jordan, the horses looked at him and then each other. The bigger of the two horses looked at the rider of the other horse and head-butted him to kill him. Then he kicked off his rider and killed him.

The horses started talking to Jordan. They were sent to wait for "the one" who would bring down The Estate. And they took Jordan to a floating white sheet, which was sitting on the ground. There was an old man with a short cropped white beard sitting in the middle of the sheet. Without speaking, he indicated that Jordan needed to sit where he was sitting. When he got off the sheet and Jordan sat down, and the sheet floated across the water and space and dropped Jordan off on a shoreline.

On the shore, there was a big fat man with a beard-- who looked a little like the guy who played Friar Tuck in the Kevin Costner Robin Hood film-- the man was singing. He was also a member of the old house-- the one that was of the people. He pointed down a path leading away from the shore.

From there, Jordan followed the path. On the way, he was killing trolls, goblins and singing rats (which he wasn't sure he had to kill, but did anyway) with his bow and arrows. When stopped at a gate that led into some dark woods-- one female goblin asked Jordan to NOT kill her in exchange for information-- being shown the hidden pathway to the graveyard. Jordan was searching for the grave of a dream-uncle (as in not one of his RL uncles) who'd died as a werewolf. (The graveyard was where people who were werewolves were buried.) He wasn't told this, but Jordan knew it-- the reason they were buried in this graveyard was that no one was certain how dead those who were buried in the graveyard were. The goblin then pulled out a statue of a newborn alien (from the Ridley Scott movie "Alien")... the statue came to life (but as a living statue) and ran into the graveyard.

"What the hell was that for," Jordan queried.

"It will find the kid," was the goblin's response. "It is the ever-hungry one."

The living-statue burrowed into a nearby grave and out came a teenager-kid. The alien statue was chewing on his hand. The kid flung the statue at the goblin. The statue stopped moving. The goblin was becoming less goblin-like and more human-- still short, but proportionate and not a LP. The kid and the "goblin" argued for a bit. The kid said how better his life was now that he was dead.

Then the kid led Jordan to what he called "The missile", which was a canoe. Everything around the canoe's impact site was dead. Apparently, this was one of the greater weapons of the estate (House = Old Family of the people; Estate = the power hungry family). This canoe was shot through the sky (Think slingshot, but without a slingshot), but it had to be steered while in flight. The Estate sent the inventor to steer the canoe through its first flight, but he'd turned into rock salt upon impact. Impact had killed everything living in that area-- "purifying" it-- and everything that approached it now would still die... but Jordan walked right up to the canoe, apparently immune to death.

The goblin and kid were about to explain how you remove the steering mechanism from the canoe when the clinking noise of Cookie's cat collar on my bedside water glass woke Jordan up... (guess I'll need a new water glass...)

This dream was so vivid, I wanted to write it down before I forgot.

It starts out in the present and then goes into the 1920's... with elements of this era.

For some reason, I'm Black Friday shopping in Kmart (at least I figure it's a Kmart from how the tags on the shelves are printed out), who happens to have some sort of deal about bringing in recycling. (I suspect I dreamed about this because my husband brought a bunch of boxes from the move down the stairs yesterday-- he was going to break them down and take them to a recycling bin.) I walk through the front doors and am looking at comforters for a queen sized bed. They were supposed to be on sale, but the tags on the shelving were coming up at $99. Also, for some reason, comforters were all they had at the front of the store-- it was like a maze... I had to walk through the comforters... and once I rounded the corner, the dream morphed.

I'm now in the 1920's. Gangster days. (Probably a reminder that Dillinger Days is coming up and I'd wanted to make a 1920's dress to wear... or maybe because I moved my Fedora last night to get at a new book to read from the top of my stack of "to read".) Wool is a common fabric. Men are dressed in suits with their hair slicked back. Women are dressed in somewhat modern clothing. The location of the dream is no longer Kmart, but a hotel (with a bar). I'm seeing people in the hotel who are waiting to get married. They're going through their wedding plans. (I suspect this is because my husband's cousin is going to get married soon and we've been invited to the wedding...) Though, the people I'm seeing to get married include people from high school (like Gov. Meecham's grandson... I suspect this was in the dream because one of my co-workers had asked to see my high school yearbooks, which I had also left at work yesterday.)

One of the wedding planners, a woman in a suit-coat and skirt of grey wool, is writing on a big chalkboard the name of the wedding. She writes in 3-foot tall letters a giant script "M" followed by a "/" (slash) and then the surname of the man getting married (I can't remember this detail... possibly because I left the room). I go through another wedding room... and then sneak into "the back rooms", which happen to be a mixture of office-type cubicles and rooms. It's still 1920's... because the phones are old-school (possibly from the antique shopping my husband and I did for my MIL's Christmas gift-- that and my husband expressed a desire to buy an antique phone.) There are also old wooden chairs-- with the slits up the back of the chair... and those desks... with the coat hangers with the arms... and wool scarves and fedoras.

I sneak into one of the back rooms. As I do this, I hear someone coming. I mostly shut the door to the room I'm hiding in-- enough so there's a slit through the door and I can see who is there. Much to my chagrin, a brown tabby cat (who looks like my cat, Clovis) sees me and sits outside the crack of my door-- giving away my position to the person who has just snuck into the back area. The person turns out to be one of my co-workers-- Priscilla-- who has come to find me because I guess I was supposed to meet her there in the dream. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, but dream me has no idea why or what's going on.

I let Priscilla inside the room-- the cat is no longer there. We're looking out the open window at the back of the room and Priscilla makes a comment about how she hated coming in that way and asks if she needs to do so again. I say "probably not" and mention that I can take care of it. She's relieved that she can go out the front door... which we need to do shortly, as she informs me that the "drop-off of the hostage" will be happening soon and we need to get outside into her car.

I climb through the window and 1920's meshes with the present-- I think Priscilla's car was modern, but I can't remember the make or model. Priscilla goes out the front door of the hotel and meets me out back. We both enter her car-- she's driving. We pull out the back parking lot and are driving the back road of the hotel when an old black, 1920's car with white-wall tires shoots around the corner and drives up the street.

"Are those the guys...?" I ask.

Priscilla is looking towards the block hotel-- you know... the fake one from that recent Dillinger flick with Johnny Depp... the one that was "supposed" to be Hotel Congress, but looks nothing like it. There are a bunch of gangsters with tommy guns in suits that pour out the front door. They're looking for someone.

Thinking that was who I was talking about, Priscilla says "yes" and doesn't chase the car that just whizzed past us the other direction and turned down another street, away from the hotel. I'm frustrated because she's missed it!... and is driving down the back road while watching the fellows who came out of the hotel. I ask her if she saw the car peel around the back road and then make a quick turn. She hadn't... and turns the car around and turns down the street to follow the old black 1920's car-- the apparent hostage car.

The street is so crowded with cars... and there's a school zone with a crossing guard, who has stopped traffic. I'm frustrated and express this frustration verbally by saying, "We'll never catch them now."

... and then I wake up.

I'm suspecting that the road trip I'm having to take later today is the reason I'm dreaming about cars and road trips... and my conspiracy efforts for Monday donuts with Priscilla are the reason she was included in the dream. Somehow, it's one big conglomeration of all the things I'm thinking about this weekend.

Is there an underlying meaning? Maybe. Maybe not. I just write these things down when I've time and I remember them.

Is it just me, or is Angelina Jolie getting more and more beautiful as time goes by?

(Granted, I do have a good opinion of her; she's my generation's equivalent of Paul Newman.) Motherhood (combined with wealth) looks good on her.