...and she's back!

Well, the buzz of Christmas is over. It was an amusement park of a holiday this year. Lots of hours spent at work, many hours spent processing with and about Edgy, family antics of Griswald proportions...what a ride!

Highlights include:

• Singing in a choir--I didn't realize, cheesy as it is, how much I missed it
• Looking absolutely stunning in my dress for Christmas. Eat your heart out, single men!
  
• my father's prayer before dinner--huddled around the pool table cum serving table, we held hands like angels while Dad made apologies to God on behalf of the entire world for, among other things, changing Christmas to "holidays", for the killing going on in Bethlehem, for electing liberals to government positions, etc. I timed it. 5 min and 45 seconds of apologies.
• holding my cousin's 5 month old, 16 LB baby girl. My arms ached holding the little cutie.
  
• getting a lego yoda pen
• getting my first leather jacket EVER, which reminds me of a story (doesn't everything?): when my college suitemate, Em, got her first leather jacket, she walked around campus with a new air about her, an air she called, "the bad girl syndrome." Suddenly, the self-proclaimed doormat transformed into a Pink Lady, swigging Tequilla like it was a wine cooler (mainly because she didn't know the difference) and taking risks like...touching an elevator sign that I ripped off to put over my bed or like only studying for 5 hours for a test instead of 5 days!!!! Yes, her halo tilted a little, which caused me to chide her unmercifully. Well, Em, I feel the power now. I feel the pull to the dark side that leather gives. When I put that jacket on, soft leather brushing my skin as I button the unimaginably difficult buttons to button, I feel a rush of power and vitality, the conflict within me, and immediately want to straddle a Harley and ride with an evil gleam in my eye screaming . Now I just need some new boots. Glinda, wanna go shopping when you get back?
• [trying to come down from the high of thinking about my leather jacket]...ok, yeah, where was I? Oh yeah, highlights, um...a candlelight service on Christmas Eve, one of my favorite things to do. I love darkness and candles, especially in a church bc of the Gothic effect and the simplicity of it. Reminds me of Notre Dame cathedral--[sigh] gorgeous.
• Leaving the Christmas Eve service ravenous and stopping by the only place open at 1:30 AM on a holiday, the godless Jack in the Box. Ordered my first "real" hamburger since March. Not really worth it, I don't think. Mayo--blecch! And then came home to put on my kitty cat PJs and fluffy socks and curl up with some egg nog.
  
• Christmas day breakfast with Edgy's wonderful family. They gave me a 300 disc CD changer, which I gave to Edgy. Sad.
• Movie Christmas Day--awful! The Holiday, don't go see it unless you want to find out if it is possible for Cameron Diaz to be a worse actress than she was in her previous movie. Trust me, she is. I hate to be mean like that, but romantic comedies are just not her niche or something. Plus, I was biased bc I wanted to go see Rocky, but no one will see it with me.
  
• A stop by Hollywood rendered me 2 other movie pleasures: Pirates of the Caribbean and Talladega Nights, the latter giving me a couple of chuckles, and the former being incredible! Thank God for a truly feisty (not just sexy feisty) female protag.
• 26th--NO WORK!!! I had a wee bit of a head cold, which is still lingering. Spent most of the morning in bed, and then went in the evening to a birthday party/holiday shindig at a friend's where I played games on a Wii (I HAVE TO HAVE ONE!!!), at way too much feta cheese (adding to my head cold), drank a $45 bottle of wine (yummers), and had Fannie May chocolate directly from Chicago! Evening ended with another trip to Hollywood, where I got Little Miss Sunshine and slept through it. Not that it wasn't a good movie, but I think the cheese hit me (or the wine, maybe).
• Today no work again, which is a little unnerving bc I'm not sure what to do with myself. Think I'll go for a walk and then go see Dreamgirls with a friend...or check my work email...