Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Saturday, December 26th, 2009
traceroo	10:42a	Boo Christmas Families with children write about how the flavor of the Christmas holiday changes once you have kids, and it's really true -- or so our first Christmas with the kittens has shown! "Nana" filled up the kittens' stocking with new toys. Mama and Dada gave the kittens a Weasel Ball on Christmas morning. For two nows now, our cats have been wild shark-eyed, totally cracked out and over stimulated! We've delighted in watching them hunt the self-propelled electronic toys, try to make off with the Chinese yo-yo when they thought we weren't look, hunt down that particular smell of catnip somewhere amidst the shredded paper, and continued to sled on the tree skirt over the tile floor now that presents are no longer holding it down! As waywalker calls it, there was "phat lewt" aplenty! I laughed with my family that surely if there were any question previously, now I must acknowledge that I am a grown-up since I clapped my hands and squealed with pleasure over the gifts of a Dust Buster, and a book about mortgages. My mother and I both did considerable shopping at "our favorite store," and thrilled together with stories of ridiculous bargains on neat things we found at the thrift store on half-price day. She got me this wonderful maroon colored chenille Liz Claiborne sweater for $3. My mother's favorite present was the $7.96 fancy framed portrait of our wedding photo, pictured here: ( Cut for photo. ) For the second year in a row, Ian and I took our traditional Christmas Day dinner at Benihana. As last year, we were seated with another family who were jolly and chatty, and it was a good time! Then we went to see "Sherlock Holmes" for the equally traditionally Christmas Day movie. ( Thoughts on the movie here. ) Our house is a disaster area! Thank goodness today was trash day, at least. The cats are cracked out, Ian and I are tired, the house is a mess. It's wonderful! I expect today Ian will play Assassin's Creed II, and I'll sit and knit and watch him play since the game is that entertaining. We got a PS3 for Christmas which doubles as a Blu-Ray disc player, and several movies including the new Star Trek, and we'll possibly give that a run today. I'm looking forward to seeing if Blu-Ray is really all it's purported to be. I've never seen it in use before. Fa la la la la, la la la la! Trace Current Mood: cheerful (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
traceroo	12:43p	Hobbits' Holiday House ( Photos of our Christmas decorations. ) Happy Holidays, Trace Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Swing Out Sister - Surrender (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
traceroo	1:10p	Two Nights Before Christmas December 23, and all the warm weather we can eat! We've got the windows open here in Austin. Although it's overcast, and looks like a typical bleak winter day, the temperature here in Austin is in the mid-70s and it's lovely and mild out for now, even if it won't last for long. Mama has just dropped by for her daily unannounced visit around lunchtime, today to drop off some goodies for Ian's Christmas stocking. I hope to take photos of the Christmas decorations at our house today finally to share with you. Our staircase railing is so happy with all four stockings on it for Ian, Mama, the kittens, and me, pine garlands and red beads and white lights! The display I made for our holiday cards is now positively bristling with glittering greetings -- thank you all who sent them! -- and really our house is just stuffed to the gills with holiday cheer! Yesterday I finished off the last of Mama's Christmas presents, and what will probably be her favorite. I got one of our wedding pictures developed in 8 x 10 for her, and a nice frame. She'll be more amused that the total cost of the elegant project was $8. I got this great steal of a fancy large frame at Salvation Army on half-price day for $6.50, and the development of the photo was only another $1.50 at Sam's. Ten months after our wedding day, I grabbed another 8 x 10 for ourselves as I've been meaning to put a large wedding photo in the living room. Ian and I are still glued to our computers playing video games throughout vacation. We might head out this evening for an elegant dining experience at Five Guys Burgers and Fries... which naturally always spurs a continuing string of vulgar puns like, "I could eat Five Guys all day long," and, "Five Guys really fills me up," "I can't wait to have Five Guys in me," "My wife and I paid for Five Guys and we were fully satisfied," and so forth. It really gets ridiculous. We love it! This date might conclude with the stunning entertainment of going to The World's Most Stressful Whole Foods and picking up some delicious Monterey jack cheese for our Christmas dinner since their cheese selection really is superlative. I might talk him into watching, "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" tonight which he has never seen, and which we have from Netflix at present. Picked up two books at the library yesterday, both from movies. One is Amy Tan's, The Joy Luck Club which I adore as a movie. I've never read any of Tan's work, however. I've heard many good things about the book version. I also picked up The Road To Wellville by somebody with a long complex Irish name which did not impress me as a movie. The story about Kellogg's crazy healthnut spa in Michigan sounds good as a book so I picked it up. The first three chapters are amusing enough to have prevented me from yet putting it down, although I hope it picks up a bit if this book hopes to keep my attention much beyond about six chapters. Meanwhile, I secretly reread Pride and Prejudice recently, the no zombies version. I wanted something familiar I could pick up and put down through the holidays and finals, and of course I got sucked in and wanted to finish it for the zillionth time! Mr. Darcy reminds me of Ian, so this book makes me extra happy for it. Missing all our friends far and wide, and wishing you could boost your legs upon our couch for the traditional Christmas Eve cheese dip and viewing of, "It's a Wonderful Life" in our living room. Maybe next year! Love & Kisses, Traceroo Current Mood: chipper (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
traceroo	9:11p	Yuletide Altercation at Walmart Today, 3 days before Christmas, I went into my local Walmart at 2:00 in the afternoon to find it PACKED with last-minute shoppers. While in the peanut butter aisle, some bitter old hag who looked, as a biker friend used to say, "like she had been rode hard and put up wet" was speaking at the top of her voice, clearly searching for someone to listen to her. "Take that child HOME! If MY boy acted out like that, he'd'a been WHIPPED!" It's then that I noticed a child crying a few aisles over -- not a full-on meltdown, mind you, not throwing things, no temper tantrum, but just crying as small children will do. My brain not yet having been taken over by talking about poo all the time since I'm not a parent, I'm vitally aware of the bad behavior of strangers and their strange children -- this wasn't it. There are times and places NOT to take your tired children, like a 9:00 pm rated R movie for example -- but Walmart at 2:00 in the afternoon? Perfectly acceptable. I let the old battleaxe pass out of the aisle, and think over her words as I continue my search for Skippy brand creamy peanut butter, sold locally only in Walmart, not my grocery store. Target acquired, I turned into the main aisle to find myself behind the old bat, still running off at the mouth. She turned, saw me, and still searching for an audience, she continued her diatribe: "You know their mother lets them act that way at HOME, too! They're savages! They're just like INDIANS!" Indians. I shit you not. I didn't miss a beat this time -- I put on my sunniest smile, all teeth and Yuletide cheer. I replied, "At least the mother isn't advocating child abuse and racism just a few days before Christmas. Happy Holidays!" and I waved and walked past her. It took my words a moment to register with the old bat. She said something like, "Well, that's a fine thing for YOU to say at CHRISTMAS!" Continuing to walk away, I didn't turn around, I just flipped her the bird over my shoulder because that's how I roll, really. Apparently this is where this genteel southern belle of rural Texas drew the line. She said, and again I shit you not: "Well I NEVER!" I didn't think anyone actually said that in real life. I turned around then, put another totally genuine great big smile on my face, and flipped her the bird a second time. "Have a good one!" I called out, "You look like you could use it." And that, friends, is the highlight of my yuletide joy: how I got into an altercation at the local Walmart in Round Rock, Texas, with some embittered old liche in the peanut butter aisle. Current Mood: proud (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 21st, 2009
traceroo	9:47a	Christmas Vacation Ian's studio has closed for the last two weeks of the year, and so he's on unpaid vacation for 10 days. The past two days therefore have been enormously slothful. We played Champions Online together all weekend, and not a whole lot else. I just don't have Ian's stamina for leisure, and I have to get up and do something productive every so often or I go brain dead. Nobody likes not having a brain. We anticipate more of the same for the next two weeks, just playing video games, watching movies, maybe occasionally going out to eat to the movie theatre, but that's IT! Nice and relaxing with no obligations. Ian has long since bailed on watching "Dollhouse" as really we agree that it started out enormously insipid and uninteresting. Pretty much as soon as its cancellation was announced, the show kicked into high gear trying to tell its story before it goes off the air. Why couldn't it have started with this ferocity? Last Friday night's episodes moved the over-arcing story into a direction I sure didn't anticipate, and I enjoy where it's going. Pretty much this show could've skipped the entire first season and I don't think I'd have missed it. My only regret is that this show ever got this entertaining at all. If it couldn't start out really neat therefore to attract viewers and preserve itself for continuation, then I wish it had stayed boring so I wouldn't miss it when it's gone. Nevertheless, Joss Wheadon, you will not fool me again! I know everyone is going to die. In episode 1, I called Sierra as the first to die. I'm now thinking Victor, Paul, Topher's nameless assistant, and maybe Sierra as well. We went to see "Avatar" last night, although not much excited about it based on the previews. Since James Cameron has only ever let me down on "The Abyss," the appeal of which I still don't get, I hoped sincerely that the story would be good once I got there. Ian and I heard nothing but excited praise for this movie, so that improved its chances. Our Guildhall chum Matt really summed it up best -- you've never seen anything like "Avatar" visually. Unique and breathtaking, I'm so happy I saw it in the theatre (if Ian and I did opt to skip 3D since it doesn't play nicely with us wearing glasses)! The CG in this is just seamless to my eyes, and so beautiful! I think Cameron made a clever choice to choose an alien environment so as to avoid the uncanny valley that makes humans done slightly wrong really mess with your sense of reality. Matt further went on to say that we have seen the story before many times, and certainly done better, and I agree with him. The story was interesting and good, however, and that's what I wanted. So many movies seem to make the mistake of making computer graphics so good that you get immersed in their illusion only to be bored silly by finding nothing of worth in that world. "Avatar" didn't leave me feeling like that; I still cared about the characters and wondered what would happen. I think I'd like to take my mom to see this since she doesn't go out to the movie theatre too often, and this will really knock her socks off. My singular objection to the movie is that I did not care for the James Horner score. Although all composers tend to reuse the same themes again and again, Horner has this particular blare of horns that he uses more often than I'd like. We hear in repeated in, "Battle in the Mutara Nebula" from "Wrath of Khan." It's a strong component of "Bishop's Countdown" in "Aliens," (arguably my favorite piece of movie music ever), and in "Titanic" it signals some new component of the emergency of the ship sinking. We hear those horns again throughout "Avatar," and I'm a little bit over them. Further, one particularly dramatic battle scene has this really jolly-sounding horn section behind it that couldn't but remind me of some baroque classic piece. It was noticeably jarring and seemingly out of place to me in the scene. Ian and I are big on sitting through end credits of movies, and the pop love song at the end about "all the colors of love" about made me want to stuff a drinking straw in my eye. My objections to the soundtrack were slim and truly unique amidst a lengthy list of other comments I could make about the movie, all positive. I recommend you go see it, too -- go get a babysitter, make it a date night. This is one you'll definitely want to see on the big screen. DVD really won't do it justice later. I'm planning to leave the house today, which is really comparatively exciting news! Just a few errands to run to the drug store, library, maybe Pet-S-mart. Otherwise it's more of the same sloth, and I liiiiike it! Happy Holidays everyone, Trace Current Mood: cheerful (1 Comment |Comment on this)