Repacking

I did a pretty good job of cramming all of my stuff into two bags, even though the amount of stuff I had kept doubling. My secret: bring every CD you own on the trip, then throw half of them out. In case you were worried about Burl Ives, Jimi Hendrix, or the Singles soundtrack (pictured), I made sure to rip them all first.

GAUGE: 4" to thirt.... no... fift.... uh.... cookie monster

Here are 4 things your first-ever knitting project should probably absolutely not include:

1. Blue fun-fur eyelash yarn
2. Finding size 9 double-pointed needles
3. Anything that is not a scarf
4. Felting

Best Idea Ever

So, Mom, Simon and I were brainstorming ideas for what to do New Years Eve, and mom was like "We could see a movie." And we were like "meh" and then she was like "or we could go to dinner?" And we were like "meh" and then she was like "Or, we could gather up the Christmas ornaments that were damaged in the fire and chuck 'em against the trash compactor to smash 'em." I do not need to tell you what we were, in response, all totally like.If you don't know my mom, you don't know how surprising that was. But I guess she's full of surprises.

Antrhopomorphosyncretism

And lo, though the good camera's batteries were dead, it still found some way to be useful for the blog.

Family Conference

Last Christmas we figured that since 4 of 5 kids were in grad school and 1 of 2 parents was a prof, we could probably have our own Dilts family mini-conference. We didn't plan another one this year, but I happened to have a poster handy, so I showed it around. If Simon looks bored, it's because he happened to have something way more awesome handy: Here he is, showing us the nature film he wrote, directed, shot, edited, narrated, and starred in when he was in South Africa in October:
You should track it down. Dung beetles are amazing.

A Life of Luxury

America! Will I ever get to sleep on your velvety beds?
Eat your giant meatballs?
Become one of your beautiful princesses? Well, I can dream.

Key Features

I was like "Mom! Take a picture of me driving!" So she took a bunch until she was satisfied with this one. I snorted and showed it to her an she said "What? <pause> Oh, well, you can't see your face, but your hands are on the wheel!!"

Nutritional Highlights

My favourite part of this cereal is that the new emphasis on nutrition in America means that the box emphasizes how nutritional it is for kids to eat 40 or 50 tiny double-chocolate chip cookies for breakfast every morning.

Swag!

The Christmas season is about lots of things, but I think Christmas Day for me is all about loot. Here's what we got:Mom got to say "ooh!" about 15 times.
Simon got the same thing from two people for the 3rd time in 4 years, but at least this time the second person was a video rental place. Andrew got exactly what he asked for, to his surprise. Can you see what it is?
Dad got "Dad's Life in Pictures". Also, check out the last supper in the background.
I got a little piece of Havoc, and sent it up to land on a bigger piece.We all got home-made whole-wheat cinnamon rolls. Yum.

Oh, right.

I guess when Mom said it was a cot, an I said "I would love to sleep on a cot!" I forgot what the word 'cot' actually refers to. It refers to a cot.

Lost and Found

Look! My Camera:
Thanks to Andrew for bringing it back! And thanks to my K.K. for giving me this rather extreme way to prevent it from getting lost again.

Also, the return of the camera means the return of a few dozen lost photos:
I'm going to date all the posts with these photos as Dec. 14th until I retrieve my lost my cell-phone, and with it the pictures I've been taking for the last two weeks (sigh).