Christmas came and went in a flash. My mom was supposed to come out, but canceled a few days before, which meant I could really relax for the holidays. This year I decided I'd rather deal with a real tree--and my lousy allergies--than drag out our artificial one. So on Saturday, I took a break from endless grading and bought a Douglas Fir (fewer branches, needles, sap, and so forth). I unpacked only a few of our ornaments--didn't worry about lights on the tree or the outside of the house. I also didn't worry about Christmas cards this year (I had to laugh when TH finally took note of this, decided "we" MUST send them to the relatives and close friends, printed out my excel list of xmas card addresses, and then spent two hours working on that while I read final exams). I got all my grading completed by late Sunday night and posted final course grades the next morning. Almost immediately, I received two grade queries...including a request for post-final extra credit [gah!]. This inspired me to leave the house, so I headed to the mall with MP2 and got all my shopping done in nearly one fell swoop (I'd already done a bit of Xmas shopping in November and some via amazon--including a Kindle for TH). On Christmas Eve, we saw Avatar at the Imax theatre. I had high expectations. I liked the first 20 minutes or so, but it was downhill (for me) from there on out. Soooo predictable, soooo long, and soooo many distinctive cultural traditions and practices patched together into a 6th-grade interpretation of an 'indigenous' society (have to say that I did love the line about "decanting" the avatars, and of course, the biz of "unobtainium"-mining as the corporate partner to/funder of scholarly research is so cliched and stereotyped that it is funny). Afterwards, we had a great seafood dinner at a restaurant downtown that we've been wanting to try. Christmas Day was really low-key. We opened presents, had some breakfast, and then MP1 and I made double chocolate cookies (which looked far better than they tasted--I think this was my fault, as I used Starb*ck's new microground coffee instead of regular coffee and I think it overpowered the chocolate). For dinner, I cooked a ribeye roast and veggies. Afterwards, we watched Julie and Julia (VOD) and Carl Sagan (MP2 asked for the DVD set). Julie, Julia and Carl, what a three-some that was.
our minimalist tree...
Awaiting Christmas dinner spills, really cute P*ttery Barn polka-dot placemats (my one Xmas decor indulgence for this year).
Our Christmas Day chocolate fix...
and now, a few of the presents I received...
2 comments:
Your tree looks like a Noble Fir not a Doug . . . Doug's usually don't let you peek through to the trunk. I WANTED a noble but settled for a doug!
Nice spread of books. NCB has good taste.
Dugan Aguilar is giving a presentation opening day (2/13 @ 7:00pm) at the Maidu Museum on "Deeper Than Gold"
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