this little life of mine

Amazingly it's time for the End of the Year Meme I've been doing since 2004.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before? Moved over to the Family Law Department and started helping customers over the counter and on the phone.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't recall making resolutions last year (and I can't find them in my archives), so I think I'm exempt from this one!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  My cousin, Jess, had an adorable baby boy earlier this year and a couple co-workers had babies, too.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes, my grandma died in September.

5. What countries did you visit?  Sadly, despite getting a passport, I didn't make it out of the country this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2010?  Courage.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? September 27 - the day my grandma died (though we didn't learn about it until the following day).

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Being promoted to Family Law and working counters. (It was no more money, however, just the new experiences and ablility to update my resume!)

9. What was your biggest failure? Not finishing my NaNoWriMo novel.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? No injuries, but several illnesses - just the usual colds and flus, though, thankfully nothing serious.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I bought a new computer, a nook colour, and stock in the Green Bay Packers.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Pretty much all my friends simply for being awesome.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? A relative of a friend of mine behaved very, very badly, but I won't mention which friend to protect his (or her) feelings.

14. Where did most of your money go? Travel - I vacationed in San Francisco and Seattle this year.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Visiting Seattle with one of my besties! I hadn't seen DeeDee in ages and I haven't been to Seattle in forever and we saw and did tons of awesome stuff, so it was very, very cool!

16. What song will always remind you of 2010? Galaxies by Owl City.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? a little sadder because I miss my grandma.  

b) thinner or fatter? thinner, but only by about 10 or 15 pounds.
c) richer or poorer? poorer due to the once-montly unpaid furlough days.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? I wish I'd spent more time at the beach, did more rubber stamp art and did more writing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Laying around on my fat ass doing nothing and/or watching stupid things on television.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? I spent Christmas with my mom and grandpa. We had a lovely dinner and celebrated my grandpa's birthday with chocolate cake. 

21. Did you fall in love? Oh, hell, no!

22. How many one-night stands? None.

23. What was your favorite TV program? I totally love "Glee", "Doctor Who", "Fringe", "Terra Nova", "The Big Bang Theory", and "Chuck".

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Yes.

25. What was the best book you read? That's a loaded question, as I read over 40 books this year and really enjoyed several of them, but here's my top 5: Purple Daze by Sherry Shahan, Diary of a Witness by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan 

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Owl City - I absolutely LOVE the fun lyrics and the great beat of their songs.

27. What did you want and get? A nook colour. 

28. What did you want and not get?  A new cell phone, but I'm working on that now, so perhaps I'll have one very soon!

29. What was your favorite film of this year? I think I only saw one new movie this year and that was Breaking Dawn Part 1. And, yeah, it was good!

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 45 and didn't do anything special. 

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?  Attending Weetacon VII. 

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?  Absolute and total comfort.

33. What kept you sane?  Music. 

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?  I've wound up with a slight crush on Jim Parsons from "The Big Bang Theory". He's hilarious!

35. What political issue stirred you the most? Meh, I don't want to get into politics. 

36. Who did you miss? My grandma. 

37. Who was the best new person you met?  Liam - my adorable second cousin.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Everything can be fixed. 

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. 

Dear God, I was terribly lost,
When the galaxies crossed,
And the Sun went dark.
Dear God, You're the only North Star,
I would follow this far.

Oh telescope, keep an eye on my only hope,
Lest I blink and be swept off the narrow road.
Hercules, you've got nothing to say to me,
'Cause you're not the blinding light that I need.

For He is the saving grace of the Galaxies!
He is the saving grace of the Galaxies!

Galaxies by Owl City

Well, there she is: my new computer. It's a Sony Vaio all-in-one, so there's no tower, just the screen, keyboard and mouse. So far I'm really enjoying it - mostly I'm enjoying having a computer that works!! My old computer started dying last summer - July or August, I think - and finally gave up the ghost around the beginning of November, taking a majority of my NaNoWriMo novel with it.  (sad face!)  Anyway, it took me a while to look into different computers, but I kept coming back to this one. I loved the sleek look of it, the large screen that is a touchscreen, too,  as well as the reduced desktop clutter. I'm hoping the two of us will be very happy together for years to come!

A bright and brilliant sunset this evening!

I was thrilled to see Meg is doing The Mayfly Project again this year. It's a simple, yet difficult concept: sum up your year in only 24 words. Here are my words, for what they're worth:

Work, work, furlough day, work … Halloween in San Francisco, wine tasting in Napa Valley, Atascadero & Avila Beach, adventures in Seattle, losing grandma.

It has been very , very cold here. That is all.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week I'm reading The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa. I believe it's the final book in the Iron Fey series, but I'm not 100%  sure. I've enjoyed every book in this series, and this one is no exception! Here are my teasers from pag 30 on my nook:

I have him a brittle smile. "Then there will be a lot of fallen soldiers before the day is done," I said quietly, and walked out of the gorge.

In my house Christmas Eve is defined by a good bottle of wine, a delicious light dinner and a viewing of It's a Wonderful Life.

I bought this Alpha Omega chardonnay back in October during the Rehab Napa Wine Tour and have been saving it for a special occasion. It's SO good!

This year mom and I went with a Surf and Turf theme with our dinner, and bougfht a couple frozen appetizers - bacon wrapped filet mignon and mini maryland crab cakes. They were yummy!

Merry Christmas!

Today I baked up some cookies for Christmas! Not from scratch, and not even from a box mix. Nope. These cookies came pre-made and pre-sliced, and were super easy!

I ordered these Red and White Cranberry Delight cookie dough from my co-worker's son who was participating in his school's fundraising program. I've ordered cookie dough from him before, a few years ago, but only got the frozen tubs of dough and it took me years to get round to dealing with them, and even then it was kind of a pain digging the dough out of the tub!

This year I really wasn't going to order any because of the pain-in-the -butt factor, but when I saw the pre-cut cookies in the catalouge I immediatly ordered them!  (I also ordered Double Chunk Chocolate cookie dough, but my dyslexia must've gotten in the way when I wrote out that order because I ended up with a tub, but whatever. I'll deal with that over New Year's!)

This pre-cut dought is awesome! Look at how easy and convenient this is; one layer of cookie dough fits perfectly on one parchment-paper-lined baking sheet, and since I have two baking sheets, I was able to get a lot of cookies baked at one time! It literally took me one hour to bake all 36 cookies!

And, yes, these cookies taste delicious, too! So, yeah, I'm a lazy bum and all, but I also have 36 freshly baked cookies to enjoy with a cold glass of milk (or some festive eggnog with nutmeg) and share with family for Christmas!

I got my Green Bay Packers stock certificate in the mail last night. I know some people think it's kinda silly - I'm not going to make any money off this stock purchase or anything, so it's basically just a really expensive souvenir, but I'm still very excited to be part owner of an NFL team!

It may look like this oak leaf is lying on cracked ice or maybe even a bed of diamonds, but it's not. It's lying on a pile of broken glass. Some knucklehead kicked in the side of the bus stop, shattering the safety glass and making a huge, annoying mess! Still, I got an interesting shot out of it, so .... a little good from the bad.