We had a ham dinner last night and we are having prime rib for dinner tonight. We are on our way over to The Taylors for a short visit and then back to fix dinner.
Hoping that all of you have a wonderful Christmas. Most of my crew is in Long Beach having Christmas with Joey and Jonathan. Mike is having Christmas with his family in Colorado and Tina is in Fresno with her kids. Today is Duncan's 19th birthday. Hard to believe.
Well we are almost on to a new year and new experiences and let us hope they are good ones.
We have eaten through our first part of the Christmas holiday. Last night, we had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with all the fish. My grandmother still insists on making most of the food - although she is limping along with great difficulty. But cooking is her passion so there is no stopping her even though she can barely walk. She also made her usual Christmas cookies. So here we are now on Christmas morning drinking coffee and trying to avoid eating our christmas cookies so that I don't go into a sugar induced coma. Sid is busily working on a bringing back to life a medicine cabinet we had hanging in one of our bathrooms. I have to admit it looks rather pathetic at this point but could POTENTIALLY be a collector's item - if you can ever restore its retro beauty. Sid loves this item but all I can see is a rusty broken up medicine cabinet.
It is Christmas Eve and we are very excited here on Poverty Rock! Will I get the Mercedes I asked for? How about the Breguet pocket watch? What about my gift certificate making Benicio Del Toro my personal trainer for 2011?
Luckily, we are not in need of such gifts to appreciate that we are beloved by our extended family and that they are beloved by us.
The visit with Dee was all too short. I now have a basket on my bike and have only managed to ride to down to the mailboxes and back. I hope it stops raining soon so I can get some actual miles on it. The first clear day and I am riding to Judi's house. I also have a new helmet with a blinking light in back. Look out Corvallis here comes the screaming pink machine.
Bought a combination bike lock (pink of course) but none of us can figure out how to work it. Judi, Tiff and I have all been working on the lock with no luck so tomorrow I am going down and buying one with a key.
Hope you are all ready for the holidays. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
I am going to church with Susan this morning (the United Methodist Church in Philomath), then I will swing by Judi's to have brunch with Kay, Tiff and Judi. Then I'm headed back to the Island.
I didn't get done all I wanted to get done, but (as I learned later) the power outage on the Island shut my work computer down and thus my ability to work remotely.
Murray and Nikole are coming to the farm on Monday for a short respite. I hope they enjoy themselves!
I'm up early, looking forward to getting some work done, and the computer here at the farm loses its connection to my office computer right in the middle of something!!!
Grrrrr.....
I am hoping to reestablish the connection soon. Of course it would happen on a Saturday when nobody will be in the office to troubleshoot for me. Last time this happened all I had to do was turn off the office computer and turn it back on.
If not, I will have to come up with some other options.
Sandra, there is no snow on the ground here, but Mary's Peak has some, and the fog that comes and goes is really pretty.
Kay I think you better listen to your little sister. You really need to go home now, your siblings obvioulsy can not go on without you. See isn't it nice to be loved.
Is there snow at the farm at all - I guess not really. It must look so pretty out there when it is snowing. How are things on the farmstead. Wish the farm was closer so that I could just decompress from the intensity of work and the city for a few days. Hope you are all keeping nice and warm in the house, and are you roasting chestnuts out there? Chestnuts are my favorite, sometimes I actually them as my dinner. Pretty strange huh?
Wow, I hope to be able to spend a week at the farm this summer - what a nice break that would be -aaahh!
Hope everyone is having a nice Christmas season so far. We will be in touch.
Bill just got back from the farm. He had a good time and all is well with Judith, the Corvallis house and the farm. I leave Thursday morning for the farm and will come home Tuesday or Wednesday.
The pictures from the party are great. I found out that most of my Ridgecrest crew thought you ate the red meat of the fruit and spit out the seed. I told them you eat it all.
Well we just got back from San Diego. We had a wonderful time and in Cabo I indeed got to ride a dolphin as did Steph. After I get somebody to download some pictures I will try and put them on the blog.
I am so glad it is Friday but of course we have lots of home projects to do so it may not be as restful as we would like. Luckily though the University gives us a week off which is such a gift (between Christmas and New Years) and this year we even get Christmas Eve off. Yeppie. We are so spoiled here in a way - just in a way though.
In other ways, well.......that's a discussion for another day.
Love the photos of Tory's party. So what exactly is the Pomegranate party, is it really a gathering where that lovely fruit is served??? I love pomegranates - how they look and taste so that is always a great theme for me.
There is definitely some kind of "urban chic" thing going with all of you in the photo. You all look so fashionably urban and cool. Can't quite pin down what it is. Everyone looks so fit etc... it must be that amazing Northwest air. Jessica is looking rather slim, or I should say even more slim than usual - is she running marathons with you Diana? Have you finally converted her to the obsessive world of exercise. By the way, I finally came across something that explains us folks who dedicate inordinate hours to exercising. It is not that we always love the way we feel while we are exercising- because it really is painful some times. It is that we HATE the way we feel when we DO NOT exercise. That pretty much summarizes it for me.
Heading to San Diego in a few minutes but wanted to tell you that Bopcha is going on the Cabo cruise with me. I have a necklace of hers that Tory bought her and I plan on wearing it a lot. And hey, Tory told me I could keep it.
The ship leaves tomorrow and we are all excited. Al coming over in a few minutes to say goodbye and also, he has dog and cat duty for Steph. I kenneled my dogs yesterday and they were still howling when I left. I must have looked a little stressed because the owner kept saying "they'll be okay".
Will call Heather and Coral when I get to San Diego to say hello.
See isn't it nice to be loved. 
