Happy New Year!

Wow, I don't know why I keep putting off blogging for so long, cause things just keep piling up for me to write about, and I end up with these silly catch-up monster blogs. Well, here's another.

First, some general greetings. Happy New Year all those that apply, I wish you a healthy and productive 5756! (Let's party like it's 5699) (That was very lame)
And Happy Birthday Aunt Mer! Hope England's treating you right.
And one bit of housekeeping. My last blog, focussed on placating my mother, seems to have come out much more squicky than I intended it to. She read it and said 'it brought a tear to my eye'...I had to control the impluse to rush to the computer and delete said blog immediately. If you know me, you know how much I detest being wiggly. I wasn't being wiggly. There was no intended gooiness, I was stating facts. Learn it well, people, there ain't no jello here!

And now, on with the show.
For a girl who's unemployed, I'm deceptively busy. Sunday Mom and the brother and I went for a hike. A really, really long hike. It probably wouldn't have been so much except that no member of my family should be relied upon to:
1)know a direction...ever
2)be able to find a path
3)be willing to follow rules of most kinds.
The result? We spent two hours tromping through cross-country, totally uncharted territory (that led to someone's backyard, given, but I prefer to imagine us as true explorers). Apparently, I'm still the adventurous one in my family (who'da thunk it?). The brother and I scrambled up some rocks, and the entire time he muttered repeatedly in my ear 'Is this a good idea? This is not a good idea.' And when we went off-trail, Mom kept insisting we go back to find the path! Bah!
Anyways, it was gorgeous, even though it was too warm for fall (I love fall, and Mom's going to kick my ass for insisting, again, that it's time for the warm weather to vamoose.) (Yeah, that's right, I said 'vamoose', you wanna make something of it?)

Monday was dinner at my great aunt's house, which was very tasty. It's always good to see family, and I got to talk shop with my uncle (technically cousin) who teaches me all sorts of stuff about arts and craft. I've been carving this block of soapstone he gave me, and he promised to score me some super-fine drill bits so I can make what I'm carving suitable for my beadwork. I can't believe I'm actually reaching a point where having a room in my future house be a 'studio' would amount to more than just an empty desk with a selection of never-used pencils. I'm psyched about those drill bits!
(I KNOW I'm a geek, stop telling me old information.)

And then there's work, where we're training our new manager (yeah, that's right. I'm training my boss. What kind of messed-up system is that?) She's not bad, but there are always a few bugs to work out. I only worked a couple of shifts this week, but sales are good again, and I'm left with more time for job hunting, which goes on...and on...

And I think my social life is making up for lost time, or something. I go to Lauren's tomorrow, it's the holiday over the weekend (enjoy that turkey, folks), Monday I'm meeting an old Mac friend for a movie, tuesday and wednesday I work, thursday I was invited to lunch but that's Yom Kippur, so I'd suck as a luch date (no it's not a 'date'), which makes a week from tomorrow my first available day. Not to mention that a friend from pub. class has been trying to arrange a night for us to get together for dinner for, like, three weeks (which is reaching a state of rediculousness, this oughtn't be so hard). This is very odd for me.

Oh! And Mom and Aunt Laura (who's another not-my-aunt-Aunt, but who is also not a cousin) and I went out for Japanese and I totally ate sushi! It had no fish in it, but it was...well, not 'great', but edible, and certainly not bad. I figure if someone I need to impress wants to take me out for sushi ever, it's just easiest for me to become temporarily vegan. Chickens grow on trees, right?

Oh, and Mom and I ate Swiss Chard tonight. Kale was better.

And now it's late and I can't think of anything else, so I'll say goodnight folks.
Goodnight, floks.