Yet Another Anniversary

Six years ago today, Eli and I met for the first time. It seems like a long time ago and yesterday at the same time. Weird, eh?

I opened my birthday card from Eli and this fell out:



I married a smartass. Really, though, I found it funny. It's sitting on my monitor shelf thingie. I was amazed to find a picture of the button online. I ♥ Google.

We went to the park Christmas party last night. We were there about an hour and a half. That was just enough time. We met up with our ex-neighbours and sat with them. There was lots of food and snack-type thingies. We had already eaten but Eli filled up a plate with sweet stuff. Yummm. There was a present raffle as well. Eli bought six tickets for two bucks at the last minute. We ended up with two presents. The first one was a 1,ooo,ooo candle power rechargeable spotlight. Damn, that thing can blind you. The box says it's visible up to one mile. The second present was a bottle of sparkling white wine (La Scala Spumante). I have no idea if it's any good or not. I did a Google on it and it's pretty much the lowest price-wise. I found one review at ePinions and it was favourable. Anyway, beggers can't be choosers and all that.

Eli is going gift shopping for me today. I'll be working on making ornaments for gifts. Finally. I've had the stuff for days 'n' days but can't seem to work up any enthusiasm. Ah well, nothing like the last minute, eh?

To Me

Ol' Bugger

Yesterday was Eli's birthday. He's 55. Yeah, I married an ol' fart. Not really, he's like me - very kid-like. Anyway, it was very low key. I bought him a couple cards (always two - one funny and one serious) and a birthday cake. We don't usually do birthday cakes so I thought one would be a nice surprise. And it was. There would normally be gifts but since funds are short due to the trip back to Ontario, we're combining birthday (mine is Thursday), anniversary (five years December 2) and Christmas gifts into just Christmas gifts.

A friend of ours works at Rona (similar to Home Depot) and last night was "Friends and Family" discount night. Eli wants a 18 volt cordless drill/screwdriver but even with the discount it was out of our budget. And we didn't really find much else to buy so it was a bust, but it was fun just wandering around.

I've just about got our Christmas cards done. I need a few addresses for Eli's side of the family (and this time, I swear I'm going to put them in my Outlook address thingie!), Eli needs to sign them and we'll be all done.

Our Christmas swag is up. Swag rather than tree, if y'all remember, due to the cats and room. It looks nice. I'll try to get photos taken and posted (can't find the old photos) soon.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

A Christmas Story told in 30 seconds, by bunnies. Yeah, bunnies.

Our nice neighbours just moved. They're still here in the park but in a better site and I'm quite jealous. The new site has a much larger yard and better parking to boot. I'm still closer to the laundry room, though - neener neener neener.

South Park Me

For whatever reason I've revisited the South Park Character Generator.


A fairly realistic me. Well, as realistic as you can get with SP.


Goth me. Well, if I had ever gone Goth... I had to tweak this one a bit. Her hair came out around the top and upper sides of the hat and I couldn't have that. I also mirrored/flipped the graphic so she'd be looking the other way.

I did an Eli version as well:



Oh, and look here.

Putting the "Fun" Back in Dysfunctional

Today is Eli's second day back to work. He's doing okay. What I'm finding odd is that he's showing more emotion with his father's death than he did with his mum's. I'm guessing it's because his mum lived on borrowed time for the last 40 years or so. Dad's passing was so unexpected and therefore more shocking. Well, at least that makes sense to me.

I told one of my sisters-in-law that Dad's passing means more to me than my own father's ever will. As it turns out she feels the same. Her father was (he's dead) as much a loser as mine is. Dysfunctional families unite!

The service was nice, not overly religious which is a plus because Dad wasn't. The "viewings" the previous day were a little awkward. Mostly because of not knowing the people visiting and my own shyness. And as it turns out the family didn't know many of the people who showed up. Dad had a lot of friends that were unknown to them. Ah well. I hung around the (my!) grandkids, mostly. They did really well especially considering their ages (six and nine). I put "viewings" in quote marks for a reason. Dad was cremated right away. His remains were placed in a nice oak urn and that was on display rather than a body to ogle. I'm grateful for that. Having Dad's body on display would've been too much. Oddly enough, my daughter-in-law said she prefers a body. It gives her a better sense of closure, I guess. Well, to each his/her own.

Thanks to my daughter-in-law I figured out what I'm doing for family gifts. In this month's Martha Stewart's Kids magazine there are ornaments made of buttons and pipe cleaners. They look really cute, and better yet, cheap to make. (Oooh, I just checked out that link. There are several more ideas for handmade ornaments. Cool!) Anyway, so I'll get the stuff for those this weekend and get to work on them. The ornament and a candy "thingie" will be it for the local gift giving*. I don't mail gifts to the rest of the family. I did that for several years without a "thank you" or "kiss my ass" so fuck 'em. They're lucky they still get cards.

*Last year's gifts were nice brass deer ornaments. Guys got gold coloured deer, gals got silver deer. Everyone also got a chocolate-candy-thing that was his/her first initial. I'm hoping to find the same thing this year.

Oh, we didn't get the promised snow. We also didn't get the promised sunshine. Well, the sunshine showed up today, finally.

Home

We got home at just before 7:00 p.m. last night. I don't think I've ever been so grateful to be home. It was a long, rough week. Although, in spite of the reason for being in Ontario, we had a good visit. It was wonderful to see people I hadn't seen in four years. Eli's son and his family were there, too. We saw them recently (August), but even so, the grandkids seem to have grown several inches.

The wee beasties seem to be glad that we're home. They snuggled close last night to sleep and are really underfoot this morning.

Oh, and we came back to snow. Our neighbours said there was a good storm on Thursday and it's still sticking around. It's snowing today and we're supposed to get 10 to 15 centimeters. It looks something like this.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...