Happy Holidays

Welp, Thanksgiving is past, and now it's time for Christmas decorations, Christmas music, Christmas lights, and Christmas Christmas Christmas. Now that it hasn't been Christmas for a month already. Crazy... I'm one of the firm believers that Christmas stuff is not welcome until after Thanksgiving. As it is, I'm left wondering how many more years it will be before we actually DO start having Christmas in July.

Thanksgiving weekend was crazy, but a lot of fun, and I took a lot of forward steps on my list.

#21) I made mashed potatoes! Like real mashed potatoes, not from a box (which I did make at my mother's.) My Mother-in-law peeled them, but all the rest of the cutting and cooking was me. No recipe, no clue, but they said they liked them, so yay!

#31) I caught half of the new Robin Hood movie. I'm not counting it since I didn't see it all. We also watched Bolt, but I already have a B movie /sigh/ But we watched Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? at my mother's, and THAT I haven't seen! Pretty good movie, I thought. Loved the music.

#32 & 33) I read Fluke by Christopher Moore and Fender Benders by Bill Fitzhugh. I tore through Fluke in a day. It's a great story that starts off slow and scientific, a mystery surrounding whale researchers in Hawaii. When one researcher notices "Bite Me" on a whale's fluke, their research site gets trashed and research stolen, and the picture goes missing, it sets off a chain of events leading into a sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Fender Benders follows the stories of five or so people trying to make it big in the country music scene: Eddie Long, a singer whose wife's murder by a serial killer poisoning headache powder inspired a hit song; Jimmy Rogers, a freelance writer and fan of Eddie's from the start who grew to be a good friend and decides to write Eddie's biography; Megan, a radio personality Jimmy's in love with who also wants to use Eddie to further her career; a pair of down-on-their-luck Nashville managers who haven't had a hit in ages; and Whitney, another singer going to Nashville with nothing more than a guitar and a dream. It's a smooth read, and despite not being a big country fan, I really liked it. I tried reading a book of Hubby's, but I just couldn't get into it. Sorry, honey.

#38) I'm doing 3 different online secret santas this year, with one shipping to someone in Canada. Fun! Gotta get the Canada gifts out soon, early due date.

#65) Tonight, I hit 50,000 words and get to say I finished my first NaNoWriMo! Totally doing this again next year. I already have several story ideas bouncing around...

I went to update my lists page last night, clicked Save As Draft for dinner, and came back to find my page COMPLETELY backtracked several weeks! All the pictures I had uploaded, gone; four or five books set back; 4 recipes missing; what a disaster! I still don't know what happened, either...I've got it fixed as best as I can remember, but that leaves no explanation for what just happened...