Holiday Highlights
-My brother's cats (all six of them) are cute. Okay, the kittens are cuter than the grumpy looking father cat. I liked him better when his fur was trimmed, and he looked like Chester McArthur. Sorry, Mike, they're cute, but I'm still not taking one.
-My baby cousins were also cute. Bridget is eight months old, and much like the cats, her favorite part of Christmas was the wrapping paper and ribbons. She tried to eat all of them.
-Let's just say my mother shouldn't have had that second glass of wine.
-Going to see The Station Agent. I fell in love with Joe. He was just too funny.
-60th birthday parties are fun. Especially when you get both your uncles to wear embarassing homemade T-shirts and children's party hats.

Gramma Page's Quotes of the Week
-"Anne's lost some weight, Mary. She looks very nice now. She used to be heavy."
-"Oh, Anne's not your weird child. She's really quite normal. Mike's that one that's a bit ... eccentric. Anne's very down-to-earth."

It's like being back at Vox
I was at work until 11:30 last night because we were closing an issue. Usually we just put off closing until the next day, but most everyone was taking the rest of the week off, so we were closing no matter what. My boss was there until 2:30. Sucks to be her.

Leaving Times Square to the tourists
I plan to ring the new year in at my local Irish pub. Perhaps I can find a nice bloke to kiss at midnight.

Why not smile?
The best part of Mona Lisa Smile is the Tori Amos cameo. She sings two songs at a wedding reception. She was pretty pointy, though. I wanted to give her a cookie.

It's like I'm 2
Saturday I had chocolate cake for dinner. I blame my roommate's parents. It was their cake.

Windfall
The big bosses might be too cheap to give us holiday bonuses, but I've gotten the following gifts from people in charge of me who know who I am.
-a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card
-a nice bottle of French wine

Have you ever ...
gone through a period when everyone you meet has the same name? In roughly the past month and a half, I've meet four boys named Matt. Well, one of them is technically Matty, but that's the name of my editor's pet turtle, which weirds me out so I don't think I could call him that.

P.S.
Merry Christmas! I'm off to Poughkeepsie, Boston and New Hampshire to see all sorts of family. Hope you all have a happy holiday in your respective states.

I know it's the wrong holiday, but I'm thankful for ...
-old friends who are fabulous even if they're too bloody far away
-new friends and big city adventres

Free = Good
Most of our staff went out for drinks last night to send our departing sales guy off in style. Our publisher kept buying us all drinks. We need to take him along more often.

Bad idea
Shopping at Macy's the Saturday before Christmas.

Nor'easter: Take Two
It's snowing again. That is so last weekend. The novelty has worn off, and this time I just didn't feel like leaving the apartment. So I stayed in and took a nap and started making Christmas candy.

Bastards
I tried to go watch the Mizzou game at a sports bar yesterday. They had the KU game on instead.

Unexpected
I had an excellent weekend.

Christmas in the air
So I think I've finally caught a little bit of the holiday spirit. I went to my first corporate holiday party on Monday. There was a yummy buffet and an open bar, and I met my goal of not making a fool out of myself. I did dance one dance but only because my jolly Irish publisher dragged me and my boss out there. Your superiors cannot mock you if they are dancing with you.

When I came home, my roommate had put up a Christmas tree. As you might imagine, it is very small. It sits on an end table and has only a handful of ornaments and candy canes, but it's still a tree. And my first real tree at that. (My family always had an artifical tree.)

On Tuesday I got invited to the Christmas party my local Irish pub holds for its regulars. I've only been there three times (because one of my friends really digs the Irish bartenders), but I guess that makes me a regular. It's a really charming place, and I'm not a girl to say no to an open bar (with Magners on tap!) and a free buffet.

Oh, and I might be going ice skating at Rockefeller Center this weekend.

Mr. Darcy he ain't
I saw Girl with a Pearl Earring on Wednesday night. Colin Firth has disturbingly long hair and is sort of creepy, at least at the beginning.

Ridiculous
Next week I will be moving cubes for the second time in four months. Way to plan ahead kids.

Respect
I guess I respect the nor'easter a little more. It didn't stop snowing until late last night. We got about a foot. The snow looked pretty on the quieter streets like mine where it wasn't reduced to slush quite so quickly.

Yesterday afternoon the snow even made me feel festive. It was snowing just enough to be sort of poetic, and I was walking back from the post office with a Christmas package (hooray!). As I walked past an apartment building, a little girl about 5 or 6 years old and wearing a big pink hat started to throw a snowball at me. It was too cute. I pretended to look scared. It was even cuter when the snowball stuck to her mitten instead of flying in my direction. The walk just made me want to go home and listen to Christmas music. Too bad I don't own any.

But not too much respect
The blizzard didn't keep me inside my apartment, though. I want out Friday and Saturday night. Snow, schmo, it is the weekend after all. Last night I saw a musical about the invention of the priniting press (sort of), Guttenberg! The Musical! So funny. If you weren't all so far away, I'd tell you to go see it.

It's snowing. It's snowing. God, I hate this weather ...
Apparently, I am in the middle of what the kids (and by the kids I mean melodramatic TV weathermen) call a nor'easter.

"There's a monster nor'easter headed our way. When it will hit and how you should prepare."

What does that mean? Turns out, it means snow. It started snowing at about 11 this morning, which was actually quite pretty if you could actually see a window. People started freaking out. "It's going to be a white out." "It's already snowed a foot in D.C. Leaving work, I was a bit disappointed. The snow didn't live up to all the hype. There's only two inches or so, and it's all slush. Ugly, gray slush. That's not festive.

On the way home, I saw a few "New York in snow" sites. When the subway train pulled up to the platform at Union Square, there was still snow on top. It had been underground since somewhere in Brooklyn. Of course, there was a small rainstorm down the sides of the cars as it melted. That made getting inside really fun. Then on my long walk home (I'm quite proud I didn't wimp out and take the bus.) I saw a lot of people using umbrellas. A street vendor/random man on the sidewalk even tried to sell me an umbrella. In the snow? Crazy New Yorkers.

But it's still snowing, so maybe I'll learn to respect the nor'easter by the end of the weekend.

All 14-hour drives ...
should have turkey, sweet potatoes, kugelis and three kinds of dessert at the end.

On the road again
Friday I drove for the first time in seven months. I was sort of afraid I'd forgotten how. But getting behind the wheel in Big Mama, I felt like I'd never stopped. The only difference was that I usually wouldn't have been that excited about a trip to the post office.

I also got to drive (gasp) my brother's car through most of Ohio and part of Pennsylvania. The novelty still hadn't worn off.

Flashback
I went out with my friend Tanveer on Friday night. We ended up going to Cheddar's for dessert (mmm ... warm chocolate chip cookie sundae). The dining room was closed so we got a table in the bar. After we sat down, I noticed my junior high crush at the bar. Awkward. But funny. Then I noticed that one of the girls with him graduated with me, too. And more kept showing up. Only two more girls and another guy, but I was afraid they'd just keep coming. I was not ready for a high school reunion. Lucky for me, they all left pretty quickly, so I avoided the awkward we-really-have-nothing-to-say-to-each-other conversations.

A magazine that's not afraid to use the F-word
Feminism, that is.

Old school
I'm taping songs off the radio while I type this.