Yuletide fic is done and uploaded! Now I can shower, and eat lunch, and go to the bank.

Haven't said much lately as have been sick and exhausted, and doing family stuff the rest of the time. Am sad that I didn't manage to find another copy of The Dark is Rising to read for Christmas, and left mine at home. Perhaps I'll stop by a bookshop today and see.

So, work got a little hectic, but it looks like things are settling down a little bit. As many of you know, Eric and I end up celebrating Christmas 3 times every year - once with my mother, once with his family, and once with just the two of us. This year, "real" Christmas is with Ma, so we'll be taking the train down to Portland on Thursday night and staying the weekend. I'm looking forward to it a lot - I've really enjoyed taking the train down to Portland since I started doing that (when I started temping at Amazon), and I'm looking forward to sharing that with Eric.

We did Christmas with Eric's family yesterday at his brother Jared's new house - it's absolutely BEAUTIFUL and freakin' huge. I covet their kitchen so much - it's huge, and there are two ovens and two sinks, and so many counters and cabinets and zomg want. Their kids were both a little under the weather with colds, but they did really well with all the strange people in the house. We ended up playing a few games - Cloud Nine, which we gave Jared a few years back after we played it at Thanksgiving, and Snorta (another gift from us), which was WAY more fun than I expected it to be. I had a lot more fun in general than I had expected, considering there was some drama leading up to the big day.

Eric and I did our personal Christmas last weekend, and went out for both lunch and dinner (which is not common for us). Lunch was the important one, though, because the Original Roadhouse Grill by our house was having a fundraiser for the families of the Lakewood police officers who were killed last month. The Everett Police were out in force, taking donations and thanking everyone who came in. The food was great, and it was nice to think it was doing something useful.

So far, Giftmas has been quite successful. I gave Eric a copy of Amber Diceless, which, it turns out, was something that he REALLY REALLY wanted and had been looking for for, well, ever. I just grabbed something off his wishlist that I vaguely remembered him mentioning before, so, well, go team me! I also gave him a bacon cookbook, which went over about as well as anything involving bacon does for Eric (hint: he loves him the bacon). We also did well for the family, especially the little ones, as we got them a copy of The Polar Express book, and Ethan loves the movie very much. He can go through the book and tell the story, and seemed very happy to have it.

As for me, Eric's parents gave me (well, us) two new 7' bookcases from Ikea (!!!), which need to be transported to our house (and two dead bookcases need to be transported to the dump). Eric also won big-time by getting me the Big Damn Heroes sourcebook for the Serenity RPG, a Mutts compilation, and, the best, a laptop desk. The main problem with using my laptop on the couch (where I usually use it) is that Ramses really likes to curl up in my lap, and there just isn't room for both him and my computer. With the desk, there's plenty of room for the kitty, and I've actually noticed that my back doesn't bother me so much. It's been kitty-tested and kitty-approved thus far, which means that it works well. He did really well.

Really, it's been a good weekend. Today's been mellow, with Gahan coming over for a little bit this afternoon, and a frew necessities taken care of. It's like the calm before the storm of Christmas and New Year's. I hope everyone else is doing well, too - I know my presence online has been pretty sparse lately, but I'm hoping to work on that.

Me in the Holiday Love Meme. Because I like love! Alas, I'm a limited number of hours from a 13+ hour plane journey, so I might not end up getting to leave comments myself, in which case I would like to preface by saying that I think all of you, dear friends list, are made of awesome. Honestly, I wouldn't keep reading your LJs and keeping track of your doings if I didn't think you're a terrific bunch of people who I am fortunate and priveleged to have in my life. So go forth and feel appreciated. :)

I've been in London all weekend, before I fly out to go home for Christmas on Tuesday. The flight part I am not looking forward to AT ALL, but seeing everyone again will be nice. I'm pretty sure Lily won't forgive me for leaving and this makes me pretty sad, but will manage. Saturday night I met up with gramarye1971, and we went to the Christmas carols concert at St. Martins in the Fields. The music was lovely, the singing was great fun, and she understood perfectly when I mentioned that all boy treble soloists are Will Stanton in my head.

Yesterday was a bit more chill, as there was less travelling. I went to Lush in Covent Garden to buy lovely things, then headed north for the merlin_london meetup. I only knew one person (the_reader, who is lovely and funny in person), but met a lot of other wonderful people, and had some cakes and played Pass the Parcel and fun was had by all. Came back to the hostel to cook dinner and relax for a while online, because there is reasonably reliable wifi here (cue getting cut off, i suppose, by typing that) and it's really a pretty comfortable place to hang out. On the way back, however, I lost my balance and took a spectacular faceplant in the middle of the street, right in front of a bus. (It was stopped, fortunately. But full of people.) I am sure it looked hilarious, because that sort of thing usually does. Any injuries to my pride were fortunately obscured by the real physical ramifications--I skinned my knee in a manner suiting a child just setting out on bike-riding, ripped my jeans, and slightly twisted both ankles and my bad knee.

Today I paid a visit to the Dickens Museum, because I thought if one is going to do that, Christmas is surely the time. It's quite interesting but a lot of things were under construction/being rearranged. Then I marched over to the British Museum, lured by the promise of a glimpse of a few pieces of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard. There are only about a dozen piece out--inclusive of fragments that really add up to one thing--but what there is to see is absolutely gorgeous--garnet-inlaid sword mounts, mostly, and a bit of a helmet. Really cool.

My dad does not like the British Museum much--he loves history, but finds collections of ancient people's spare change and rubbish a bit boring (plus, you know, most of it is essentially the loot of grave-robbers). I, on the other hand, love the place irrationally and adoringly, and will happily just wander about for hours, seeing new things and revisiting old ones. What both fascinates and frustrates me about it is how it insists on reminding me how there is SO MUCH STUFF I don't know. My mom and I talked about this last time we went, about how there are whole civlisations that we had never heard of, what with their not having been covered by the standard public school curriculum. And that's not so bad--there's no way really you can cram the entire span of human history into 12 years of basic education--but well, there's a lot of stuff we don't know about. Learning stuff is really a lifelong endeavour.

Last night in the hostel tonight, and then off to the airport tomorrow. I hate flying SO MUCH; it's the one drawback to my nomadic nature. I'm not looking forward to the jet lag either, but I am looking forward to distributing my suitcase of treasures, seeing the people (and kitties) that I love, and eating a lot of food. The next post will undoubtedly be from the Pacific Northwest again...provided the horrible weather they've been having does not keep my plane from being able to land.