Ordinary Day

I’ve got to say, two weeks of just hanging out at home has been one of the nicest vacations I’ve had for a while. It hasn’t been fancy or exciting or expensive, but it sure has been relaxing. The last few times I’ve had this much time at home have been surgery recovery–and by comparison, this has been more like the Longest Weekend Ever. All things considered, an excellent way to round out 2010.

In brief, here’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks:

• Saw and enjoyed both Tron: Legacy and Tangled. Both were quite pretty, and while T: L had less plot than one might have liked, it actually had more plot and emotional weight to it than the first one did. And I say this as a fan of the first one, which I rewatched during this downtime, too! As for Tangled, I liked it more than I expected it would, given my prior fear that it’d screw up my favorite fairy tale. It was Disney by the numbers, but then, Disney does do awfully catchy numbers.
• Did Longest Night with solarbird, in which we did what seems to be becoming my yearly tradition of rewatching The Lord of the Rings. We are sure you’ve noticed by now that the sun did, in fact, come back up.
• Speaking of Solstice, and Christmas by extension, I didn’t really want much loot this year thanks to having gotten the Awesome Guitar of Awesomeness. But a few lovely bits of loot were had nonetheless! Most notably, Dara gave me a really clever little capo that lets you capo individual strings and therefore simulate different tunings. I also got Peter Jackson’s King Kong on Blu-Ray from mamishka, Matt Smith’s just-concluded series of Doctor Who from spazzkat, a B&N ebook card from jennygriffee, a lovely hardbound copy of a Norwegian graphic novel from ravyngyngvar, and the obligatory pile of stocking stuffer candy.
• The Thursday before Christmas, Dara and I went downtown and spent a lovely afternoon at Ummelina, the spa on 4th. We did their two-person Pacific Rim package, and mmmm relaxing. This was redeeming the gift card I got Dara back in April for her birthday, since we’d decided that “while I am on vacation” was an excellent time to do so. After the spa, I did a lightning-quick raid on the marketboys, catching them JUST as they were closing up shop and surprising them by my arrival. They looked pleased to see me! Or at least pleased to sell me literally last-minute raspberries. ;)
• Christmas Day itself was fairly quiet. Dara and I went back downtown for the aforementioned viewing of Tangled, and afterwards had Chinese at a place downtown we hadn’t tried before. We didn’t care for the place much, but they were awfully overworked that night so we couldn’t quite hold it against them. And the food, while mediocre, was revived by Dara later for two more meals’ worth of nomming. So it was a win in the end.
• Have been doing a lot of trying to fill out all the achievements on Plants Vs. Zombies, as well as trying to play through the new levels in Angry Birds. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
• The high point of Christmas Day was definitely the Doctor Who Christmas Special, and big kudos to BBC America for having actually broadcast it in a timely fashion and uncut, as I previously posted!
• Also as previously posted, Dara and I had an almost impromptu totally blottoed viewing of “Spock’s Brain”!
• Also watched a lot of MST3K as I was seriously in the mood. Bought one of the DVD box sets we hadn’t owned before and watched all of those, as well as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (PERFECT followup to “Spock’s Brain”) and Hercules Against the Moon Men via YouTube, streamed over the Blu-Ray player. (Which worked amazingly well, I might add, and way better than playing those same videos over any of the computers in the house would have done. Even given that it’s on the exact same network!)
• Some light reading was done, and way less writing or editing than should have been (read: none to speak of).
• Caught a cold, which was NOT so fun. But really, it didn’t change much of what I was doing anyway, except while I was shaking it off, I was doing the same things with added blankets, Nyquil, and sneezing. George was very, very happy to occupy my lap the whole time regardless.
• And last night, we finished off the year with a lovely visit from Jenny as well as llachglin, kathrynt, and their children, for consumption of homemade pizza, some more boozahol and snacks, and playing of Rock Band 3. Jenny stayed overnight with us so she wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to Issaquah with a bunch of drunk New Year’s Eve partiers out on icy roads, and we got up to have tasty breakfast cooked by Paul. A great way to finish off the old year, and start a new one, indeed.

So yeah. Feeling ready and rested if not tanned, and rather looking forward to getting back into the swing of normal things on Monday. Bring it on, 2011!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I didn't get to do this last year, so it was quite satisfying to be able to observe Longest Night this year. solarbird, risu, and I got into our stockings and opened a present or two, though we're saving the rest for when spazzkat gets back from Virginia. For now, though: big shoutout of thanks to lyonesse for the awesome, awesome Elvis pub glasses she gave me (they have reproductions of Elvis movie posters on the side), and to mamishka for a DVD set of the last several episodes of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, which I'm anxious to watch all the way through thanks to my days as a Battle of the Planets fangirl when I was a kid. Hee.

After gifts, we were joined by technoshaman for the duration of the evening, as well as visited briefly by former tenant Danny and a pal of his.

We had planned to spend most of the night installing new RAM in newmoon so that we could install the Livejournal code base on it--all part of the master plan of making our own journaling site. (We're not bailing off LJ yet, but we'd like to have our own site as a backup.) But Dara discovered that the RAM she'd purchased is not the correct stuff for newmoon, which torched that entire idea.

So instead, at least as long as Danny and Ryan were visiting, a bit of Guitar Hero happened and a lot of conversation. We got in an episode of Babylon 5 as well--the season 3 one where the station secedes from Earth Alliance. I had quite forgotten how intense and cool that episode was. I'll have to make an effort to go back and re-watch all the B5 one of these days.

Then Dara played several of her flute pieces for Glenn and nudged me to get out the guitar. I was getting quite sleepy by this time; it was after midnight at that point. So I had to break out the big guns--the Great Big DVD. ;)

Part of this was of course the desire to introduce Glenn to GBS, since he hasn't seen them perform yet. Part of it was however that playing my guitar along with live GBS is an excellent way to stay awake! After the entire Great Big DVD concert and certain selections off Courage & Patience & Grit, I had well and thoroughly hit my second wind. And much to my satisfaction, Glenn expressed his approval of the earth-rumbling chord my B'ys put out at the end of "General Taylor".

After that Dara noodled around on the little mandolin a bit, but both her hands and mine were starting to hurt, so we had to put the instruments aside. We shifted over to watching Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill, which is always giggleworthy. And we finished up with watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which carried us around to 7:55am and sunrise.

Dara and I did our circuit of the house to visit all the windows with our candles, and after thanking Glenn for joining us, we fell relievedly into bed. And got up, to my general surprise, around 1pm--earlier than I'd expected! We've been fairly limp with sleepiness for the duration of the afternoon, but it's been good to just hang out and do computer work, and watch old episodes of MST3K too.

Happy Solstice, all! And happy holiday weekend, rolling clear on over into Tuesday. To those of you who are traveling to visit friends and loved ones, safe journeys to you all!