A Post.

Things I got for Christmas.

90,000 movies.
a couple gift cards to Plato's from Mikey.
one of the journals I wanted from Barnes and Noble.
a gift card to Borders (which was kind of lost in the move... I'm hoping I find it when we unpack).
Boggle!
amazing argyle socks.
some various cute ornamental type things.
a toy typewriter.
a REAL typewriter. (yes I'm serious, a gorgeous typewriter made in 1901. I'll post a picture when I can be bothered to go upstairs and take one.)
a pretty Christmas decoration my mom made.
a food storage starter kit.
some jewelry.
a cute gray hoodie.
some other stuff that I've forgotten at the moment, but it was all great.

Other good things about Christmas.

we got to call Daniel! he's such a cutie and it was really great to be able to talk to him.
we all wore ugly Christmas sweaters (which, by the way, were WAY more trouble than they were worth, but it was really fun once we finally got them all worked out).
my family went a little crazy with the gift-giving this year, and it was a lot of fun to be in on what everyone was getting everyone else and see everyone getting things that they really wanted.

I think that's all for now. I'll post some pictures later, and for now I'll leave you with this:

Christmas Music!

Well. The post I have prepared for you is not as organized as Drew's, which I'm sure many of you have seen. I've been organizing my Christmas music and adding to my collection tonight, and listening to it makes me really happy now that it's finally the Christmas season. So basically here are my favorite things to listen to at Christmas, in the form of a top ten list:

10. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
8. We Three Kings
7. Carol of the Bells
6. Coventry Carol
5. Ave Maria
4. Silent Night
3. Nutcracker Suite
2. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
1. O Holy Night (best versions--Amy Grant, Josh Groban, Celine Dion, and two unidentified guys who used to be labeled as Celine Dion on my computer but are clearly not.)

Now. As far as Christmas music goes, I am very picky, and I have a pretty low level of tolerance for cheese; as such, there are very few whole Christmas CDs that I would be willing to own in their entireties. However, Nathalie was listening to one yesterday by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that I really loved, and as soon as I find out the name of it I shall let you know.

The end.

Talk about a blog revival...

I think three posts in one day means I'm at least well on my way. :)

So. I was looking at Lindsey's blog and was inspired by her "looking forward" post. I too am looking forward to a lot of things right now, and so I think I will share them here.

Things to which I'm Looking Forward in the Near Future:

1. Muppet Christmas Carol
2. Roommate gift exchange
3. Lunch with Megan at Olive Garden
4. Picking up and loading the Uhaul truck one week from today
5. Seeing Kennedy and Mia in the Christmas program at school
6. Road trip to Texas!
7. Seeing my family
8. Christmas!
9. Giving people presents from the giant stack that we have sitting out in the hall
10. Hearing from Daniel when he gets his Christmas package (which is amazing) and talking to him on Christmas Day

Also, tomorrow is Mike's last day at work! Yay! Then he just has his finals and helping me pack, and on Friday we're out of here! I can't believe four months have gone by already! I'm going to miss a lot of things here so much, but thinking about living by my family makes it much easier. :)

I Married Jerry Seinfeld

Mike has lately developed the habit of perfectly imitating Jerry Seinfeld's yelling voice. You know, the one that Frank Caliendo imitates in those Dish Network commercials?

=

It's quite amusing. The end.

Curse that Disney Vault...

I just found out that Beauty and the Beast is finally going to be released from the vault again in fall 2010! Yes that's still almost two years away, which is very sad and annoying, but at least now I know! And if you think of it this way it's not so bad: It's only three releases away. Pinnochio is coming in the spring of 2009, then Snow White in the fall (which I will be buying), then Fantasia in the spring of 2010 (which I will also be buying) and then Beauty and the Beast! I'm so excited. It's pretty much my favorite movie ever, and I've been dying to buy it. Just thought I'd share. :) :)

Greece

So Athens is having a civil war outside Daniel's apartment.


No joke, I'm not kidding. We got his weekly email this morning and he told us all about it. Apparently some college students were protesting something and surrounded a cop car, pushing it and throwing rocks at the officers and stuff like that, and it ended up that one of the students got shot and died that night. So the missionaries were told to stay in their apartments and not leave, but Daniel's apartment looks right out over the street where apparently all the stuff happened that night, so they saw it all.


I won't go into all the details but basically there was a standoff in the street between the cops/military and the civilian mob (which included the college students, the local Communist group, and lots of random angry people). My dear brother, because he and his companion are not geniuses, got tear gassed because they didn't think to close their window and some of it got in.


Anyway, so they're lined up facing off against each other, cops are throwing tear gas, the civilians are throwing cement and rocks and breaking glass and lighting dumpsters on fire and blowing up a couple buildings, and Daniel and his companions are watching from their window. Eventually the cops pushed the crazy people back and things calmed down, so Daniel went out and took some pictures, which we'll see when he mails his memory card to us. However, more stuff is supposed to happen tonight (don't ask me how his mission president knows) so Daniel and his companions are moving to some other missionaries' apartment in a different area.


So. There you go. Most terrifying email we've gotten from him, and I hope it stays that way. I bet my mom's freaking out.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7771628.stm --a BBC news article about it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7770189.stm-- and some pictures.

Pop!

I finished three books today! Two of them were books I've been reading for a while and they just happened to come to a close at the same time, and one of them was The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which goes surprisingly fast! I read it in approximately 45 minutes. Anyway, finishing three books in one day is something I haven't done in quite some time, so I thought it worth mentioning. Particularly because my blog has been so boring lately.


Um... dinner tonight was fun. It was Nathalie's birthday so the rest of us cooked--I made my mom's Israeli salad, which is amazing and everyone loves it, Liz made a delicious cheesecake, and Rick made homemade burgers, egg rolls, and Thai curry something or other. Anyway, it was quite the mix of foods, and it was all delicious.


After dinner we played a new version of Cranium called Pop 5 or something... Someone in Mike's parents' ward gave it to us yesterday as a belated wedding gift and it turns out it's much more fun than regular Cranium. Everyone loves it so far, even people who don't usually like Cranium-type games, so that works out really well.


Anyway. So I kind of accidentally started reading The Sword of Shannara--and by that I mean that I needed a new audio book to listen to while I get ready and clean and stuff, and that was one of the only interesting ones we had immediate access to so I thought why not? So I guess I'm doing that now, which isn't what I'd planned on doing (I was going to wait a while before jumping into another big fantasy series, but it's okay, Mike says these books are pretty good stand-alones too, so I can stop in between if I need to). I'm also going to finally read my first Charles Dickens. Can you believe it? I own three or four of his books but I've never read one. So anyway, I'm starting with A Christmas Carol--pretty easy and seasonally appropriate, plus it will go well with the Muppet Christmas Carol party this weekend! Which, of course, I am very excited for.


So I think that's about all for now. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a revival for my blog, but I guess we'll see!

Once upon a time...

There was a really sucky night in which I didn't sleep at all.


So Mike went to sleep at 11:15. I kept reading until 11:40, when I was tired and decided I wanted to sleep. I lay awake until about 12:15, really frustrated because I wasn't remotely sleepy and the freaking cat's shadow outside the window was creeping me out. So I went to Walmart.


I shopped for a while, got a couple Christmas presents, but mostly just wandered around until about 1:30 when I started feeling tired. So I went home and got in bed. Still couldn't sleep. At 2:30 or so Mike woke up to go to the bathroom, and was very sorry for me when I told him what was going on. He fell back asleep within minutes, and after a while I got up.


I went out to the living room and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I'd just bought at Walmart, and worked on a few people's presents. (Also I ate some leftover rice I'd found in the fridge, because I was starving.) Then I watched Elf. When it was over, at 4:45, I decided to try sleeping again. I lay awake for a while, probably about 20 minutes, but finally I fell asleep on the couch.


Mike woke me up at 8:00 because his mom wanted to use the living room to exercise. Needless to say, I was not happy. First of all, she could have done all the exercising she wanted and I wouldn't have woken up. Second, it had taken me five and a half hours to fall asleep--and third, I knew that once I'd been woken up I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. It was true. I went into our room and tried, but I was wide awake.


So. My night sucked, and today I am very tired.


I can't take a nap though, because I don't want to risk the same thing happening tonight, and I think the only way to avoid it is to make sure I'm so exhausted I can't stay awake. Blah.


Let's see. In other news, I'm reading a Swedish crime novel, and it's really good. This isn't really a genre I've explored before, so it's a fun change. Also the guy who was murdered had only one credit card, an IKEA card. Is it silly that that made me happy? Well I don't care, cause it did.


I also bought The Tales of Beedle the Bard last night because I saw it at Walmart for $7 something, and I figured why not, J.K. Rowling has never disappointed me before. Haven't read it yet, but I'll let you know when I do.


I love How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The song about the Grinch is pretty much the best song ever written. Too bad the movie's like half an hour long but cost more than many brand new blockbuster movies... It was worth it though. Now I just have to buy the Muppet Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life and the core of my Christmas movie collection will be complete. (In case you're wondering, those three are the Christmas collection, which I started last night by buying How the Grinch Stole Christmas.) At some point I'll probably want to add White Christmas, but it's not essential.


We bought Gattaca at Big Lots yesterday for $3... We went there specifically to look at movies because we knew they had really cheap ones, but Gattaca was the only one we saw that was remotely worth buying. In fact, it, Hollywood Homicide, and Barbershop 2 were the only movies there that I'd even heard of. So. Not a big success, but at least we got Jude Law out of it.


Um... I can't think of anything else to write about.


Except here is a quote from Mike: "A man just offered me a rhino for my robot."


So. On that note... The end.

James Bond and Christmas

I love Christmas shopping. And I love wrapping presents. They make me irrationally happy.

In other news, we saw Quantum of Solace last night. It was good, but the first one was better. The opening chase scene wasn't nearly as cool, and I thought the fact that the movie included a car chase, a boat chase, and a plane chase was a little much. Also the credits were slutty and not anywhere near as cool as the ones from Casino Royale, with the cards and everything (I love those credits! They are so good). Anyway. Good movie, fun times.

That is all.