Matt sends this link: 2005 Game Designer of the Year. He's winning! Aieeee! :)

Still feeling sick :( Golf balls in throat.

Cherubs call from the living room. I must get up more energy and go entertain them. We are having a low key night of cheeeeeeese fondue, popcorn, nyquil and a movie.

Happy new year, everyone! May 2006 be everything you wished for and then some!

Phil arrived in one piece (he's still asleep at the moment) yesterday and so our holiday began. I suppose we celebrated Boxing Day this year instead of Xmas :)

As I was slaving away over a hot stove, Matt happened to message me, so I invited him to come to dinner. The boys wanted to meet him and there was an entire turkey to eat, so I was reasonably sure we wouldn't run out of food.

By the time Matt left, I had been reduced to a gibbering, drooling and exhausted scrap of humanity. They tripled-teamed me.

The cherubs like Matt. What a surprise. :)

Happy holiday week!

Thank you, Broos, for having me over for Xmas Eve :) Dinner for carnivores was perfect! And both of our teams won, so that was cool too.

We're celebrating Christmas today, since Phil doesn't arrive until this afternoon. Hopefully by then, my throat will stop feeling miserable :/

It's rather odd having a "grown up" son. Chris spent most of the weekend with his girlfriend Naomi (which was fine with me since I woke up yesterday absolutely feeling under the weather). They were here for the afternoon and Naomi and I opened our gifts to each other. The rest of the presents will wait for Phil :)

Chris and I played Scrabble. About half-way through the game he said, "I hadn't thought I'd mind so much, but I don't like losing." :/ I wasn't trying to beat the snot out of him. Thank goodness I don't remember all those two- and three-letter words I used to have memorized, or he would have packed up all the unopened presents and returned them to the store.

Sometimes you know a person for a short time and when they're moving on with their lives, it's surprising to realize how much you're gonna miss them!

Fannie and Shawn are taking new jobs at our Austin studio, so tomorrow is Fannie's last day in the office. Today Fannie walked around introducing John's new exec assistant to us and as she was talking with us, I started tearing up. I'm really going to miss her...she's funny, silly, smart and just so efficient at getting stuff done.

Also today, I struggled with getting something to work. It worked, but I wanted to add a bell and a couple of whistles. After failing miserably on my own, I asked Matt to come look. As usual, we bickered and when he left, he hollered something snide over his shoulder. I gave him my traditional farewell ("Gods...I hate you, Matt!!") and suddenly the scripty-mechanics guys (with whom I share an office) burst out laughing. Usually they just ignore us, so today we must have been particularly inflammatory. :)

Then again, they might have been eavesdropping on purpose, since in yesterday's episode, Matt allegedly found a fly in his peppermint mocha and bit into it...then brought it to show me. :/

Samantha Brown is neat. She sounds like the kind of person I'd like to travel around with :) She's amusing, quirky and can be silly. Her current series is Passport to Europe and it's very entertaining!

Last Friday, Kevin, Sean, Broos and I all wore (per prior plan) our kilts to the office. Later on at game night, I mentioned that the pockets in my utilikilt are elbow-deep. That somehow morphed into a discussion about being able to do naughty things beneath the cover of the kilt (ahem) because the pockets are so incredibly cavernous. After suggestively demonstrating the pocket depth and making a few risque comments, I realized that Kevin was sitting on the couch amonsgt the other women (we were laughing our makeup off by this point). It was hilarious when I thought my audience was only women (now you know why we were all laughing so hard, Broos!), but it was kind of awkward with a guy listening...and watching.

I have to wonder if Kevin's sorry that he didn't buy the same model kilt that I have, though :)

Sometimes you want to make sure TiVo isn't missing something you'd like to see, so you use the Search by Title function and scroll down. Not too often, because it's time consuming, but just every so often.

Amazingly, there are pages of "To Be Announced" on a variety of channels. I'm tempted to record one, just to see what I get! It's kind of like playing Fish at a carnival...you're never quite sure what the person behind the sheet will attach to the end of your fishing pole, but it's got to be something interesting, right? :)

You do have to check now and then to make sure you won't miss a special program that TiVo won't be smart enough to catch, such as the time it completely missed the Good Eats Thanksgiving show because the name was different ("Romancing the Bird" instead of "Good Eats").

Although, that might be what set the TiVo off to record movies from the Lifetime channel...keying off the word "romancing." Hmm. Guess we'll see what we get!

I'm a Democrat. Or at least a not-Republican. :) Generally speaking, though, I'm kind of non-political. There's things that I hate that have no relation to any political affiliation (heh...though I just typed 'affliction' which might be a Freudian slip) and things that I blame squarely on one side or the other.

Dubya certainly gets my knickers in a bundle. This month's calendar from USAA had a quote from him and I immediately took scissors to the page and excised it so I wouldn't have to see his uplifting take on combat. Especially since he's never actually been in danger any himself.

Ever since CNN started their coverage of the war, I've read through their casualties page. Fortunately for me, I don't know anyone personally who shows up on these lists. What I like about it is that they include a small snapshot of the person; it brings a very human face to the numbers of men and women who've lost their lives since this whole sorry episode began. So I'm lucky because I don't know anyone on these pages, but there's families out there who do know, very personally, some of these people.

For those who prefer their casualties without names and faces, however, there's always the coalition fatalities chart. If I worked at the White House, I think I'd wander over to Dubya's office whenever he stepped out and change his home page to one of these.

Friday I felt like crap. Even though I wanted to blame being sick on Matt, who's been out sick, he's supposedly not catchy. Whatever. I'm sure it's somehow his fault.

Anyway, I went home early from work and took a very long benadryl-induced nap. When I woke up Saturday, I still felt a bit blech, so I spent the day curled up in bed so that I could be well enough to go to our company party.

This year our party was at the science center. Chris came with me and enjoyed meeting some of the folks I work with. We'd never been to this museum before and had a great time exploring the different exhibits. There was even a karaoke set up in one of the rooms, where I discovered that SimSlayer Joe has a great voice :) Before we left, we watched Santa v. the Snowmen in the IMAX theater. It was a lot more fun than last year's party.

This afternoon, our boss asked if one of us designery folks wanted to go give a chat at the local art institute with our art director. Since I have no life, I volunteered...plus I realized I'd be near the very same trolley stop that I'm supposed to catch a trolley on tomorrow morning and have never seen. Going to this class thing, I'd be able to drive by the trolley line and get a visual fix on it.

Win-win!

The chatting thing went well. The instructor and I were the only females in the room, so we were instantly bonding. I never did find the trolley parking lot, though. :/ After driving around aimlessly, I returned home to check the directions on the internet. Come to find out there are only 44 stalls at the Fashion Valley trolley stop. That hardly seems enough. But two minutes down the road, as it were, there are over 500 at the Old Town stop. I figure I can make it that far for the sake of more chances to park.

Everyone keeps going on and on about how hard it is to find parking downtown San Diego. It can't possibly be any more difficult than finding a stall in downtown Seattle. Still, I don't know that I want to pay downtown prices to park my car so the trolley will (hopefully) do. Unless I chicken out at the last moment and drive the rest of the way. We shall see!

I haven't watched football since Steve Largent retired. This is the first year since then that the Seahawks have actually been doing really well, so I'm wearing my "throwback" jersey and watching Monday Night Football. Guess that makes me a fair weather fan :)

The Seahawks are currently kicking the Eagles' ass! The poor Eagles are being booed off the field by their hometown fans. :/ Now that I do hate; if the team's not doing well, they shouldn't be booed. Just stop watching them for 20 years!

Steve Largent was the hottie of my football fandom those long years past. Not only cute, he was a family man and all-around nice guy. Unfortunately, he also turned out to be Republican, but every man has his flaw. ;)

Back when I worked the phones for Blue Shield in Seattle, I had a last name that was pretty but hard to spell. My boss suggested I come up with an easier name to use and so was born Mrs. Largent.

Mrs. Largent got many kudos for being kind and helpful to the callers; I think that a lot of them were pre-disposed to like me since Steve was such a prominent personality. It was a lot of fun when the caller would pause after Mrs. Largent introduced herself and asked what help the caller needed. "You're...not..." they would often stammer and I'd respond brightly, "No relation." One caller said, "Well, you're nice enough to be married to him." Aww! :)

I still have some of the letters folks sent in thanking Mrs. Largent for her help. For years afterward, a lot of my co-workers would call me that, too, which was always good for a laugh when a new employee would pause and drop their jaw. I guess that twisted sense of humor of mine goes back a lot farther than I thought!

The cookies this year are shortbread, mainly as I have two shortbread pans this year after lusting after them for ages. One I got when Kevin, Candyce and I went to the Scottish festival last January. The other I bought not long afterwards here in San Diego.

If you, like Chris, taste shortbread and say, "Oh. I forgot I'm not a 'shortbread person,'" then you should let me know now...for only shortbread and variations thereof are being baked for Christmas this year. Should you have the same lack of taste as my cherub, you'll get a card.

:)

I usually don't go to movies, though there are any number of them I want to see. I thought I'd give Netflix a go to see whether it would be worthwhile.

The first movie I borrowed as Life is Beautiful, so that Chris and I could watch it in Italian. Alas, other than the occasional cry of "Zio (uncle)!" we weren't able to pick enough out to leave off the subtitles. :)

Next I got Little Voice, and it was well worth the wait. If any of y'all have never seen it yet, consider it very highly recommended!

Fortunately for me, a lot of the movies I want to see were released some time ago, so everything in my queue is available now. Because I'm cheap, I'm on the one movie at a time plan, which seems to work out just fine. Even when the DVD is here, it's not like I rush over to view it.

Speaking of rushing over to view something, please take a moment to consider some of the festive holiday recipes that can be found in old cook books. I may have to Hampshire something to take to game night sometime soon!

The vet told me that Mittens is "a little powerhouse" and is well on the way to full recovery! We just need to keep an eye on him, make sure he's continuing to eat and drink and he should be fine.

Thank goodness. Thank all y'all for praying and thinking good thinks about him.

Mittens has gained a half pound since his last vet appointment. Yay! And he's tired of premium (if freely sampled) cat food and wants Meow Mix! YAY! :)

Waiting to get the results of his lab work. If all is well, I can quit worrying about trying to drip fluids into him (especially since the last time, he wriggled so successfully that I poked myself with the needle...definitely can see why he hates this procedure).

Now all I want for Christmas is a snazzy little fabric cat carrier. :) All these recent treks to the vet have shredded the cardboard one we got with Melody.