The Holidays

The holidays here were a pretty cool affair all around. Christmas Eve night, D and I got together at his parent's house with two of his brothers for massive amounts of food. There was homemade spinach dip, sausage balls (which we made), chicken salad, potato salad, crescent rolls, various crackers and other breads, fruit salad, and a chocolate cheese ball (think chocolate cheesecake shaped into a ball, rolled in tiny pieces of nut, with dark chocolate chips in it).

Obviously, I ate WAY too much.

Then Christmas morning, people got together again for a breakfast of biscuits and gravy, but D and I hadn't slept well so we skipped that part.

Later, everyone showed up for even more food and presents opening. We had chicken casserole, broccoli cheese casserole, ham, rolls, potato salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green beans, and glazed carrots (from my mom's Carrots Supreme recipe). Most people liked the carrots well enough, but I think it was quite different from anything they'd ever had. One of D's brother really liked them, but there were still quite a bit left over so I'm happy. I make those a meal in and of themselves. :-)

Again...I ate WAY too much. :-)

After food was stockings for the adults and presents for the kids. I got three new nail polishes, some Lindor chocolate truffles (yummy!), a new nail file, some baggy clips, a coupon holder, and some new, very pretty disposable razors.

D got one of those long clicky lighters, some beef jerky, some sharpies, and a couple other things I'm not remembering.

He and I were responsible for putting together his mom's stocking, which was oh so much fun. We got her some lotions, hand sanitizer bottles, a bag each of honey roasted almonds, cashews and a cheddar sesame trail mix, and then the day before I had made a batch of peppermint bark so we gave her two ziploc baggies full of that.

Later on in the evening, while everyone was getting ready to disperse, I ended up going back inside. D's mom had made (and don't ask me why they're called this...) diapers. They're basically ground beef and cream cheese wrapped with a kind of crescent roll-type bread and baked in the oven. Not too keen on the name, but they are oh so delish! I also got loaded down with tons of leftovers.

In other, but similar news... D and I kind of had our own Christmas a bit early. I want to say it was maybe Monday or Tuesday that we ended up picking up a check from one of his clients. He took me to Burlington Coat Factory and got me this incredibly plush houserobe (bathrobe for all you Yankees). It's dark blue and very thick and soft. I love it! Plus, we got it on sale at $20 marked down from $60. What was even cooler is that later that day, my present for him came in the mail. Being unemployed has its downsides, like not having any money to spend on anyone, but I found a way around that. I've been doing surveys for a couple different websites and one of the sites offers points for rewards. Those points can be spent at their site for different prizes from cds, books, and dvds to small appliances and kitchen gadgets. So, I used the points I had built up to get him The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy dvds. Unfortunately I didn't have enough to get the third one, but maybe it'll end up being an early birthday present or something.

Ciao y'all. Gotta go finish my coffee.

*sigh*

Well, I didn't hit 50,000 words by the Nov. 30th deadline. I did however get around 40,000. The story isn't finished, but I decided to take a few days off before continuing the writing.

The suck part is that I probably would've been able to get the 50,000 if not for other intrusions. I ended up taking a couple days off early on, but I had been ahead of my word count goal so it wasn't too big of a deal to catch up. But, then D and I got calls for three projects (one of which was a 3 hour round trip drive) that were all done in the space of about a week and a half. On top of that, close to the third week of November, my computer started acting all wonky; running really slow, internet not wanting to work right, email totally shut down, etc. All that pretty much kept me from writing more than a couple hundred words for five days straight. If I hadn't gotten up at 3am a couple mornings towards the end, I wouldn't have even gotten that 40,000 mark.

Oh well, there's always next year. And yes, I still am planning on finishing the story.