A belated Merry Christmas to everyone! We had fun going up to MN for the long weekend to celebrate with my in-laws. Now it's all about getting ready for Ohayocon in less than 2 weeks. After that, hopefully things will get less hectic as there won't be any more cons until ACEN in May. In January I should have time to give all my websites a once-over and finish up some projects that have been in-progress for... way too long. I'm finding myself spread too thin, so I'm going to have to make some decisions and will probably be shutting down and consolidating some sites in the future. But, decisions on that will be made later. For now, onto 2006 and Ohayocon!

Well, the holidays have once again snuck up on me. Last week was, of course, Thanksgiving. Just had a quiet dinner over at my parent's house. We also saw Elon's parents that weekend. At least I got to leave work pretty early on Friday.

Now, on to Christmas preparations. Started shopping, actually pretty well along with it. In a couple of weeks it will be a flurry of activity with cookie baking, present wrapping, and package shipping. But, for now, pretty calm.

Things have been pretty hectic with personal life issues. My maternal grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago. Not completely unexpected, but it wasn't an "any minute now" kind of situation either. It made for rather somber celebration last week.

Between everything going on, I'm way far behind in web stuff. And cosplay stuff. And housework. Just plugging away a little bit at a time...

Why is it that I always have lots of stuff to do, but rarely do it until the last minute? *sigh* Well, I've been working on the first pet Hogwarts scarf, I'm a little mor than half way through the first one. But, with 4 total, I'm sure I'll get them all done for our Christmas card design. So, maybe I'll have to cheat on some of them. :p

Speaking of Hogwarts.... HPatGoF comes out in just over a week. AND I may be able to go to the midnight showing on Thursday night for the first time ever! I've been planning to take off the 18th for Christmas shopping, and since the mall opens later than I have to be at work, that means I'm sleeping in on Friday. So, I can be out late. heh heh I guess I'll have to see about that, I don't know who would come with me, and I'm not sure I want to go alone.

I don't think I'll have version 7 of Bunny's Ambition done in time for the 6th anniversary at the end of the month. Way too much yet to do on that. I still haven't started coding it or anything. But I am working on rewriting all of the manga summaries, I'm into the Black Moon arc now. My almost-6-year-old writing was kinda crap. So, I'm making shiny new manga summaries my goal for the anni!

Between regular-life stuff and Reactor stuff, I'm going insane. Just a couple more weeks though... (My con task list is up on the cosplay blog) This is why I'm seriously cutting back on cosplay after this month. Besides a couple of easy costumes for Ohayocon (simple new costume and finishing up my lolita) I'm only allowing myself 1-2 new costumes for 2006. I have to spend some more time on life stuff and website stuff.

Knitting is going slowly, especially since I'm not able to spend much time on it now. But, I am starting to get a hang of it. Will be starting my first pet HP scarf this weekend.

I should be getting my iPod tonight. I've been wanting one for *forever* really. My lovely 20GB with color display will be handy. It will hold all my music, digital photos, and will be used as a portable storage device for my files.

Coming up this weekend: trip to Brookfield Zoo with our friends, and visiting my friend Christine who is in town this weekend for her 10 year reunion. (Mine shall be next year.)

It's been so busy and stressful at work, since it is once again Christmas season. Dratted retail-ness of my job. On the good side, it sure does make the days go by very quickly. And, it will be much better in the next couple of weeks. We're just past the worst of it now, and I'm not even working that much overtime anymore. I was just 15 minutes late getting out of there tonight.

In happier news, I'm looking forward to learning how to knit. Looking at books and websites just didn't do the trick for me. So, my friend Tara (who knit me my Harry Potter scarf) is going to teach me. We're going to Hobby Lobby on Friday to pick out needles and yarn to get started.

Just got back from our 2 week vacation last weekend. We visited my relatives in Phoenix and Elon's in San Diego. Quite a trip! I miss all the relaxing and reading and spending time together we had already. (-_-;)

Now I'm trying to get caught up with my websites. I still want to add up some new galleries to the Bad Cat site this week. Plus, I want to get going on my costumes for The Reactor. Hoping to start my Mew Berry props this weekend.

Other fun plans for the weekend include mini golf (weather permitting) and going out to see the movie March of the Penguins. And, skipping out on Elon's English Department end-of-the-summer picnic. :p As one of the rare non-teacher spouses in the group, the "teacher parties" as I call them are BOR-ING thankyouverymuch.

Now, it's dinner cookin' time.

A coworker shared this link: JobPredictor.com

I never knew I'd be an ideal Monkey Impressionist. I should really look into that, huh? XP