Mental Wanderings

Hope all of you had a great holiday! I will have a post about the holiday later today, this is the "non-holiday" post.

This might qualify as holiday-related, but today is the first day that really feels like winter, this morning was very cold, but not because it was raining or windy, just because it was cold. I realized that I have come to expect a certain kind of weather at certain times of the year. Falling leaves, falling tempertures, bright colors=Halloween. Jackets, hats, and gloves are required for Thanksgiving, and Christmas means snow, bare trees, ice. Some of the grass/landscaping on the side of the road is covered with frost, which is the first such winter phenomona I have seen this year.

I have a project for all of you readers. (However many of you there are) What was the most recently written Christmas song? Bonus project, top 5 Christmas songs, including the artist.


When you are driving (or riding) down the road, do you look at other people in other cars? Over the last week I have seen some intresting things in cars, and wished that I could see the events leading up to whatever it was that I saw. 1. Sitting at a stoplight, I looked at the car next to us, and the passenger, was a Caucasian female, between 70 and 80 years old. She was wearing a cowboy hat, made from red velvet, with white feather trim on the brim. This hat was so huge, and so showy, I couldn't belive it. 2. We parked in a parking spot, and as I was getting out, I noticed a man in the passenger seat, sleeping. Then I looked in the back seat, and saw what I presume was the man's daughter, dancing and singing to whatever she was listening to on her Ipod. 3. This is not a spefific event, but something that happens a lot. People talking in their car, moving their hands around quite empahticly. My favorite varitations on this theme are the people who are by themselves talking, I guess, on the phone, or the people who are arguing with someone else in the car. Hilarious!

The Nutcracker was a smashing sucess, I got huge laughs in my "solo". My character has a family of "Barbies", and I was supposed to communicate a sense of being overwhelmed, which wasn't too hard, because my "family" was a bit overwhelming. The men in the audience laughed, and I didn't hear the women doing much of anything.  I also got to help with backstage work, which was great.

This post has been broken up into two parts, one on the bus to Monterey this morning, and this one, at home. 30 minutes ago I finished a run on our local bike/hike trail, this was my first intentional excercise in 3 months.  Now Mom, Dad, Alex, and myself are watching Doctor Zhivago and I guess that a 3 hour movie shouldn't be judged from the first 34 minutes.

The MBA was fun, another high-volume, high-postitive interaction day. I was awarded a "Sand Dollar" which is good for one meal at the Portola Cafe, and is awarded when a volunteer is comendded by a guest.

I sent out my Liberia letters to everyone in my family's address book, now I need to make a list of those not in our address book. I will have updates as things progress, and fundraising totals.

In 5 minutes I will begin my Christmas post, so tune in!