it's way too late to be this locked inside ourselves

Today was super fun--we had our neighbors, Ross and Lorena, as well as Katie and her dad over for dinner, an occurrence that is becoming something of a tradition. As I've mentioned before, Ross and Lorena are really awesome, interesting people; they were in one of the first waves of the Peace Corps back in the sixties (to Nigeria), and he is the Presbyterian minister while she leads the talented and gifted program at the jr. high/high school. And of course, any time that I can spend with Katie is good, although never enough, and her dad is entertaining as well, so a good time was apparently had by all. We made prime rib and crab legs...and the eight of us ate a ten-pound prime rib (that includes the bone, though, which we didn't eat) and five to eight pounds of crab legs (which includes the inedible shell, of course), as well as new potatoes, green beans, sourdough bread, salad greens, and my jam thumbprint cookies for dessert. Ah, everything was so tasty! We also had a bottle of zinfandel from the Valley of the Moon winery that I went to in Sonoma with Ritu and Maneesh--I really liked that wine, I had a bottle of it when I made the chorizo/garbanzo bean soup a couple of weeks ago, and so I brought another bottle of it home with me. I have a bottle of merlot that we didn't get around to drinking, so my parents can drink that sometime, but I insist on popping open the champagne I brought home before I leave, since it would be tragic to let it turn to vinegar. I may get the chance tomorrow, since Aunt Becky is coming down to play games (and eat more food, no doubt...I guess we're making stew or something...as my mother said, it would be a tragedy if I couldn't cook, since that's all my family does).

In forty-eight hours, I should be landing in the San Francisco airport. I tried to change my flight so that I would get in earlier, because I'm currently scheduled to land at something like 11:45pm, and I will have to pick up my luggage before I can go home, but Northwest wanted to charge me $800 to change my flight, which seemed ridiculous at best and robbery at worst. In some ways it's nice, because I don't have to be at the airport in Des Moines until 4:30 or 5, which means I can eat lunch at home and will have time to shower and finish packing...but it sucks on the other end, since I'll have to find a way home from the airport at midnight, which requires either a shuttle or a request for a ride from one of my friends. So, we'll see what happens. I'm actually more worried about the weather than anything, since it's icy here right now and may get worse before Monday...and I *have* to go to work on Tuesday, since I'm training people Tuesday morning. Bleh. It's been really nice to have a break; I've made a point of checking my email only rarely, and refusing to think about it otherwise. Vacations are wonderful things, aren't they?

However, I didn't write anything in my romance novel this break, which makes me sad. It also makes me angry at myself, truth be told, since I wanted to finish it by the new year, but lacked the will/inspiration. We'll see what January holds in regards to the novel. I do intend to read more about Scotland; the more I know, the more fascinated I am with their culture, and I feel like more information about Scotland (particularly the Highlands) can only help me to form a picture in my mind. I was talking about Scotland with Lorena tonight, and she was there several years ago before visiting her son in Kenya, and she was telling me about all sorts of books she has about Gaelic culture and customs, Scottish fairy tales and myths, Scottish spirituality, etc., that sound fascinating. She's supposed to give me the titles/authors tomorrow so that I can find them in a library or get them off of Amazon...so expect more information about Scotland, if nothing else, since I like to share the fascinating little tidbits that I pick up while reading.

I wanted to write my year-in-review tonight, but it's almost two a.m. and I need to go to bed if I have any hope of getting up early enough tomorrow to shower before my aunt shows up. I also have to start the brutal process of packing; I got lots of breakable or semi-breakable stuff for Christmas (like irish coffee glasses, candleholders, a cake plate that had belonged to my grandmother, etc.) that I have to package carefully. I also have to figure out what to have my mother send me later, like the waffle iron, my pizza stone, and the casserole dish that is the only really perfect dish for baked beans or pizza surprise ('pizza surprise' is what we call midwestern goulash--elbow macaroni, ground beef or sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese--because my dad was going to try to make us pizza in Ukraine once but realized that he didn't have the ingredients for it, and so we ended up with goulash instead, so it's pizza surprise because the surprise is that it isn't pizza). I got the casserole dish for Christmas last year but didn't want to risk leaving it in the kitchen when I was sharing with the two random roommates--the casserole dish is an antique, and it's the same as the one my mother uses, since she got it off of eBay. The casserole dish was an effort to forestall a blood feud over the inheritance of the real casserole dish, since all of my siblings would want the dish...so my sister and I got 'new' ones from eBay, and my brother will eventually get the real one. Seems fair to me, especially since I get to start using mine whenever I want. Too bad it isn't red, though...it's a light blue, so it doesn't match the rest of my stuff at all, but it produces awesome baked beans and so I can't complain.

Now I'm just rambling, and for no purpose whatsoever since a discussion of casserole dishes and pizza surprise is hardly interesting. Goodnight!