Got back from Christmas in the Midwest with the in-laws. The house is still standing, and Hobkin was happy to see us. His Godmother gave him a slew of goodies during his stay at Skunkie Christmas Camp, including veggie cookies, a treat ball that we can record our voices on, and a little plush elephant that jingles. Hobkin has the sweetest fairy godmother! I’m so glad he can stay with someone as wonderful as her when we go out of town. It gives us such peace of mind knowing our little fuzzwit is being well cared for in our absence.
He was happy to see us, though. Spent all of yesterday curled up with or on me.
The week went by far too quickly. I’m trying hard not to dwell on the looming specter of returning to work tomorrow. Wah! But I loved spending so much time with Matthew’s folks. They’re such wonderful people. I really adore them; an occasionally quirksome feeling I must admit, since my relations with the biological side of my family dropped into “merely cordial” status a long while ago. It’s strange having such fondness for parental types. But strange in a warm and fuzzy way.
Also, my dad-in-law looked and sounded much better this year than last. I’m so relieved. And I again see where my Matthew gets his stubborn streak. Heh.
Can’t believe all the goodies received this year!
DVDs: The Matrix Reloaded, The Two Towers, Pirates of the Caribbean. (Matthew got Topper, The complete Firefly series, The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn’s), The Mark of Zorro (Tyrone Power’s), and To Have and Have Not).
CDs: The new Cruxshadows album (which I didn’t even know was out!) and the two Stone Soup albums on CD that I thought I’d never hear again! Stone Soup was one of my favorite bands in high school. They were small and local to my Midwestern area, and they only put out two albums on vinyl in very tiny release. I had them but no way to convert them to CD as we no longer have a working record player.
A couple years ago, we gave Matthew’s brother a music CD burner for Christmas plus he’s got a turntable that still works. Unbeknownst to me, the two brothers put heads together and Matthew got my Stone Soup records to his brother in time for burning to commence. I’m ecstatic to finally have them on CD!
Books: When Darkness Falls with a novella by Tanith Lee, Shatterday an out-of-print collection by Harlan Ellison, Harry Potter 5, Mortal Suns by Tanith Lee, and Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon (I’m such a geek!).
Clothes: Reams of it, including the comfy Victoria’s Secret sleep-shirt from my sweetie that I’m currently lounging in and the pair of dragonfly earrings I cooed at in the store when we were out shopping.
And, my honey reprised his Skunk Calendar from last year, eliciting cries of astounded delight from me, as I was mourning the year passing so I could no longer have his creation to gaze upon! 2004’s is gorgeous! I’m totally thrilled.
Yesterday we watched Topper, To Have and Have Not, and The Matrix: Reloaded after a long nap to recover from the 12-hour drive. Today, more DVD viewing. And I’ve started reading When Darkness Falls.
We’ve still to do stockings this morning. It’s also when we’ll do Christmas with Hobkin. He’s got Christmas Cookies, a package of tissues, and a plush toy to discover.
I got Matthew a DVD burner and a spindle of blank DVD-Rs for Christmas. I do tend to give him “some assembly required” gifts, heh. I expect we’ll need to go out and get a Dazzler or some-such hardware so we can hook up a laser disc player to our computer. Time to start converting our laser disc collection to DVD! I anticipate computer guts strewn across the living room floor before everything’s installed and going, but it’ll be messy in a festive sort of way.
It was a very nice Christmas. And I’ve got a tidy pile of packages under my “Birthday Tree” to be opened next week! Oh, the avaricious glee!
Writing stats:
– No new words written this week. No surprise there.
– 34 crits so far on my offering in the Critters queue. Gleep. But so far they’ve been generally positive.
– Rejections from Argosy, F&SF, and The Third Alternative to greet me when we returned. Pfft.
– A note from a fellow Phobosian that the CEO of Phobos will be traveling all this month so not to expect the contest results winners to be announced until next month. I do love Phobos, but they’re perpetually tardy. But then, in the publishing biz, that’s par.
– Haven’t heard from Creative Loafing. I must assume that means they only contacted the winners. Plan to give the story I sent them a once-over and then toss it up to Critters. I really do think a market should have the courtesy of responding to everyone’s submission. Especially since I enclosed a SASE along with my email address. *grumble*.
I’m so behind on reading my Friends List. I’m going to try to catch up on it now. Emphasis on “try.”
It’s always nice to have a reliable petsitter. You know, when J and I went to a cruise ship for 7 days, we put Jasper (red poodle) in a pet home of some sort, at the time he was the only dog in the house. Anyway, 7 days to us is like a month to them, so when we came back he was growling at us and didn’t recognize us till we call his name. Guess he recognize the voice. Hobkin’s goodies is sure great.
When your intermediate family is not as close to you, it’s always nice to be close to your in-laws who treat you nice…it helps.