i'm sorta getting ahead of myself though. there was a last minute surge of holiday festiveness within grad div, and maybe that accounted for some of the change in holiday plans.

ok, back to the party...the seaborg room of the faculty club was where we had the grad div holiday dinner two years ago; i don't know why it isn't the "regular" spot...i think it's a really nice room.

there was a white elephant gift exchange. whenever i participated in one of these in boston or northampton, you didn't get to open anything until after everyone had had their opportunity for selection. i didn't actually participate in the selecting, i only brought a gift...a gift i made which apparently was stolen a couple of times. for reasons known as stress of the season i never took a picture of said hat...if i see yoon wearing it sometime (she's who wound up taking it home) i'll snap a pict. in the interim, here it is inconspicuously wrapped amongst the other offerings...

this is dick from publishing; dude has a great sense of dry humor, as witnessed by his tie!

a very cute pict of gina and i taken by maria. my picture of the other side of the table was not very image friendly, if you know what i'm sayin...

dean mason handed out a buncha see's chocolate santas...you know, santa is some kinda anagram of satan, isn't it? what's that all about?

and there was entertainment too! lots of singing...but only shaya's picture seemed to come out...



in the midst of getting things ready for sending out for the holidays(pictures in the picture gallery next week) i managed to eek out a pair of ravenclaw gauntlets from the first issue of vogue's K1 for myself...STOKEDNESS!



i do think my neighborhood can be quite lovely...like momi toby's at 6:30am...



on christmas eve they had a news blurb about the tom and jerry christmas display on 21st between the castro and noe valley. hopefully i'll have live picts tomorrow(break in the rain...)

tom taylor's the name, christmas the game...one of the things i kept saying all day is, man, just change one letter in a person's name, and you've got a whole different ballgame., referring, of course to the disparrage between our city's mr.christmas, and the infamous mr.tooltime tim taylor...



although i'm not the hugest fan of disney, i am wicked into lilo and stitch and thoroughly enjoyed their christmas show



of course on christmas morning, i had to watch a christmas story...a few times

it was a beautiful morning

this gift took my breath away, LITERALLY

this gift feels really soft and reminds me of flames

this gift made me laugh out loud for several minutes

a bouquet of bar stirrers; my aunt knows i'm my father's child...

i don't know if you can see the two harry potter lego sets; one i bought for myself back in october, and the other came last week. it's kinda like santa sent it, cuz i got it(a used snape's classroom kit) before i could pay for it. thank you!!!!



i spent christmas day and night at neil's house, with him, and, later, seanie. here's my see's santa getting familiar with neil's russel stover santa...

we went to the airport to pick up sean, and i was amazed at how many people were there!

there's a house a few doors down from neilz that always puts up a tinsel christmas tree forest...there's something about it i think is neat-o

this is the only pict i took from hanging out. i brought all kinds of harry potter candy with me, in addition to a dinner and a lunch and some snax...there were fizzing whizbees and acid pops, and chocolate frogs...



i'm trying to walk that fine line of all vacations/holidays whereby i get some stuff done, but do nothing really. one thing i have done is to meet one of my new year's resolutions. i wanted to track all my spending for last year. i wasn't as efficient as i could've been about doing it, but i HAVE actually completed the task(except whatever i spend between now and friday which can't be more than twenty bux...the tallies will come later this week...for me, not you. you just needed to know i'd completed the task....



i built up the snape's classroom yesterday. wicked fun! i think it came out really good, and there weren't any pieces missing; except the instructions...

however, i knew this wasn't such a big deal, cuz i thought the instructions existed on line...and they did.



today is all about working on this blog

and watching the twin peaks series while continuing to feverishly knit

on this striped ballet neck cardigan i started on christmas eve. if i finish the sleeves today, which might be reasonable as they are going to be 3/4 length, and i don't have anything other than dinner to take care of, then i can start the fairly easy fair isle from stitch'n bitch nation tomorrow!!! that won't take long at all, cuz it's "chunky" yarn, and then i can finish up the friend gifts for the january giving period....yes, i DO have some yarn issues, thankyouverymuch!