Christmas and Beyond

January 2, 2009

Thank You Cards

I was going to do the obligatory photo-dump of everything I got for Christmas, but since we’re moving next week it all got loaded up and hauled away before I even had a chance to enjoy most of it! I’ll have to wait until March, or later, to really get my hands on those goodies. I mostly got books, socks, money gifts and whole bunch of delicious doo-dah inbetween!

Christmas Table

To Chris, From Dorian

Some of my favorite presents came from my friend Dorian. When it comes to being an artist, he is the exact opposite from me– Dorian’s a “man’s man” and loves to work with his hands, so what better to give us for Christmas than his very own ceramics? Though I’m not sure it was intentional, the vase he gifted me reminds me of chakras. The mug is for Chris and holds an ungodly amount of coffee!

Homemade Limoncello

Chris’s sister, Lindy, and her fiance, Danny, gave us a bottle of homemade limoncello, which I’d never had before. I took the tinyest of sips after unwrapping it and I felt instant warmth in my belly. Good stuff! And the corked bottles are adorable, to boot.

Allyson Riggs

Allyson asked me not to give her anything for the holidays, which I can respect because I always feel a twinge of guilt when someone outside the family gives me something and I have nothing to reciprocate with. I consider all the little dates we’ve had with each other this last month to be enough of a gift for the both of us, though… I will miss her dearly!

Other not-pictured things to be excited for: Moleskine weekly planner, SmartWool socks and cat-pattern socks (!), The Devious Book for Cats, a couple Terry Pratchett books, VCTOTW, Thai phrasebook & CD, delicious local chocolate bars and all the Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa you can dream of!

For New Year’s we kept it simple with the roomies, where Charissa joined us for an exhilarating night of Skip-Bo, Quiddler and E! True Hollywood Stories. I’m pretty sure we were all in bed by 1:00 AM. We sure know how to party!

I hope everyone else had a great holiday, too. 2008 is a little hard to say goodbye to, but here’s to ’09!

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COMMENTS

i love getting smartwool socks for christmas.

Isn’t it the best? This is the second year in a row for me, with hopefully many more to come!

For New years i am commenting in streams i follow regularly. I love your pictures and really love bokeh. Here the yellow fall tones are so soft yet warm.

have fun in thailand. it was my last stop on my recent big trip. we only stayed a week this time, but i’ve been there for 6 weeks before. its a great time. let me know if you have any questions. my favourite was hiking in the forests with elephants outside of Chang Mai but there are so many things to do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tasmin/sets/72157611513232061/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tasmin/sets/72157594359232251/

There was a time when we used to drink lemoncello a lot with my friends, in winter specially after a heavy meal …is addictive.

ooh, WANT.

i love this shade of yellow!
+ the bottle looks awesome with the cork.

Your friend Allyson reminds me of Madeline. On a whim, i was searching for memorable quotes from the animated series and saw this one though it hardly fits into the context of the photo:

“What could be worse?’ ‘What could be worse?’ ‘What could be worse?’ ‘A BAD BAD HAT!”

By moving, do you mean… leaving for Thailand for a while and then coming back not to the big house (with cats and friends), but to someplace entirely new? Like a new state or apartment?

I was reading through Allyson’s post on blogging (Why do we blog?) and i think she might be right. It’s a little cathartic to reassess my thoughts and type them out someplace in smooth, clear sentences for everyone else to read. I feel like so much of what goes on in my head (big, small, mundane) is left unsaid but by parsing what’s on my mind and logging that onto the computer… It’s like having my own personal Pensieve. A place where i can go back to later and nose around. Study my emotions, irrationality and my goals + objectives.

But to credit Allyson, it has just as much to do with my attempt to give my life some meaning & little validation. That having others comment on and approve of the choices i make can make me feel like i’m apart of something larger. So i’m not alone in my decisions or without moral guidance by a small audience.

I think internet posterity might have a little to do with it as well because… if i die tomorrow, i guess the only thing i have to leave behind (and i’ve got so very little) are these thoughts, these feelings and this perspective. If someone can read that and empathize with their own situation drawing parallels between them both, that’s all i really care about. It might help, it might hurt but at the end of the day, at least it was honest.

Please promise me you won’t loose touch when you go galavanting off across the world. I would miss you and your posts too much.

Oh. And of course I won’t drop off the face of the Earth, so to speak! I would die without the constant validation of all my internet peers, hahah ;)

Gosh, I used to love Madeline so much as a kid!

And for a first-ever blog, I found her thoughts on why we blog to be an exceptional start, too. It really got me thinking, and I’d have to agree with everything you both mentioned. Especially the bit about posterity and validation. I mean, why else do we share stories with friends and talk about the things we like/dislike, etc? That kind of search for a response from the outer world isn’t exclusive to only the internet– it gives you a bigger bowl to fish from!

That mug is adorable. I hope you had a fun time on NYE! Sounds like you did…

Thanks! I wish I had photos of more of his work, it’s all so excellent. I took a ceramics class last spring with Chris and after that we both gained a greater respect for someone who really knows how to throw!

Love that cup. Love it all…

…and then the gorilla said, "For twenty dollars a martini, I can see why!"

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