Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas, everyone! I hope all of you had a good holiday and got everything your heart desired. This year Christmas was (relatively) quiet. Carrie and Clint and Lauren were in Colorado, Melissa and Adam and all the kids were in Texas, Shannon and Clark were . . . well, just across town. But they weren't there on Christmas morning so it was just Jessica and I as far as "kids" go. Meme left at lunchtime to drive to Boise with Brady so all of the Wycherlys could be together.

We, as ever, made out like bandits on Christmas morning - despite Dad's constant insistence that Christmas would be smaller this year. The biggest Christmas surprise of all was a PS2 for the family and Guitar Hero II for me! I honestly thought they'd never go for that. I think I'm already developing a blister.

Elliott was very sweet and got me a Far Side book, an Eddie Izzard DVD, and a DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. We saw Pirates on our first date, so I thought that was extra nice. I'm not sure if he did that on purpose, or just because I like pirates a lot. Bonus points, either way.

Shannon and Clark got me sock monkey slippers, so here is a picture. As promised to Melissa.

In other exciting news, Dad has signed us up for high speed internet, so next time I post pictures on this blog it won't take half an hour. Woo!

This is me.

Thanks, Adam!

Holy Crap, People!

Once again, Clark has taken the words right out of my mouth. ESPN's coverage last night of the Las Vegas Bowl was the absolute worst piece of sportscasting I have ever seen, and I spent this season watching the mtn, people.

Come on!

ESPN, largely regarded as the paragon of sport broadcasting - the first all-sports network, now many many sports networks and websites and magazines and such - spent the entire game talking about anything except the game. There was actually a time in the second half when they were talking about Brent Mussburger's Rocky II action figure with (retired UNLV basketball) Coach Tarkanian when one of the broadcasters said, as an aside, "Oh, and that was a completion."

The hell?! Where is my football game?

Adding insult to injury, not only were they totally ignoring the game up in the booth, but they weren't even showing the game. For minutes on end, all you would see were the guys in the booth and whatever irrelevant person they were there talking with. It's pretty sad when the best commentary on the game is provided by a retired basketball coach. Whom they were trying to interview about Bobby Knight.

Argh. Hulk smash!

Okay, sure. This was not a real barn-burner of a game. The officiating was genuinely retarded, with officials having the difference between "defense" and "offense" pointed out to them, very gently, by John Beck. This did not warrant commentary from the booth. Heck, at one point the ref tried to issue a penalty "half the distance to the foul." Um, no. I may be just a girl, but I know that ain't right. Did they comment on the fact that BYU was playing against their former head coach, Gary Crowton? Barely. Have anything to say about Oregon's bizarrely crappy offense? No. Repeated fights breaking out on the field? Nah. But let's make sure we talk about West Texas A&M's golf coach, for cry eye!

(Yes, I know he's Oregon's quarterback's brother. I still don't care. Maybe you should talk about the Leaf actually playing in the game, hmm?)

And now that this post is over, let me tell you in true ESPN fashion that BYU won, 38-8.

Pretty Kitty

Elliott has a beautiful and enormous cat named Whitey. Whitey is 17 years old, and still doing pretty well. He is humongous! He's also very pretty - short white hair, pink nose, pink ears, green eyes. Not the most social animal in the world, but then what cat is?

Here's a picture of Elliott and Whitey on the couch at his mom's house, where Whitey lives.

Rock on, Stewart

Last night I went to Alex's house for dinner. Alex is a great cook, and has people over from time to time. Last night was mashed potatoes and gravy with some great roast beef. After dinner, we all played Guitar Hero. Usually I don't play that much, but I finally got over myself and actually do not suck at it as much as I thought. I even did pretty good on the "medium" level, instead of playing "easy" like usual.

Alex is really, really good. Below is a picture of he and Danae rocking out to some wickedly hard song. Danae came close to beating him, but Alex pulled it out at the last second.

Sabrina, Brindi and Elliott were there, too - here is a picture of them:

Brindi declined to be photographed.

Christmas

Well, Clark has been letting his feelings known about Christmas things, and I wanted to get something off my chest too. Lots of songs may - or may not - qualify as Christmas songs, and they all get played at Christmas time. Sure, "My Favorite Things" doesn't have anything to do with Christmas at all, but that doesn't prevent Delilah from foisting it on us all the time. But that's not what I want to talk about. My main complaint here is about an actual Christmas song: "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Let me show you a sample of the lyrics here:

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you
"Be of good cheer"

It's The Most
Wonderful Time Of The Year
It's the hap -happiest season of all
With
those holiday greetings
and gay happy meetings
When friends come to call
It's the hap - happiest season of all

There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And
tales of the glories
of Christmases long, long ago

It's The Most
Wonderful Time Of The Year
There'll be much mistltoeing
And hearts will be
glowing
When love ones are near

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The
Year
There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And
tales of the glories
of Christmases long, long ago

It's The Most
Wonderful Time Of The Year
There'll be much mistltoeing
And hearts will be
glowing
When love ones are near
It's The Most Wonderful Time
It's
The Most Wonderful Time
It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

By:
Eddie Pola and George Wyle

Now, most of that is just a fun, trite song. But let us revisit the refrain:

There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And
tales of the glories
of Christmases long, long ago

Parties? Check. Marshmallows? Uh, check. Caroling? Check. Scary ghost stories? Ch . . . what?

Hold on a minute here! Who on earth tells scary ghost stories as part of celebrating Christmas? That's Halloween stuff! I know that the Christmas decor arrives in stores earlier than the Halloween stuff these days, but let's not get the two mixed together. Anarchy! Won't anyone think of the children?

Sure, some may argue that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is a ghost story. And sure, if you happen to be Scrooge McDuck, then it's a scary story. But it's not actually a scary ghost story. It's a story with ghosts. It's not the same thing. So what were Eddie Pola and George Wyle thinking?! Did they just need a rhyme there? Couldn't come up with anything else that rhymes with "glories?" What gives?

If someone can explain this whole thing to me, that's great. In the mean time, I'm boycotting "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

Huzzah huzzah

The famous rental car:

And my FABULOUS NEW CAR!

Gross

You may not be aware, but I recently took a lot of time off work. This time of year they always print up little slips letting you know how much vacation you have to use (or lose) and I always have way too much because work is way too important and I have stuff to do and I can't possibly take a day off . . . yeah, that's not true. But sometimes I feel that way, so I always get to December and have an impossible number of days to take off work. So last week I didn't go. At all. I actually took 6 days off in a row, which gave me a very nice 10-day weekend. Ahhh . . . what could I possibly do with that much time?

Not that much, as it turns out.

Well, not as much as I would have liked. But I did get some stuff done. I got all of our Christmas music on the computer so I have it on my iPod now - 8 hours! That's a lot of Mele Kalikimaka (two versions) and dogs barking Jingle Bells.

I also did my holiday baking. I thought to myself, why not make some cookies? Cookies are fun to make and decorate. I can make cookies for all my friends and everyone will think I'm Martha Stewart and it will be great.

Fast forward ten hours later, when I've cleaned the kitchen twice, baked 8 dozen sugar cookies and 4 dozen fudgy bon bons, made my own frosting (six colors!), and am now sitting at the table, covered in nine kinds of jimmies. I think I built up some serious forearm muscles, creaming all that shortening into all that sugar. Not to mention mixing in the six cups of flour. Hoo boy. I think I won't be baking a gross of cookies all in one shot again until I own a KitchenAid mixer.

Anyway, the cookies all tasted fabulous, even if the ones I frosted at 10:30 at night weren't quite as elaborate or pretty as the ones I frosted at 8:00. The bon bons also weren't as prolific as usual because I cut my finger on the Eagle milk can, and that made shaping the dough quite tricky, I tell you what.

Man, I wish I had a cookie right now.

I also spent a lot of my time off work . . . working. I'm lame. But it was vacation then or nothing, and I also had stuff to do . . . I went to a Project Learning Tree training at the Tracy Aviary, and then it was the National Science Teachers Association convention! Woo! Party time!

Actually, it was. I had lots of fun. Not so often do I get to do such overtly nerdy stuff these days.

I also did get a lot of Christmas shopping and wrapping done, and I'm warning you now that I went off-list for a lot of y'all. I hope you like the stuff. I think you'll like the stuff. Please like the stuff.

Insurance sucks a little less.

Yesterday was a good insurance day. Shocking, I know, but it can happen. Which is not to say that I'm not waiting for the other shoe to drop here, but sometimes you take what you can get.

The day started with a call from Allstate, which is the insurer of the other car involved in the accident. Yeah, I didn't think it was insured either. Apparently the accident was reported to them at the end of November (?!) and they are now getting a hold of me. She asked if I was fine (I am), asked if I went to the doctor (I did), asked if I paid anything out of pocket for it (I didn't), asked if I had to get any prescriptions or anything (I didn't), asked if I had recovered (I have,) asked if I missed any work (I didn't) . . . and then told me she would be mailing me a check for $750 for pain and suffering.

Um, okay. Fine with me! Not a bad way to start the day.

She also asked if my car had been repaired yet. Um, no. Not as such. Nor will it be. "Oh," she says. "How much was the damage? $4000? $6000?" Actually, over $12,000. "Oh my. That's a lot." Yeah, well, Geos can do that when traveling at a high rate of speed.


Then the mail came. In the mail was a check from my insurance company for $120. Why? I have no idea. It just arrived in the mail, on its own. No explanation. Hm. It was too late in the day to call them to ask about it, so now I have that money too.

I did get another piece of mail from them over the weekend, an updated insurance document of some kind that also arrived without explanation. So I have two guesses here. Either they have refunded some of my premium because there has been no car to insure for almost two months, or they are refunding some of my premium because they have dropped my collision coverage. I honestly can't say for sure at this point. So that may not turn out to be as good as first believed, but a check for $120 is a check for $120.

Also, I returned the rental car on Monday. It was costing me $26 per day and Linda offered to let me borrow her car until my new car arrives, so I took her up on it. When I was paying the rental car place, they mentioned that the amount charged to my credit card may actually be smaller than the amount I was signing for, since the insurance company was still talking about picking up more of the tab. Keep your fingers crossed there! Even if they don't, the check from Allstate (which was totally unexpected) will more than cover all of the rental car costs.

Yet more insurance news

I know. We all thought we were done with this. It's turning into some sort of farce here - the car crash that never ends. Allstate insurance called me last week, which was weird. I have insurance from four different companies - car, health, dental, and duck insurance - but none of them are Allstate. Turns out the other car in this whole mess was insured. Huzzah.

Allstate sent me a lovely letter, received on Saturday, letting me know that they had received the claim dated October 21, 2006 and that they wanted to work toward a "quick resolution" to the claim for my convenience. Riiiiiiight. Way to be quick there, folks. They also said that "if" their person was found liable for the accident that they would pay for a rental car until my car could be repaired or replaced. Now, obviously this is a form letter. Well, that or Allstate is even further out of touch with reality than my insurance company is.

Anyway, I hope to possibly angle this into getting Allstate to pay for the days of rental car time I've racked up since my insurance company cut me off over a week ago. Barring that, they are aware that I have also opened a "bodily injury claim" (I went to the doctor once after the accident) and that if I had over $3,000 in medical bills I may be eligible for "pain and suffering" compensation. Perhaps I can be eligible for pain and suffering payment purely because I am still having to deal with this? No? I'm going to call them back tomorrow and see what's going on here.

TSO

What?

What?

I can't hear you. I've gone totally deaf because I forgot to wear my earplugs to a concert. Again. It's not as bad this time as it was after the Aerosmith concert, where my ears were actually still ringing the next day, but wow. That was loud.

Trans Siberian Orchestra was in town yesterday, so the 'rents and Jessica and I all went. We had floor seats, 25th row center. Very nice, even if we did have to sit behind some tall people. The best part was that since we had floor seats, so the light displays were right overhead. Also, they had pyrotechnics at both ends of the floor, so we could feel the heat of the flames at the same time that the snow from the snow machines was melting on our faces. The lasers through the falling snow looked really pretty. Very sparkly. The first half of the show was their Christmas Eve and Other Stories album, and then the second half kicked off with Layla. Most excellent.

Opinion Poll

So the question is this: does Jessica's* hairdo make her look like a lhasa apso? Post your comments below.

*Yes, Jessica knows I am doing this and she's okay with it.

The (hopefully last) insurance update

Victory is mine, victory is mine! Great day in the morning people, victory is mine!

Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land - the insurance check has finally arrived! My old car loan is paid off, and my new loan is pre-approved. In the next week, I should have a brand new car.

Huzzah!