Ice Ice Baby

We've had a lot of winter so far and it's only midway through December. Ugh. There are areas around here who still have yet to get their power back after the winter/ice storm that began last Thursday evening. I only lost power for a few hours in the middle of the night Thursday night and I only noticed that slight inconvenience when my fan shut off. I always sleep with a fan whirring in the backround. I was extremely lucky.

Thanksgiving was at the end of last month. Mom, Sherry (and Curry), Heather and Dave, and Jeff came to my little homestead to have a typical Thanksgiving dinner...yummy. It was nice not to travel but hosting makes for a big mess to clean up. Xander had a good time.

The first weekend in December, I went down to Milford to hang out with Danielle, Jaime, and Madison. We spent most of the day at the mall in Nashua and Manchester. Good times!

Last Tuesday, Ashley had a labor scare...but everything seems to be just fine now. It's getting to be that time, so hard to believe. Speaking of, I still need to figure out what I'm doing for her for Christmas.

Well, I'm nearing the end of my long weekend "mini-vacation" and I go back to work tomorrow...just in time for a winter storm. Can't wait to clean off my car in the morning and again after work! I hope people drive safe. This past Friday was a good day. It began in the salon with a super cute haircut which looked amazing for the rest of the day after everything was said and done. I can't for the life of me recreate the way it looked *sigh* I wish I had someone to style my hair everyday. I then went to the jewely store and ended up walking out of the store with an even better pair of diamond earrings than I had bought the day before. I wasn't totally happy with the original ones and went back hoping to exchange them and ended up finding gorgeous ones in the 50% off display. I paid a lot less than they are worth and I love them!!

I was all excited to sport my new do and bling at our department holiday party Friday night at the Hanover Inn until I received a call from Sherry asking me if I wanted to go to a Duran Duran concert at Foxwoods Casino in CT. She had bought tickets closer to the stage earlier that day and had an extra. I decided to go to the concert but it was a hard decision because I was so excited about the holiday party. It was fun to see them in concert again although I'm bummed that I'll never see the original 5 members...back in 05 Andy wasn't there because of a death in his family. Now he's not even part of the band anymore. We were so close to the stage! Driving down to CT made me realize how destructive the ice storm was. I didn't realize that some parts of NH and MA were in states of emergency. Whole towns without electricity, trees and limbs down all over the place, people seeking shelters in community buildings, ice-covered trees dramatically bent, barren icy hell pretty much everywhere. I need to pay more attention to the news.

My neice turned 14 on Sunday. I can't believe she's older than I was when she was born. I'm getting old.

Today I ended up getting 4 free brand-new winter tires from my dealership...score! Dave noticed while taking them out of their garage that quite a bit of damage had been done to the beads when they were removed from my car in the spring. I showed them to the service manager and he offered to replace the 2 tires that looked pretty bad. Imagine my surprise when I go in today to 4 new tires because the other ones were unavailable! Pay it forward, baby.

Next week is Christmas already. I work Christmas day for 8 hours then I am headed to Denise's for dinner, weather-pending of course. This year, the fam has decided to not do gift-giving amongst each other but to do something for a cause or make something we all can enjoy, or provide some type of service. I think I'm just going to donate to our humane society up here...that cause excited me the most.

Java froyo and Family Guy mini-marathon is calling my name, peace!