The ghost of christmas past...

I suppose it all began 2 weeks before school ended, when i said to myself, "self," I said, "its gonna get ugly." and so it did. I had two mostly aweful last weeks of school, punctuated by an undesirable trip to las vegas, and then finals. but i made it through. and had a week to work before i took 5days of vacation christmas week. That's when the new manager arrived at my lovely little starbucks store. she was abrasive and overzealous in changing everything about our store in a matter of a week. i seriously began to consider my options for alternative employment. but then came vacation.
monday, we drove from anaheim to san francisco, got in around 330pm, and proceded to take a nap until 8pm. went into chinatown in search of dinner, found some. did a bit of reconnaissance to determine where we should stop the next day. and went back to the hotel to bed. The plan for the next day was the zoo, the asian art museum, more chinatown and pier 39/ghirardelli square. the zoo was nice, right on the beach, which was odd, but nice, it was cold and windy. we took the train back to downtown to go to the museum which had a special exhibit on southeast asian art of the 14-18th centuries, it was amazing, but small. then shopping in chinatown. we went into a couple of tea shops, and tasted many different types of tea. i could go on at length, but that's another blog. it was a long, fun day, and we were beat when we got back to the hotel.
the next day (wed) we drove south to visit my family in hanford for a couple days of christmas. we were surprised to find that christmas eve (when the bruces traditionally open presents) had come a day early. it was very cool that cory and annie got to be there via webcam, and it was a lot of fun having them to interact with. They got a nice selection of teas from a shop in new york which i will discuss at length in another post. my parents got me some nice sweaters and an original penguin shirt-that i saw (just this monday night) on an actor on tv, so you know its cool. my grandmother got me a set of small remote control helicopters, which were hard to learn, but so much fun to practice with. Due to a miscommunication my parents were under the impression that we would be leaving early on christmas eve to spend the night with my inlaws. we were spending the night, but we were planning on arriving after midnight. so my parents made other plans that afternoon. we spent some time with grandma after they left, and then headed south to home for a brief stopover.
it worked out well, as we got a chance to empty the car and our suitcases before heading to meg's folks. we spent the night with them and opened presents with them on christmas morning. I got a really nice remote control helicopter that i destroyed after one flight (it was a really hard landing) and a sewing machine.
(a moment to defend the sewing machine) yes, a sewing machine. I cannot count the times i have thought, "it would be really handy to have a sewing machine right now." I always end up taking things home to have my mother repair or hem. or in a pinch i hand stitch them, which is fine, but it ain't always pretty. don't get me wrong, i didn't rush out and buy a bunch of patterns so i could start making my own clothes. its just something i think every household should have.
christmas night, we had to return home because we both had to work early on boxing day. it was a good christmas and we enjoyed seeing everyone, and i enjoyed all the driving-because i'm crazy like that. after christmas, we spent some money on feathering our nest, new bed and bath linens, and stuff like that. we also went clothes shopping, it was a magical time.
Our friends Joy and Jeff moved into a new(old) house right before christmas and i promised to help them between the holidays, so i went down to do that on newyear's eve day (i didn't realize that was the day i picked until the night before), traffic from san diego wasn't bad, and i was home plenty early to do nothing to celebrate the new year. it was pretty boring. nice, but boring. we both had to work the next day, again.