New Year (part 1)

Here's how I spent my New Year's Eve:



Details: Cascade 220 Superwash on #3 needles. Navy blue and "tropical fruit paints." Sized to fit a 3-year-old child.

10 on Tuesday: ten last-minute gift ideas

1) Baked goods
2) Kits for baked goods (one of my student's mothers used to give me a jar of homemade pancake mix every year... loved it.)
3) A book. (We actually have duplicate copies of our favorite books just so we can give them spontaneously to our loved ones.)
4) A CD. (Almost out of fashion these days, but still appreciated by my older relatives.)
5) A knitting kit: download a fresh copy of the pattern, print it out, find suitable yarn in my stash, and add a pair of needles if the recipient isn't a already a die-hard knitter.
6) Dried fruit. I ordered a huge batch of it from Meduri when they had free shipping just after Thanksgiving, and have been handing out the tins to everyone I didn't think about enough in advance, like my children's gym teacher.
7) Stashed knit goods. I have a spare pair of adult mittens, two pairs of children's mittens, and a couple of scarves. Knit without an obvious recipient in mind, they wait on the bottom of my bookshelf until I have need of them.
8) A DVD.
9) Charitable donation in a friend's name.
10) If all else fails, a gift certificate.

10 on Tuesday: Ten things on your to-do list

1) See the doctor about a new asthma inhaler.
2) Finish knitting my cousin's fingerless, elbow-length mitts and mail them to Georgia.
3) Finish my mom's Xmas socks.
4) Buy a gift for my sons' violin teacher.
5) Buy a gift for my son's classmate who is having a party on Saturday.
6) Do the laundry.
7) Finish my mother-in-law's scarf.
8) Find the swift and ball-winder, which vanished when we rearranged the guest room.
9) Clean the dining room.
10) Get more sleep!

Ten on Tuesday: 10 movies I'd like to see at the theater

Ooooh... is this a wishlist for the movies I wish had been made?

1) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
2) The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury
3) Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
4) Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
5) The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
6) Sunshine by Robin McKinley (heck - anything at all by Robin McKinley!)
7) Alphabet of Thorn by Patrica McKillip
8) All of the "Eve Dallas" books by J D Robb
9) Sundiver by David Brin
10) Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (although I don't how they'd make a movie where each of main characters can only see one color.)

Unfortuately, a quick glance at Carole's site showed that she meant for us to talk about the actual movies available in the theater... so here we go...

1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
2) Skyline
3) Unknown
4) Megamind (which my family has already seen, so I'm probably alone for this one.)
5) Season of the Witch
6) Faster
7) Voyage of the Dawn Treader
8) The Tourist
9) TRON: Legacy
10) True Grit

Of course, if I actually have time to see even half of these, it will be a great December!

Ten on Tuesday: 10 ways to simplify your life

Uh-oh... this list is going to be a lot of "do what I say, not what I actually manage to do..."

1) Keep only one credit card.
2) Pay all your bills on time.
3) Cook your meals ahead of time (I do most of my cooking on Sunday and Monday evenings.)
4) Pack your bag at night.
5) Always put your keys in the same place.
6) Charge up your phone and computer every night, too.
7) Do the dishes before you go to bed.
8) Clean out the fridge a couple times a week, and label all the left-overs clearly.
9) Do the laundry every day, instead of twice a week. (I know this doesn't work for most people but it really helps me out!)
10) Get enough sleep that you can think straight!

When's the weekend getting here?

Answer: for me, sadly not until after 5pm... I have to be at work until then.

Cryoburn

I haven't had much time to read this fall, but I did pre-order seven books by my favorite authors that were due out before Winter Solstice, so that they would magically arrive in my mailbox without any further effort on my part.

This did not, precisely, work out as planned.

Barnes and Noble is still working out their protocols for pre-orders, so I kept having to go in and say, "Yes, I know that this book won't ship for another two weeks, but I still want it...." I eventually complained and the problem went away almost immediately. (Hooray for the Help Desk at BN - apparently they actually do stuff, unlike the nitwits at Amazon. I have never gotten an intelligent response from Amazon.)

Yesterday, All Clear by Connie Willis and Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold arrived! Since I still haven't read Blackout, I didn't start with the Willis (although she's one of my favorite writers.) Instead, I carefully did enough work that I could justify taking the evening off, and then settled in.

It's pretty good. It isn't AWESOME like A Civil Campaign or Memory, but it's definitely worth reading. I suspect that I'll like it much better once I read it again, slower.