SORRY.

You know what I think? If you don't have anything to write about, take half a month off. Now that I've sufficiently restocked the number of life experiences that I don't mention on my blog, I can write again.

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Where to start, wheeerrre to start...oh yes, Christmas. Christmas was....christmas-y. That's about all there is to it. I baked 5 dozen cookies and ate a lot of pork. This year my little cousin had his muslim friend stay over for Christmas and New Years. Poor kid, he must think we eat nothing but pork, all day long. Sausage in the breakfast casserole, ham sandwiches for lunch, christmas ham for dinner, leftover ham for snacks, ham candy, ham popsicles, ham cookies, ham in our stockings...you get the point. There was even pork in the delicious meatloaf that my mother made especially for him on Christmas eve. Being the heathens that we are we debated even telling him, but being the questioning agnostics that we are, we considered the possibility that maybe pork IS sinful, and didn't want to risk his soul for a little meatloaf.

I got good presents:

a super nice camera lens
a kindle so I don't have to haul books around when I travel
a bike from C
a gorgeous pie plate from poland from Callie
other odds n ends that I don't feel like typing out

I gave good presents:

ex libris stamps for my dad and sammie pie that i designed myself
a $100 mood gift certificate for my mom and a cool quilt pattern
a box from poland for callie for her earrings*
a blender, some cologne and something else that i cant remember for C
a wallet and $20 bucks for john vernon**
something for jessica that i cant put on here because i havent given it to her
a GPS for C's parents***
a diamond necklace for C's sister****
some beer steins for C's other sister

*no, we did not consult with each other beforehand on the topic of whether or not to both purchase gifts for each other from Poland. We're just cool like that.
**I thought long and hard before buying this potentially lame gift and then I thought...he's fifteen, what could be better than $20 bucks?
***went in with his sister and her fiance and C. C'mon, I'm not THAT rich nice.
****it was on deep dark "please take this from us" clearance. also, not that nice.

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Then for New Years we went to the godforsaken frozen north Wisconsin to visit C's family. It was...cold. C thought it would be a great idea to bring Olibur Finwik, even though there was two feet of snow and he is only 1.9 feet tall. Not so much. The first thing he did when we got to my probably future in laws house is run around to every room like a maniac for about five minutes, finishing his romp off by pooping in the house while running.

Great. 20 years from now they will still be talking about when my dog came and left a trail of poop in their house for Christmas.

Then we tossed him outside where he proceeded to pee on the screen door and poop on the welcome mat, refusing to touch his porcelain ass to the snow. Finally, on our last day there he peed on the carpeted stairs.

Anyway, aside from that New Years was great.

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When I came back to work, the first thing I did was check my email, and then I entered fifty or so sweepstakes. That can be my new years resolution: Win Sweepstakes.

Heres a (partially) comprehensive list of what I could win!

• A trip for two to the North Pole!
• A trip to Montana
• A trip to Branson
• Eight Vera Wang Bridesmaids dresses
• A trip to Ancestral Scotland
• A West Virginia getaway!
• Some super expensive baseball bats for C
• A couple diamond rings.
• combined approximately 2 million dollars
• trip to disney world
• a fifty thousand dollar wedding
• a wood cutting machine
• two sweeps with Hasbro and hellmans mayonnaise that i don't remember the prize for
• a new set of pots and pans
• a nice casserole pan
• a motocross bike.
• a fifty thousand dollar car.
• some other stuff i can't remember.

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I started this post right after Christmas and now it's like a month later and I'm going to finish it by god.

Is it sad that when I added the "people I'm related to" application on facebook, it showed about ten people that I have never even HEARD of in the "possible relatives" section? Possible relatives meaning I have at least one relative in common with them. Maybe I should get home more...OR maybe my second and third cousins should stop marrying and having babies at such an alarming rate.

I think thats a good place to end things....

booze and hors, here I come.

Ya'll....just two seconds ago I typed up an email to send back to a coworker. I was THISCLOSE to sending it and heres what it said:

"...it should be on your desk tomorrow. Love, Kate."

LOVE. I ALMOST SIGNED MY WORK EMAIL WITH LOVE. I NEED TO GO HOME RIGHT NOW BEFORE MORE DISASTERS ALMOST HAPPEN.

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Along the lines of other stupid email blunders....two days ago while discussing (light heartedly) over email with my coworkers whether or not to have a cocktail and hors d'oeuvre hour instead of a gift exchange I actually sent the following email to my entire office:

"You guys know I'm always game for alcohol and hors."

Yeah, I'm really big on hors. Especially with alcohol.

Ugh.

A Partial Christmas List for My Millionaire Friends.

Ok, I've done some thinking, now I'm ready.

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I was thinking that I haven't posted tree cam since...well, since I started posting tree cam. The tree is bigger now, and its looking all fall-y and winter-y. We're contemplating bringing it inside for the winter but I am (probably rightfully) afraid that I won't water it and it will wither away. NOT a good sign for the tree that is supposed to be representing our relationship (ya'll sometimes we're so sappy it makes me want to barf, so its ok if you do that now).

Tonight C and Downstairs Dan. are both at work so it'll be the perfect time to update Tree Cam. GET EXCITED.

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Ok, even though I've done some thinking, I'm still not feeling very verbose and exciting so instead I'm going to provide my Imaginary Christmas List for 2008, with pictures (some)! Without further ado:

Kate's Imaginary Christmas List Presuming Her Loved Ones Won the Lottery 2008

1. a pony. I'm not even trying to be cute here because I really really REALLY do want a pony. I'm fairly sure this one has topped every Christmas list since I was five :(

(this horse is prettier than me :( )

2. a house While I love my CURRENT house, and my current roommates are fine and dandy, I do NOT love living with three other people (not including C).

(room for ONLY two people and lots of love!!!)

3. a vacation to somewhere exotic actually, anywhere but st. louis is sounding exotic enough to me at the time being. I've found myself saying to C, "Hey baby, lets get a room at the Holiday Inn by the airport! Won't that be fun?!" Yea...I need to get out more.

(both of these are Holiday Inns...)

file this one under "boring ass posts"

Soooo, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It ended up that I had ALL of my vacation days left to use (yes, you are in awe of my extreme fear of getting fired work ethic!) so I took Wednesday off to absolutely shorten the amount of time I have to spend at work this week. At the moment I am seriously regretting not taking tomorrow off as well. Alas, I am greedy and want to carry over as many vacation days as possible to next year.

GOD this entry is boring. Were you expecting something pithy? Perhaps something touching and nostalgic? TOO BAD, you get to hear about my vacation days.

I gotta go think some more before I finish this so I don't fall asleep on my keyboard.

Happy Halloween.

Tomorrow is Halloween and I just don't have the desire energy to find a costume. Also, if I remember correctly from my college days (side note: I find myself waxing nostalgic about my college days more and more, and usually I make a policy not to be nostalgic about anything unless it was at LEAST five years ago, but anyway...) Halloween if you are over the age of eight is mostly about conceiving a costume idea that is mundane and adding the word "Sexy" to it and going out to get drunk and possibly hook up. Since getting drunk is expensive and I don't need to put on a cat suit to hook up, what's the point? Maybe I just need to be shocked out of my boring-ness.

If you didn't ever indulge in this sort of ridiculousness in college (Hi, Mom and Dad!) let me tell you how many Sexy Nurses and Sexy English Teachers and Sexy Trash Ladies there are out and about on any given October 31st. The best, in my opinion, are the Sexy Animals (I myself have given into the Sexy Cat Phenomenon and once attempted the rare and difficult Sexy Peacock.*)

This year our roommate attempted to make plans with us to get dressed up and go out on the town. She's going as an (sexy) Stingray to her friend's (sexy) Crocodile Hunter. I assume these costumes will be "sexy", because she is not the kind of person who would dress herself in the actual image of a stingray, triangular fins and weird prehistoric feeding hole and all. Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how one goes about dressing up as a stingray without employing a large amount of felt and/or construction paper and/or poster board. C and I entertained ideas of going out as Borat (because C does a mean Borat imitation) and a Gypsy (bonus! Gypsy is the cute (only to us, I presume) nickname that C has given me) and then someone suggested I go as Sarah Palin because I wear glasses and have bangs and can pull off a French twist and a blazer. Then I suggested in an Ultimate Moment of Laziness (UML) that I ressurect my Sexy Flight Attendant costume and C pull out his Sexy Airline Pilot...uniform. Hey, no one has to know he's not in costume haha! But then if he's going to do that, I might as well be a Sexy Graphic Designer for a Major Law Firm and if thats the case we should definitely stay home.

Although the above suggestions were met with minor bursts of enthusiasm, it was nothing earth shattering enough to rouse us from the couch to go plan said costumes. Thus, I assume we are Not Going Out for Halloween.

I'd like to say we would prefer to stay home and pass out candy to the eager young trick or treaters on my street, but there are no eager young anythings on our street. Sure there are young children, but I doubt their...ahem, caretakers...will be putting together a candy getting expedition for their progeny any time soon. So staying home will only result in eating all of the candy I buy myself and actively becoming LESS sexy. While I don't relish the idea of dressing up as Sexy Kate, I strongly reject the notion of becoming Fat and UnSexy Kate. So thats out.

I suspect what will end up happening is that we stay at home and turn off the porch light. Like that deterred me from coming to someone's house to get candy when I was little.

* But ended up as a Sexy Flight Attendant.