What a wild and wonderful year it's been

Guest are about to arrive for our New Year's party so I must be brief. This time last year I was just getting used to the idea of being engaged. What a great time it has been since then.

The coolest thing about life is how it gets better every year. Happy New Year to you all and may the passing years be equaled with rising fortunes.

HRH

No, seriously, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

All my bags are packed and I'm ready to go, leaving on a fast train for Kingston in a matter of hours. Doing all my Christmas shopping this year, I really didn't take the actual size of the presents purchased into account. As such, I have a large, almost hockey equipment-size bag, only full of presents. Call me Mrs. Claus.

If case I forget to do it in the next day or so, Merry Christmas to everyone. My you be able to share the day with the ones you love most and if you can't, make dramatic poses as you think of how much you miss them. It keeps you limber and makes it a little less woeful.



Today's sing-a-long song: "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby

HRH

Glamour and Glitter, Fashion and Fame

In the line up at Starbucks a colleague of mine confessed that she'd be spending a lot of time on YouTube recently, watching episodes of Jem. My reaction to this was delight in knowing that I could see the cartoon that shaped my girly psyche (for better or worse) and also dismay that I could see the cartoon that shaped my girly psyche (for better or worse).

Like most girls of my time I LOVED Jem. Loved the hell out of it. Whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was almost 100 per cent of the time "singer." Who ever thought up the show was a frickin' genius. I'm sure my entire family was scarred for life by my repeated (aka perpetual) listenings to the tapes that came with Jem dolls.

After a conversation with Tash (one who totally surpasses me in diehard Jem fandom) today, I decided to have a look at the shows. Would they live up to what they are in my memories? The plots themselves are terrible, the animation dated, but one thing continued to strike a cord with me; the Jem music videos.

They were each about a minute and a half long, silly as all get out but completely awesome. I managed to find my favourite one, from the episode "Stiches" where Jem and the band are trying to inspire their drummer Shana (also their clothing designer) to create something amazing. The result The Mood I'm in:



Oh it makes me want to dye my hair pink. Bless you YouTube.

Update: It would be unfair if I didn't unclude my favourite Misfits song as well, We're off and runnin'.

Today's sing-a-long song: "The Jem Theme Song" by Jem and The Holograms.

HRH

In search of holiday spirit

It's hard to pin down why, but I'm not feeling the holidays this year. Things started off well enough. I got the tree up, marveled at it's beauty, got the cards sent, completed all the shopping, played my holiday CDs ad nasueum, enjoyed a cup or two of coco, I even have dough waiting for me in the fridge to be transformed into sugar cookies, but I'm not feeling the usual excitement.

I know some of it is due to the green holiday we're experiencing. The snow seems to be an important player in creating holiday magic for me. Also all continual debate about Christmas trees in public places has been a real enthusiasm killer. It's not a problem I can fix, it's also not a problem I completely get. Trees are pretty. Yay.

I suppose, to be fair, one should be religious to truly have rights to weigh in on the issue. Christmas has pretty much zip to do with Christ for me. Perhaps because of that I should just let go of celebrating it. I don't know. It seems to me that the holiday has shifted from it's traditional celebration of the wee infant Jesus to a family celebration of gift giving. It just happens to fall on the same day as when Christian's celebrate the birth of their lord and saviour. (An interesting reversal of how the Christians subsumed the pagan holidays that traditionally happened around the winter solstice).

What I love about Christmas is all the lights. How we respond to the growing darkness by covering our homes and buildings with beautiful colours. Winter is really dreary and holiday decorations help in concealing that for a little while as we ease into the cold. When I see a Christmas tree I think "ooh that's pretty!" not "Go Christianity!" The occasion has evolved way beyond that for me.

Anyway, I digress. This year Christmas seems to be depressing me. As it gets closer each day I feel lower and lower. In a lot of ways, it feels like it's already over and I don't entirely understand why.

But I don't want to bring other people down around the holidays, so this will be the last I speak of it. More often that not, you can brighten your mood just by acting like you really feel that way. If I keep smiling on the outside, the inside should catch up in good time.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" as performed by Crystal Gale on the Sesame Street Christmas special way back in the '80s

HRH

Finely filtered

Geez! We're well into December and I'm just getting around to the first blog of the month now. Something is truly amiss. I don't know why, but I haven't had a lot to say for awhile. Blog posts occur to me only when I am as far away from my computer as time and space allows. It would be really lame to have this fizzle out when I'm a mere six months away from this blog being a whole five years old.

I suppose because I've been at this for some time, I'm less inclined to just blather about all the things I've blathered about before. I suppose I could talk about all the cooking I've been into of late, or how I find it perpetually annoying that hand lotion bottles always develop a crust around the spout and I invariably cover myself in hand cream when I try to use force to get it out of the way. I mean, isn't that just the most fascinating thing EVER.

Indeed, I could regale the public about my latent fears of pregnancy and home ownership (though both seem to be ultimately positive and inevitable things), my growing problem with buying clothing at Lululemon, how I'm trying to learn all the choreography to the Thriller video, about my recent experiments (and total failure) in do it yourself home hair glossing, how totally fucking gorgeous the Christmas tree is this year and how I could actually send out the wedding thank you cards if my husband would just finally print the darn labels.

Stuff is going on. I'm good. We should really get together for tea sometime. I'm finding the Chelsea show is better in person these days than online.

Today's sing-a-long song: "I don't feel like dancing" by the Scissor Sisters