A Much Needed Day Off

It was sooooo nice to be able to just lounge around on the couch today under my new down throw blanket and fuzzy slippers while Johnny set up my iPod and loaded up the new CD's. We had a full weekend and it started with our Company Party at the Bottom Line on Friday night. Here are some pics...


Handsome Matt enjoys a beer with William



Joey, Michelle and William



Val and Sean wait for their yummy sandwiches



Mookie and Fred chat about the old high school days



Shackie and Mangey stop by for a few martinis



Fred and Johnny mug it up (John's gonna kill me for posting this pic)



Jal and Joe (of "A Very Joe Christmas" fame)



Sean and Mike lookin' mighty scared (of Freddy's dancing?)

I think I captured everyone at the party. It was small, but was nice to see everyone. We exchanged gifts and John and I got a couple that were addressed "From: Their Butts". I had 3 drinks (vodka and cranberry) which pretty much just made me very sleepy. John and I got home around 1:45 or so... we haven't been out this late in a while!

Saturday, we lazed around late in bed but had to go grocery shopping for the evening's festivities and to prep for Christmas day hosting duties. Lots more present wrapping had to be done too. A sad call from Susan saying she was sick and the gathering at Ron & Karen's had been postponed meant my chicken & grape salad would be shared between Linda and Diana instead of the three of them. John and I stopped over at Mom B's to check out her tree and hang out before heading to Nate & Linda's. What a lovely feast they had going on over there with both Nate's and Linda's family in attendance. After a short visit, we were off to Robert & Pokey's. This year's gift distribution frenzy was moved up to 11:00 PM, despite Grandma Moreno's objections. She likes to wait until midnight. Lots of gifts were passed out to the little ones mostly. I don't think there was as much given out this year.

Sunday was our big day. Both John's family and mine gathered at our house for ham, mac & cheese, kraznapolski (spinach & cheese cassarole), nutty buttery green beans, and loads of cookie treats. We also had snacky things like cheese, crackers, summer sausage, chips, veggies and dip to start, as I was running a little behind and was still prepping the side dishes when everyone arrived. We're very happy Freddy and Mike M were able to stop by and help us eat some food!

We had a flurry of presents too, as Mom B brought over a carload of things to spoil her grandkids and new favorite daughter-in-law. LOL. John also spoiled me with a beautiful Tiffany necklace, some cordless TV headphones, Lantern Moon knitting needles, a Perez salon gift certificate, and an iPod! I got a lot of awesome gifts from Mike and Diane, Jim and Ann, my folks and aunts, and friends too. Although I didn't spoil John the way he spoiled me, I did get him a 19" flat screen monitor. As I write this entry, I'm thinking, "Man, this screen is ginormous!"

So, today was a clean up and laze around day. John was on call and he didn't want to tempt the fates by leaving the house and then getting an elevator emergency call. We ate lots of little ham sandwiches and cookies.

Hope everyone had an awesome holiday weekend and I look forward to hearing about everyone's activities!

Festivus... for the Rest of Us

As my friend, Bill (that's DE Bill, not Best Pal Bill), pointed out, today is Festivus. It's also one of those "Friday before a long weekend" type days where no one really feels like doing any "real" work. I have been working on consolidating some documentation written by someone else, but it's hard to stay focused. And... the boss said we could leave early today... around lunchtime. Woohoo!

Yesterday was our company luncheon (not to be mistaken with the Company Party tonight at the Bottom Line!) and there was all kinds of food and fun. We started off our office party with a Secret Santa game for those who participated (names were drawn 3 weeks ago)... then onto the food! Deli, veggie and fruit platters were ordered from the local grocer and staffers brought in everything from Pumpkin Soup to Baked Ziti. YUM! Of course, there was desserts! Cakes and my famous cookies and brownies.

After lunch, it was back to work, but we reconvened after the boss' conference call to do a Mystery Gift game. At stake was a good gift and a crappy gift. The first game took quite a while and got suspenseful as folks were knocked out of the game one by one. The second game was more cut-throat and quick. The winner of the first game got to pick from two boxes, but was not allowed to open it. The winner of the second game got the second box. As it turns out, the winner of the second game got the "good" gift, a $75 gift card to Wawa! That's a lot of coffee and gasoline! The "crappy" gift, which really was very nice, was a $25 gift card to the Olive Garden. There were little messages inside the boxes on top of all the fluff inside (GC's were on the bottom). I don't remember what they said, but they were very funny.


Khayyam and Bryan try to unlink metal puzzles

For part of the afternoon, the guys tried to unlink the metal puzzles the boss gave them. The techie guys love this stuff!!!

It's amazing how much more in the "holiday spirit" the folks at my new job are. And very generous! See the bounty of little gifts I received in the past week!


Cards and holiday cheer


Candy canes, chocolates, candles, ornaments, and lots of other very thoughtful gifts. The goofy penguins are mine. I got them at a flea market -- 5 for $1. What's not to like?

In the 3 months I've been at my new company, I've received a little pocket calendar, a regular calendar, a turkey and a lovely thermos. I don't think my old company gave us anything like that! Not the "original" company, which gave its employees "Turkey Bucks" at the Acme at Thanksgiving and a (small but much appreciated) bonus at the end of the year. But the other company that took over... they rarely showed appreciation for the employees in that manner. It was dependant on the department you worked in and who you knew. I did receive a nice mug and a golf shirt. The last department I worked in gave us shirts to provide a "uniform" for the instructors. I can't really do much with them now. If anyone at ATS wants a ladies size medium golf shirt, I have plenty!

But I do have to say I'm very thankful to be employed at my new company, despite the long commute and pay cut. And I'm thankful for my husband, family and friends. So, happy holidays and I hope to see many of you this weekend!

Company Party 2005

One of my most anticipated gatherings of the year is the "Company Party" at the Bottom Line. It's not as if we never get together at a bar, but there's something special about the way this bar is decorated for the holidays, preparing everyone for a festive Christmas.

My first Company Party, I believe, was the year a large group of guys dressed in Santa suits (doing a bar crawl) came in and Maria danced with one of most of the night. The place was packed with Santas! Two years ago or so, LL came with her friend, Gina. One of the Santas asked her to dance and said she was the prettiest black girl he'd ever seen. Sometime during the evening, I believe she ended up dancing on a table or chair. Another year, we were drinking shots... kamikazes, jameson. After a few of them, I was a little yazzed. I got on the dance floor and danced off my buzz!

Last year, we finally got to meet Michelle, Joey's (then) new squeeze. We also met her sister, Jen, and fiancee (now husband) Shad. William and Freddy piled into Shad's car for a ride home and they've been grateful to him ever since. Exactly what happened during that ride?

Although the group has changed over the years (some of the married folk with kids don't tend to join us anymore... so sad), it's always interesting to see who will show up. Will Mangey stop by for 10 minutes and leave without saying goodbye? Will we see Tim McGee? And has the bar learned how to make a Stoplight?

Hope to see you at the Bottom Line this Friday night!

3 lbs of butter and a KitchenAid

Every year in mid-December, I bake cookies. I've been doing this for at least 7-8 years now. You'd think it would get easier, faster, streamlined... but somehow it's still a big mess. I generally make the same 5-6 varieties of cookies, sometimes throwing in a new one to test. I spent a good chunk of my Sunday, along with the occasional help of sous chef, John, making dough. Lots of dough. But thank the culinary gods for the invention of the KitchenAid mixer. This thing weighs a ton (I borrowed it from my mom) but it makes cookie dough in a jiff. It's the washing of the mixing bowl and paddle in between each type of cookie that takes up my time.

The cookie baking actually started at the grocery store on Saturday. The hunt was on for Skor bars, an ingredient in the Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate Chip Toffee cookies. John said, "How about Heath bars? They're toffee." Oh no, my dear husband... you've gotta use Skor bars! That's what Martha used. Martha of Notley, NJ. Stewart, of course. This was a recipe she showcased on her MS Living show years ago and I've been baking them ever since. They're my favorite cookie and I only make them once a year.

No Skor bars to be found on Saturday. Not at the drug store either. We had a more pressing matter on Saturday than to look for Skor bars. I had a cellophane noodle salad to make. Cellophane noodles and a small bottle of fish sauce. The tragic little Filipino market didn't have what I needed so we trekked all the way to Wheaton (after a long day of gift and grocery shopping) to buy cellophane noodles. Then back home to make salad.

Salad completed and ready for partying, we went to the first annual Weekes Family Holiday Bash. What a wonderful party it was! Although I only knew a few other people at the party, the Weekes family sure knows how to put everyone in a festive mood for the holidays with lots of beautiful decorations and plenty of food. I really enjoyed the pomegranate spritzer and it looked like my cellophane noodle salad was a big hit.

Sunday, John had an errand to run so I asked if he could stop by the 7-11 and see if they had Skor bars. If not, the Heath bars would do. Ugh! What am I gonna do when they decide to discontinue Skor bars? John scored a couple Skor bars! YEA! Ready to make dough. This one has to be refrigerated, so I did that and moved on to a new recipe... Rum Balls. After reading the recipe more carefully, I realized that needed to be refrigerated too. No baking has been done yet, keep in mind.

John made some Haystacks. Those don't require any real cooking. You just melt some peanut butter and butterscotch chips, dump in a can of chow mein noodles and a can of cocktail peanuts, stir it around and drop 'em onto some trays and let 'em harden. While John was doing this, I was making peanut butter cookie dough. Finally! Something to bake. John unwrapped a boatload of Reese's cups for me. See, the pb cookie dough goes into these mini muffin tins. When they come out of the oven, you press a Reese's into each cup. It's a Reese's wrapped with a pb cookie. I like making these but they're not a favorite of mine. Luckily, John loves pb.

Next cookie was the Mexican Wedding Cookies. Such a simple recipe. Only, this time, it was powdered sugar flying everywhere. The last cookie was GOFCC (good old fashioned chocolate chip). I just prepped the dough for that too. I was all cookied-out. I'll bake off the 3 doughs I have in the fridge tonight. I hope.

After all the cookie work, I went over to William's to have some of his famous chili and watch the Redskins-Cowboys game. I should have known better than to believe William had a chili recipe. It was actually Little Dana who cooked the chili. And it was yummy. It made up for the Cowboys getting STOMPED on by the Redskins.

Hope everyone has their shopping completed and holiday plans made. Till next time...

Jal the Ripper

I started a new project (X-mas gift) and the yarn I'm using is called "Dream" by Moda Dea. It's soft and lush and eyelashy. Meaning it's got little wispy things hanging off the main part of the yarn, which looks like chenille. I love all the different eyelash yarns out there, but having to rip out and start a project over (and over and over) on the same chunk of yarn makes the little eyelashy things tangle up and look mangey.

Being (pretty much) a self-taught and undisciplined knitter, I tend to wing it. I rarely ever swatch or check my gauge. I do try to use the recommended needles and find comparable yarns for a project, but for the most part, I'm winging it. This is OK when you're doing something like a scarf. It doesn't really matter if it's too wide or too long as most scarves are "one size fits all". And for the few ponchos and hats I've made, they've turned out OK without me checking gauge. Actual clothing... that's another story!

My first clothing project was a cotton knit tank top. I really like the design but I think the yarn I used was too chunky. It sits in my closet under a pile of turtleneck sweaters. I blogged about it and put it up for adoption, but no one has claimed it yet.

I made a knit tank dress for little Gabrielle that came out pretty cute. My next venture was a knit guernsey dress for my co-worker's baby, and I have to admit it's the best thing I've ever made. It had everything... bobbles, button holes. It was a beauty. Debbie Bliss patterns are so awesome! Both dresses came from the same Debbie Bliss book. I wish the little baby dress had instructions for larger sizes. I'm sure I could adjust it to make it fit a 3-yr old, say, but I'm not that advanced in my knitting yet.

This summer, I made a sweater for my sister-in-law out of a new fiber, Bamboo yarn. It was really cool, but didn't knit up as soft as I thought it would. It's a cool design I'd like to try again with another yarn. Maybe for myself... this spring...

But for now, it's scarves, scarves and more scarves. I've got 3 scarf projects on the needles and one more being cast on again. I hope I don't tear out all the little eyelashes!

How many miles????

I looked at my odometer this morning as I was nearing work and it read 177,777. So pulled to the side of the road next to the big Mercedes Benz holding lot (not sure what they really do in there but it's full of Benzes) and took a picture. Pretty crazy to think Jackass has traveled so many miles in 10 1/2 years!

Monday, we celebrated 12:12 at Uncle Jed's and two of the original founding fathers, Henry and Billy, showed up. We had more than the required 12 people at the party, so another year of good luck! William did an awesome job planning this event and everyone had a good time reminiscing about past 12:12 events. William had a bunch of door prizes, including surge protectors, a universal remote, and a flash drive. I won the grand prize... a 12-pack of Natural Light beer, a favorite of Henry's. I was hoping to win the Spongebob disposable camera. The beer may find a bow on it and regifted to a lucky Chumado.

Busy weeks (and weekends) coming up. Gift purchasing and crafting - almost complete. I'm about 3 hours away from completing my brother's birthday gift. I still have to figure out what to get my new brother-in-law, but luckily, I have a list. I know what I want to get/do for about 5 other folks on my list... I just have to get to the store or find a few extra hours in the day.

I can't wait for my stamping stuff to come in! I plan on making gift tags and it should be a fun day of wrapping and stamping. I started making these cute little knit hats for cards, but that project has been sidelined for now. Where does the time go???

OH... and then there's the baking and cooking. I have to make a cellophane noodle salad for a party on Saturday, bake brownies for my company holiday lunch next Thursday, bake cookies in general, make a special food gift for Susan, and plan our X-mas day menu as John and I have the family over to our place. Actually, the menu is planned... just need to get the ingredients and put it all together. And clean the house! Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it! Happy Holidays!

12:12 2005

Yes, I know it's 12/12 (the date) but this most honored holiday began as 12:12 AM, the time... We were honored on Friday night with a first hand account (by Henry) of the incident that sparked this holiday. Back in 1980 (or there about), he and a few guys were hanging out and decided to call Doreen, who one of the guys really liked. It was after midnight, but it didn't matter (I imagine they were probably drunk). They also decided to record the call via some device that hooked to the phone. Anyway, so they called up Doreen. At this point, Henry and friends could only hear the conversation from the perspective of the caller. The caller asked for Doreen and then said, "12:12?". When they played back the recording, apparently Doreen's dad picked up the phone and said, "Don't you know it's 12:12???" Not a very exciting story... guess you had to be there... but the gang somehow managed to turn it into an annual holiday. The first few parties, each person had to bring a 12 of something. This usually meant a 12-pack of beer. Or a dozen doughnuts.

This year, I hear they located Doreen. She had been living in New Orleans and was displaced by the hurricane. She came back to the DC area and someone ran into her working in downtown Silver Spring. She may make an appearance at our 12:12.

If you're in the Bethesda area, come down to Uncle Jed's at 7:00 to celebrate our most favorite holiday of the year! Happy 12:12!

Congrats, Bianca and Jay!

Just a quick note to say CONGRATULATIONS to Bianca and Jay, who got engaged this weekend while out in Phoenix to see the Redskins game. We hear Jay asked Robert for Bianca's hand before they went out to AZ. How sweet! Congrats!!!

One Step Above...

So tragic...

... a Charlie Brown tree. Actually, it's very nice. Just needs some beaded garland or something. We set the tree on top of the "formal" living room coffee table because the little alcove we had it last year has been taken over by our soon-to-be liquor cabinet (currently hiding wedding gifts and a catch-all place for Jal's junk!).

Last Thursday saw the sudden passing of poor little dumb-dumb Tiger. He would have been 7 in April. Although Tiger wasn't the most handsome of bulldogs, he was a sweet, side humpin', snorty friend to Freddy and Molly and we send our thoughts to them.


Molly and Tiger (1999-2005)

Happy 40th birthday to Joe Burdett! We celebrated his birthday with a surprise party thrown by his wife, Nancy, on Saturday night. It's been quite a while since I've been to a party with so many people. I thought Khalid's 40th in September was pretty big, but this was even bigger! Apparently, Joe knows A LOT of people! And the food... there were 3 rooms of food! We all had a wonderful time seeing old friends.

The new girlfriend of one of John's old high school pals looked a lot like someone who went to my junior high. Rick introduced her as "Teresa", but it's possible she changed her name from the girl I knew, Van-Ahn Nguyen. I'm not sure why I didn't just ask her if she went to Sligo. For some reason, we're not good at mingling with people we don't know. We've often tried to make a game of it where we send someone out of the group to mingle and bring a new friend back to us, but that hasn't been the case for quite a number of years.

This weekend, John and I also braved the strip malls of Columbia and Rockville to do some X-mas shopping. My problem is what I need is TIME, not shopping centers. I've got a number of knitting projects I need to complete, but instead, I'm blogging (LOL).

OH! Last Thursday night I went to a stamping party hosted by my co-worker, Mary. She's been creating beautiful greeting cards for a couple years and is associated with Close To My Heart products. She did a demo of the products and we made a card, tag and 6x6 scrapbook page using her supplies. It was really fun and I can imagine myself getting sucked into another craft/hobby. I ordered some things and gave her another order today (gifts for my nieces). I decided to stick to the holiday theme for now and do gift tags. I've done some gift tag stamping in the past, but the products from CTMH are really unique. Mary also introduced us to embossing (really cool!), but I decided not to do that yet. Knitting and beading are difficult enough to keep up!

Mary said her dream is to open up her own card shop some day. It's funny how I once put "creating greeting cards" as my dream career on one of those e-mail survey things. But the handmade cards and invites I've done in the past (which I thought were really nice) don't compare to what Mary has created! If you get a chance, click on the CTMH link and see what they're all about.

Well, must get back to my brother's b-day present. I have to finish it by end of the week!!! I'll post some pics once I've given it to him. I'm hoping it snows soooo much tonight they close the office. I doubt we'll get more than a few inches, but one can dream...