Partial updates are better than no updates, right?

It's been an exceptionally busy few days... I've tried to at least take a few minutes now and then to skim through my flist, but I've had almost no time to actually get around to replying to anyone, I'm afraid. In fact, this entry is being written in fits and starts today, between various family activities and visits with friends, and it's still only going to very basically touch on everything that's happened. It's all flying by way too quickly.

Christmas was wonderful! Up to open presents about 8:30, with a break around 10:30 to get ready and go to church, then back for more present opening (there were a lot of us here, including several children... there was a ton of stuff to unwrap). I think rackham was really surprised by the truly excellent tickets I was able to get to go see Great Big Sea in February (second row, center section on the floor, toward the left of the middle of the row -- squee!!!), and I was so worried he'd figure it out or find out they were on tour again and buy tickets himself. We got lots of cooking gear, to go with our newly acquired hobby... and one of Rackham's sisters made us this fantastic Star Wars quilt (plus has a few Star Wars throw pillows on the way that she hadn't quite finished yet). Oh! Oh! And Rackham got me four, count 'em FOUR, titanium sporks!! Way up on the extremely high end of the niftiness scale!

There was just so much neat stuff... Creating a combined Amazon wishlist for the two of us turned out to be the best idea ever! Relatives were always asking us what we'd like, as a couple, and it's tough to come up with ideas off the cuff like that, that would be something we'd BOTH like equally and wouldn't be primarily for one or the other. Sitting down and making the wishlist helped gel a lot of ideas... and it also led to a number of surprises, since we got things off the wishlist from people we had no idea even knew it was there (and that I was sure would never have been able to find on their own). And to make things much easier, this year I finally remembered to make some notes as to who gave us what. After a morning of a whole ton of people opening presents, it can get really easy to lose track of your own (point in fact, I recently found out that a necklace of a laser-carved Welsh coin that I'd been thinking had been given to me by tomte several years ago had actually been a gift from Rackham. Oops. :-p )

The other thing I can definitely say is that we've eaten way too much in the last week. Even above and beyond all the various Christmas parties and feasts, there are certain restaurants we always try to hit when we're in Utah, and it's incredibly easy to go overboard. Monday afternoon was the trip to Tucanos Brazilian Grill... I've heard there are two such restaurants up in the Seattle area, but I've never been able to find them, so it's always a treat when we're here. Tonight was a trip to Brick Oven Pizza for their made-to-order fresh pasta bar and and their own special root beer. Yum! onetwomany knows the place I'm talking about, since I dragged her there last year when we drove through this way after WriterCon.

Last night there was a Bardic (aka a Filksing) here at my in-laws' house, hosted by Rackham's twin sister and some of our friends who were in town from Minnesota. What an absolute treat! There were a few people I hadn't seen in years, and a bunch of filk I'd never heard before (a few of which were based on books that are getting tossed on the Teetering Pile the moment I get home (in particular, The Gods Themselves by Asimov)). I really need to track down some of the local Seattle area filking communities, because I sure do miss it... we used to host Bardics almost once a month at our house when we still lived here, but I just don't know enough interested people back home to make it work. It's also definitely time to start buying more filk... we're woefully behind on the new stuff.

More later if I get the chance... Hope you all had a great week!