(no subject)
Goodness gracious, I have not posted since October. Ooops? Needless to say, life has been rather busy, but not interesting for the most part. I survived another DOT inspection at our terminals at the beginning of the month. I am just happy to be done with it and to have no scheduled trip down to the mid-Atlantic for the foreseeable future. I'm sure I will go down sometime in January, but it has been really nice to be home. The inspection led me to a rather frantic prep time for the holiday season around Thanksgiving, but also meant that once it was done, I got to enjoy Christmas since I was completely prepped! I saw Cirque Dreams Holidaze, with conspiratrix at PPAC and the show was completely bizarre. It tried to be Cirque du Soleil, but really was not Cirque du Soleil. That being said, the acrobatics were pretty good and it wasn't their fault they were given weird material with which to work. Revels in Boston was just as good as always. In fact, I'd say it was one of the better performances. I loved the female soloist and the play with the play was not annoying at all. It is a great tradition that I had been thinking about dropping since Boston is so darn far, especially during the holiday season (yes, I am now a Rhode Islander), but that show convinced me that I need to continue with it next year. It really is a wonderful way to celebrate the season. I also saw the It's a Wonderful Life radio play at Trinity Rep with my parents with dinner at Gracie's prior. The dinner was everything that I dreamed it would be - gnocci with prosciutto, parmesan, and winter squash followed by duck and then a chocolate cremeaux. Yum! The radio play was also very well done with five actors playing all the many characters. It was a show that really allowed you to use your imagination. And I think my parents also loved it, so that's a great thing! I also saw the Boston Pops with my family and it was good as ever, but I really could have done without Joey MacIntyre of New Kids on the Block fame's performance. He turned "O Holy Night" into some kind of jazzy night lounge song. Ugh. It's not fair when people get such an opportunity just because they are famous. I would much rather have listened to the Tanglewood Choir all night.
Christmas itself was also wonderful and full of family. We started off at my sister's house in Barrington on Christmas Eve for cheese fondue and singing. Then, I went down to my parents' condo in Jamestown on Christmas Day for our traditional breakfast followed by prepping and cooking of the big Christmas meal. It was a warm and wonderful day inside with a few festive snow flurries outside. Even better, Cotton got to enjoy it with us. We even headed down to the beach house before the sun set to see how construction is going down there. My parents are doing a rather significant renovation/expansion of the house to make it a year round place. So far, the porch and hot tub have been replaced and they are looking great! On Boxing Day, we headed up to Westminster to celebrate with Mark's family. We sure were lucky to not have snow this year! I was, however, quite happy to get home last night to the realization that I had no big plans for the near future. Okay, except that my parents want to celebrate my birthday tonight before they fly back to Florida on Wednesday. I have so many leftovers from Christmas that it is crazy. Plus, I made split pea soup today with the ham bone from Christmas Day. It was delicious for lunch. And I'm sure it will be delicious every lunch for the rest of the week! But the good news is that I don't have to think about what we'll be eating! My big gift from Mark was an ipad2 which is totally unnecessary, but I am looking forward to carry it instead of my big, heavy laptop when I travel for work. Also, you don't need to remove ipads from bags when you go through security unlike laptops, so that's a huge plus. It was definitely a great Christmas even though it really felt like it flew by. How did it disappear so very fast?? Now, we're thinking about getting the tree down and putting everything away until next year. Sad, but necessary.