Our Christmas adventure of 2009

This Christmas started out looking pretty dismal when, on Christmas Eve, we realized that the snow outside was coming down a little too hard to make it to Norman. We had been in our own cozy world that morning, getting ready to leave, and it never occurred to me that we wouldn't be able to get there. Then Sean's dad called and told me that it was a real BLIZZARD and it wasn't safe to get out. He was right of course; by that time the snow was about five inches deep in our yard and the snow was whipping around like a frenzy. I was very upset because this was going to be my first Christmas Eve with the Sanders family and I was looking forward to sharing some of their traditions with them. And we had no idea if the snow was going to be clear enough to go up to Norman by Christmas morning or even that weekend at all. I thought it was destined to be the worst Christmas ever.
But then!
Sean and I braved the snow for a mile and made it to Ellen Sue and Kelsey's house. THey had nothing planned, because they were waiting to do Christmas next weekend with our family. And there was soup, and card games, and movies and a fireplace waiting for us. Kelsey and I even went out and played in the snow. We spent the night there, and by the next morning, the sun was shining and the snowplows had spent many hours hard at work. THe roads were clear! We drove to Norman slowly, just to make sure. We made it to Sean's sister's house, where most of the presents were waiting, because we had planned to meet here this morning anyway.
Sean's parents live four more miles east of town then Sean's sister. Their road was still closed becuase the bulldozers hadn't made it that far. To compound the problem, their gate was frozen shut and their neighbor had gotten her truck stuck in the snow right in front of their swing gate so they couldn't even get the tractor out to clear the snow.
Sean's dad spent hours that morning shoveling snow out from around the gate while Sean and James slowly tried to find another way to drive to their house. It seemed almost impossible that we would be able to spend Christmas together.
But three pairs of coveralls, two shovels, and about ten plastic trash bags later, Sean and James made it close enough to the house that the Sanderses could drag their presents and food in trash bags to the car and drive safely to Krysten and James' house. By noon, we were starting to make breakfast. By two, we started to open presents. By six, we had almost finished cleaning up the living room and were ready for supper. And by seven, I had concluded that this was an excellent Christmas.

Thought of the day:
and I still have another Christmas to go!

Phone calls.

Thought of the Day:
If you don't have time to answer the phone, don't answer it. Don't pick it up, listen to me identify myself, then say, "I can't talk right now, call me back later."
We have this thing called Caller ID now so that if you were waiting for that one important call and wanting to reject all the others, you can do that. Then I'll assume that you're not at your phone, instead of thinking that you found me tiring after twenty seconds.

Song of the Day:
The Tip of the Iceberg by Owl City.
Or maybe If My Heart Was a House by Owl City.
Or maybe Hello Seattle by Owl City.
Or maybe Cave In by Owl City.
Or maybe Saltwater Room by Owl City.

!!!writing!!!!!

Maybe the reason I wanted to log on a few days ago was so I could discuss the awesomeness of Scrivener.
I have been playing with it for days and still haven't gotten around to writing anything because I've been so busy updating the background and research folders. Since I love organization almost as much as I love a good story, this is the perfect software for me. So much fun!

Tales of woe from the internet

So I feel really stupid right now because the reason I wasn't receiving emails on my new alumni account was because I had it set to forward all my emails to a non-existent email address. And the reason I haven't written on here for a while is because my password or something was messed up and since my email was not receiving emails, I couldn't send an email to myself to reset my password. And now I've forgotten everything that I wanted to say here.
Instead I will just tell you that I have started re-reading through my NaNoWriMo script and have found more worth keeping than I ever thought possible. True, I'm going to totally re-write some scenes and have to attribute so dialogue to completely different characters, but I'm amazed at what will remain. And at how much more I still have left to write. I've decided to go for a Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone length novel on my first attempt. As you know, it is the smallest of the HPs, but still rich in plot and wit--so I should have ample space to tell my story as well. In case you were wondering, the Philosopher's Stone is 76,944 words. (No, I didn't count them myself.)
Oh, here's another tale of woe about my experience with the internet lately. I tried to buy Sean's bd present online, but when I pushed "checkout" it never loaded the page. I hit refresh about five time, also tried redirecting from the page and then coming back to it a few minutes later, all for naught. It's really frustrating and if I can't get it to work in the next couple of days I'm going to have to get him an inferior version elsewhere.
That's all for now. Except, I'm really glad there is no wind today or it would be unbearably cold.