Danielle Blog

Activities with my niece

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with my niece while I’m here in TX. We must have played with beads for 15-20 min the other night where she’d put them around my neck one by one. Then we’d take them off and start all over again. Between each one, she would looooooooooook and smiiiiiiiiiiiiiile and be so happy about it. It was a lot of fun.

Then, she got interested in her new red glitter shoes. They are very Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz like. We had to work out a new way for her to put on her shoes which involved her standing instead of sitting. We got a system down which was really good. Then, she’d clomp around on the wood floor. I think she liked the clackety-clack sounds that they made.

We also went to the zoo, which are also on Flickr.  But I’ll leave that for Friday or so.

Here is the shirt that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and The Busy One, got me for Christmas.  I think it is pretty clever.

Since my policy is to not show pictures of anyone’s faces, you’ll have to look on Flickr to see some of the dress-up gifts I gave my niece.  She was afraid of the cape that I made, but I would imagine that with time, she’ll become more comfortable with it.  In addition, I gave her a princess hat, a cowboy hat, beads (and a small bag to put them in), boas (white and pink), sparkly glitter shoes (red and pink), a cat outfit (ears, tail and bowtie), and ballerina skirts. Oh, and I got her a mirror from the dollar store.  It was a total impulse buy and appears to be one of her favorite parts of her Christmas gifts.

Here is a picture of the cape when I was sewing it, and when I’d finished it.  Note the sequins and sparkly silver ribbon.

And here is a picture of the sweetie Max.

Christmas!

May you, your family, and friends have a wonderful Christmas day!

I had a really great Christmas Eve.  Left for church at 1:45 to practice before the 3:15 service.  Practice went pretty well.  Good thing we practiced though. 

The time in between practice and service was really nice.  I had a nice talk with one of the guys I sing with. We talked about our families’ traditions at Christmastime.  We listened to the flutes and piano practice their pre-service gathering music.  I listened to them before every service, beautiful music never gets old.

I was actually a little nervous with the first service. Something about the excitement of Christmas, maybe?  Thus, when we got to the part where I needed to read the beginning of the Christmas story, I stumbled over Quirinius.  And then almost completely flubbed Galilee and Judea.  *sigh*  I completely know those words.  I’m not sure that I’ve said them all that much, but I think saying them in front of people is always harder.  Oh well.  I got Galilee and Judea right on the 2nd service and by the 3rd service I got Quirinius too.    The minister wished me Merry Christmas as I was leaving after the 3rd service and we laughed about how I finally got it on the 3rd try. *grin*

Today, we’ll start with cinnamon rolls and presents.  Later today, we’ll have our traditional meal of dill pickle doobers, ham, mashed potato casserole, green bean casserole, and biscuits.  I’ve still got some cranberry/pineapple/raspberry jello that I saved for today too.  It should be great!

Funny enough, HB was telling one of the chefs at work about the mashed potato casserole sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And the chefs who cook for Christmas dinners for shelters and such in MN decided they were going to make mashed potato casserole this year!  They got big donations of cream cheese – which was the main stumbling block.  So, HB went in yesterday and he helped make a huge vat of mashed potato casserole. He said they used a pound of onion flakes!

I watched some Hallmark Christmas movies last night while he was out cooking.  There was a really funny one on this year called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.   I’m pretty sure it was new this year.  It was really good.

Well, the cinnamon rolls are ready, and they are too gooey to type and eat, so I’ll be signing off here.

Merry Christmas!

Countdown to Chrismas

I spent the weekend doing a sewing project for my niece’s Christmas present. I’d post pictures, but I want my family to be surprised too – and they are reading my blog this week, I think. So, I’ll show it after I give it to her. It will be cuter with her in the picture anyway. Hopefully, she’ll want to wear it.

Suffice to say it was fun to dust off my sewing machine. It was a little tricky, because I didn’t have the recommended needle size for the material. And I did this during the snowstorm, so I couldn’t go out for a replacement. But, you know, my niece won’t care. Thus, I’m perfectly pleased with how it turned out. Sewing this weekend kind of makes me want to find more sewing projects. This one took me back to my younger childhood years where I would design and make clothes for my dolls and tropical barbie. This would be the one I’ve shown here before.

Other than that, I went to church (in the congregation this week) and sang many Christmas songs. I’m glad this church goes ahead and sings them during Advent. So many of the songs are about Christ being born and Christ with us, so churches I’ve been to in the past haven’t wanted to sing them until Christmas Eve.

We have a really good line-up of songs for Chrismas Eve services. I’m singing at all 3. I will also be reading the beginning of the Christmas story from Luke.

I went to a really great Christmas concert last night. It was by Lauren Redpath who was our interim music director. I think our church made a mistake when we didn’t hire her permanently. She had shortcomings as a band leader, because she really didn’t know enough about instrumentation to lead the instruments. However, I think her vocals would’ve made up for it in retrospect. Ah well, hopefully we will find someone soon. You’d think that with the economy the way it is, we’d have people graduating from music schools in the area looking for jobs pretty soon. It was a great concert and really made me feel Christmassy.

Now, I just have a couple of days of working from home and then I’m off for a week and a half! I’m sure I’ll be taking lots of photos and posting them to Flickr soon. Hopefully, I’ll post here as well, so if you aren’t too busy, pop on by!

Brrrrrrrrrrrr

I caption this:

“Im on yur vent.  Soken up yur heat.” – in the style of Icanhascheezburger

It has been cold here this week.  -11F on Monday when I drove by the dealership that has one of those signs that tells you the temperature.

So, I gave my final yesterday.  I got it all graded today and have posted the final grades for class.  I only had 2 people fail (out of 68).  I had 11 A’s in one section and 7 in the other.  Average grade was a BC (like a B-/C+).  Usually, average grades are in the mid-70s and are C’s.  My averages were 80 and 81.  I don’t think this means that I’m an easy grader/softie but that the students learned what they were supposed to learn.

In other news, my department chair told me that some student wrote her a letter about what a great professor I am!  She wouldn’t tell me who it was, of course, because I hadn’t submitted grades at that point.  But it was really  uplifting to hear that.

Now I have time to prep for next semester *big sigh*.  There is a lot to be done.

getting closer

Well, I gave my last lecture of the semester on Friday.  I give a review session Monday and the final Wednesday.

It is hard to believe we are at this point.  The days are flying by.  And I have mucho grading to do before I can start working on next semester. Yes, about half of my holiday break will be preparing for next semester.

Frankly, I’m a little nervous about next semester.  I teach 2 different classes, so I will now have 2 sets of lectures to prepare.  And for one of them, I have to plan and organize the labs that go with the course.  Which, is likely to take a LOT of time.  In fact, today I meet up with one of my friends who is still in the lab where I post-doc’d to see if I can get some DNA from her.

Anyway, I’m going to do my best to put my worries aside and just focus on one week at a time.

The part of my week, this week, that has made me feel good is that I only have about 6 points left to design on my final exam (out of 120).  AND I only have one gift left to buy.  I know _what_ I want to buy, I just need to find it.  The rest has all been shipped to TX for my post-Christmas/New Year’s trip to see everyone there.  I will overlap with Mom and Dad while I’m down there.  And of course, I’ll see Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and my niece – the Busy One.  I can’t wait to play with her.  She loves her sandbox, and I got her sand toys for her B-day earlier this month.  I had them shipped directly from the company, so I’m looking forward to seeing how they turned out and getting to play with them.  I’m also excited about what I got her for Christmas.  I’ll post pictures as soon as she sees them.

In the meantime, I’m battling a cough.  I think I picked it up from one of my professor friends.  It is more annoying than anything.  BUT it has changed my voice and made it pretty ragged, so it could be a real challenge to do my review session tomorrow.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

And now, I’m off to tackle some more things on my to-do list!

Christmas Rock Music Mix

So, this year, with all of my commuting, I decided that I wanted a CD of the “fast” rock-ish Christmas songs. About half of my morning drive, I like mellower music (to get me started in my morning), and then I like to switch to something fast. There is a radio station here 102.9, that plays all Christmas music from just before Thanksgiving until Christmas. So, I listened to their station about a week during my drives, and any time a fast song that I liked would come on, I’d write it down.

I bought all of the songs off of iTunes and made the following playlist:

All I want for Christmas is you – Mariah Carey <– my favorite of them all, really gets me going
Christmas (baby please come home) – Mariah Carey
God rest ye merry gentlemen – Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan
Santa Claus is coming to town (single version) – Bruce Springsteen
I saw mommy kissing santa claus – John Mellencamp (almost cajun/bayou/Louisiana sounding)
Feliz Navidad – Jose Feliciano (would any mix be complete without it?)
Step into Christmas – Elton John
Wonderful Christmastime – John McCartney <– very techno, 80’s sounding
Winter Wonderland – Eurythmics – a little slower than the others, but more rock/pop than anything else
Last Christmas (single version) – Wham! <– remember Wham!?
Sleigh Ride – The Ronettes
The man with all the toys – The Beach Boys
Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms & the Anita Kerr Singers
Little saint nick – The Beach Boys
A holly jolly christmas – Burl Ives
The chipmunk song (Christmas don’t be late) – Alvin and the Chipmunks
Hey Santa! – Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson
Merry Christmas Baby – Bruce Springsteen and the E street band
Please Come Home for christmas – Eagles <– also slower, but I wanted it on here and stuck it toward the end in case I wanted to skip the slower ones
Song for a Winter’s Night – Sarah McLachlan <– very slow, but very pretty, and I’ve always wanted a copy of it

I’d make you copies if I could and send them to you, but unfortunately there are laws against that.

So, maybe this will inspire you to choose some of them and make your own mix CD. Of all of them, make sure you get the first one, even if you aren’t usually a Mariah Carey fan. I’m not much of one, but it is definitely the best fast Christmas song out there right now, I think. That and God rest ye merry gentlemen by the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.

Do you have favorite fast songs (or slow ones too) that aren’t on here?

Holiday weekend

My holiday weekend was very enjoyable. First off, I decided to take 3 days off and only work on Sunday after church. Sunday is always a bit of a short day anyway, because it is the day I talk to Mom and Dad and Texas Seestor. I often take a nap too. So, it wasn’t like I was committing to something crazy busy.

On Thanksgiving Day, I did my annual routine of watching the Macy’s parade. I don’t know about you, but I loved that James Taylor opened the parade with real-live vocals, as opposed to the rest of the stars who had recordings of their music play while they pretended to sing them. I multi-tasked during the parade and did all of the addresses on my Christmas card envelopes. I’m doing them early, because with the end of the semester getting close, it is getting crazy busy at school.

After lunch, I headed to see Twilight. I was in one of those huge theaters all by myself. It was really cool. And this theater always has digital picture and awesome Dolby sound, so it was good that way. I have mixed feelings about the movie. I thought the main female lead – Kristen Stewart – playing Bella was excellent and spot on. The main male lead – Robert Pattinson – playing Edward was not my cup of tea. For one, Edward is supposed to be fantastically handsome, and Robert Pattinson just isn’t my type. Now, the guy cast as his brother Jasper is exactly my type. Too bad he wasn’t Edward. The other problem I had was with his acting. I wasn’t too impressed. But there were parts of the movie that were excellent and made up for the rest, so all in all, it was enjoyable.

I came home, put the Turkey in, and settled down to a Hallmark Thanksgiving movie while I waited on HB to get home from volunteering so that we could have our special supper. The movie ended right as he got home, so the timing was great. Our supper was excellent. Our usuals are turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potato casserole, green bean casserole, and cranberry/pineapple/strawberry/raspberry jello. YUM. We were too full to eat pumpkin pie.

Friday was awesome, because I talked to SeaQueen. And I actually got ALL of my Christmas decorations up AND the empty boxes put away! This even happened with my adding 4 new bushes of lights outside, a new manger scene from Mom and Dad, a new lighted yard decoration (package stack) for out front, and a trip to Target to buy some more colored lights to replace some dead ones for the tree. I had assumed it was going to bleed over into Saturday. However, I got it all done, which was a terrific surprise. AND I got done early enough to finish assembly on all my Christmas cards. They are sitting on my desk, waiting to go out. (I decided I’d better wait a week before mailing them).

Saturday morning I read a new book by Nora Roberts – the second one in her Sign of Seven trilogy. The 3rd one just came out on Nov 25, which is awesome timing. My friend from my post-doc came over and we went out for Indian. Then we hung out all afternoon, just jabbering away. We had tea and pumpkin cookies at one point. After she left, I read some more. It was great to just sit and read a fun book. That evening, HB had to work, so I was back to watching another Hallmark movie – a Christmas one this time.

All in all, it was a great holiday weekend. Really excellent.