giselle_lx

Do not fret if you find this message before you get a story comment.

It is now Christmas Morning here in Seoul and I'm leaving for the train to Deajeon to meet up with some friends for Christmas fun. I will find your story as soon as I can find internet once Christmas does occur over in America. I'm already certain I will be in adoration of it and am giddy with impatience to read the exploits of your awesome Yuletide work.

I really could not sleep past seven. Even alone in my house in Korea, with no reason to be up yet, I could not go back to sleep four minutes after resetting my alarm -- for want of opening presents on Christmas morning. I'm totally seven in my head. &hearts

For flavors of Christmas past ramped up even more, from Dot & Dustin, my parents new dogs this year, I have Hershey's Miniature mix bag of Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, and White Chocolate all with their own minty flavors. Holiday Mix M & M's which are all minty. And a brand new tester candy -- Candy Cane Kisses! (Which are white chocolate and candy can tiny dots of amazing) How is Christmas without things all minty.

An adorable not-rhyming poet sweatshirt and a Douglas Fir tea (which I can't wait to try) from Gordon. From my mother Candy Cane tea a pair of truly, truly stunning triple humming bird earrings in a gold and silver mix.

This looks positively divine already! It has two each of the following flavors -- Chocolate Caramel Cocoa, Chocolate Raspberry Cocoa, Chocolate French Vanilla Cocoa, Chocolate Supreme Cocoa, European Dark Chocolate Cocoa, and White Chocolate Cocoa! These look amazing and they even come with a warning on the back of the packets: The exceptional quality of Cocoa Amore requires a little extra effort to mix, but the results are worth it! Color me all sorts of intrigued already.



Christmas Eve is the casa of my memory lane and home has a much more specific focus though -- The Christmas Mouse! She is a beautiful little white stand up, with a gorgeous little Christmas dress, and dainty brown curls. And she brings you pajamas. Yes, this was a great holiday way to replace things that needed it -- those ragged and worn slippers or nighties, to exchange for children who'd grown taller or gotten more developed. But somehow I've kept it for always. Even extending it to include friends and significant others with me over the years.

It was going to be a year without, but she sent me some tiny Korean helpers --



-- along with the most super snuggly warm soft pajamas.

Taurus: According to astronomer Mark Whittle, the Big Bang began in silence. Soon it crescendoed into a majestic major third chord 50 octaves below middle A. Then it transformed, over the course of a million years, into a wistful minor third chord. In my vision of the first two-thirds of 2010, the music of your life will have a similar pattern: It begins with silence. Next, it progresses into a lush major feel, with spirited and complex contrapuntal themes. Then in June, it evolves into a dreamy, contemplative phase. By late September, however -- unlike the Big Bang -- you will move into a third act, in which the music of your life returns to the lively mood it had at the start, only now with the gravitas that the reflective phase has instilled.

It's hard to fault this predication, Uncle Rob, when the beginning I've been talking about the likelihood of for a while now. The rest I think will all come in its own time and does not sound so bad with 2010's out look. It makes me think of a few other things I need to write about during the next week and half, but it'll save until after Christmas.

For now I'll be here with It's a Wonderful Life, waiting for the Skype call opening of Christmas Eve presents with my mom, and for tomorrow, when I'm going to Deajeon for the first time, day and half, to spend Christmas day and night with Denise and Maureen. We're supposed to get up to amazing restaurants and museums and endless other things.

I'm still a little down, but I've slept a few more hours, and the Christmas Eve goes well enough.

(Yeah, I stole the idea to post this from jennday. :* ♥)

It's officially Christmas Eve day here on the East coast of Canadaland. Love and peace,

M.

It's been a good long while since I've brought you guys the utter cuteness that is my morning/IP/Intensive Preschool children, even though you hear about the all the time. Well, yesterday was Christmas Concert and last day before Winter Vacation. Thus, Selena and I took group photo's with each class and recorded our dances from the show. Which I'm going to share with all of you, plus a few more things, as well!

, I get that the reason this is happening is because I was lucky enough to find someone who I matched with, in a city of millions, where foreigners are a minute minority who saw a lot of life, food, tv, and traveling the same way; lucky enough that person worked me, and arrived on the same day as me, saw our work and coworkers the same, at least enough to take and make and build a mutual refuge; the I was blessed by that --

But I'd really, really like to not spend the whole of Christmas Eve in tears, like I have the last hour since saying goodbye at customs when I wasn't asleep riding the bus back home.




Some of this is probably also how stressful the last three days at work were, and the fact I've only had two hours of sleep since last night was Alice's going away and the airport car was at four, and my body is hating on something I ate yesterday. And how strange is it to think, if I had signed a normal contract I would be flying home now, too.

Imna put on some comfort Farscape and work on my videos of my kidlets from the Christmas concert.

Another tradition in our house, these always happened somewhere in amid December. They would be bought during grocery trips or they would show up in the bottom of your stocking (with your real orange, of course!). This was on a list of things I had made for mother post falling in love with Pumpkin Spice Hershey kisses and getting my Godiva Hot Chocolate & Cider mixes from Earl.

When I was endeavoring to make her a list of things that smelled, or tasted, or reminded me of Christmas time. I'm rather glad I did. Even though it's a milk chocolate thing and I'm not much in the mood for candy today, just seeing the box makes me thinking of home, makes feel just a little closer to the Christmases behind me and those half a world away from me.

Makes me aware of how blessed I am in my parents, in my life past and present and future.



Today was the last day of school and mail until January 4th. I've yet to receive a lot of things I'd hope would get here both boxes, and cards, but that means I'll have some interesting pile up on my desk in when I return to work. It didn't mean though that today's mail wasn't a whirlwind surprise. First there was a pile of cards.

Thus, firstly, my thanks go out to

 

risa7

 

, an anonymous elf from

 

holiday_wishes

 

,

 

bunnykissd

 

,

 

antihero_only

 

,

 

bonbouschnecke

 

,

 

sistahraven

 

, and

 

chlorrel

 

(who may have the most moving pre-written card message all month long). Secondly -- there was a box I was never expecting from

 

trelali

 

. You could have knocked me over from the shock of seeing her name on it alone.

What would come next, only served to drive me between the urge to laugh and cry continuously that was delirium. I feel the only proper way to explain this is with both a disclaimer and a photo. Disclaimer here. 1. Mah Li of the Awesome? Detests Twilight with the deeply grounded passion of a well read, well educated mind. 2. Mah Li of the Awesome? Adores me (and any and all places my head goes) more.



So reads one section of my card:

"Apparently, you are lacking the necessary accoutrements of the proper Twilight fan. Please accept this bookmark, box of band aids, and action-figure. (Sparkles not included.)"

(Li. You have no idea how hard it was to not start laughing the second I'd read this. :P So much for my having made it more than a year and half writing him and never having acquired long lasting memento's outside of a Etsy cell phone charm long dead months ago.)

I am uncertain whether I should be banned for my lolarious mental declaration that followed peering at all three through bubble wrap on my run between snack rooms and the teacher room. (You know, anymore than I'm already fanon ousted by my tongue-and-cheek rejection of most things SM related.) Poking at Edward's box -- with his terribly distended neck and gray outlined eyes and Angel brow and brown hair and sort of wrestler build. Or cackling that the first crest to end up my body will apparently be a Volturi one.

And.....well, I am beyond face palmy in how much I actually like my book mark and had no lolarious slights against it. Totally a writing focus from here on out. But that's not all!



And then I realized just now I left out one of the best gifts from this picture. I got a huge box of mix for making Key Lime bars, too! So there will be key lime bars once I figure out how to make them in a toaster oven, or there will be a key lime pie once I've tracked down some heavy whipping cream from the Costco.

At the bottom is a stunning selection of jewelry. The bracelets were made by mah lovely Li, and the earrings came from her mother. All of them in the colors of silver, blue and black. (How can I not be amused by the irony to my months focus being on this and so much lately.) The tiny notepad adorably reads "she was comforted by the knowledge that they were helpless without her." And next to it, in that itty bitty teeny tiny box is 'Freakin' Magickal Unicorn Gum,' which has an amusing back speech, too.




Thank you, love. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So so so much. For what was in the box as much as the surprise of the box and for making me all giddy and hilarious laughter filled and so very nearly in tears with angsty sleepover America wanting all at once. It was perfect all the way around. *snugs*

Finally, the premier of the Darkward fic I've been speaking of since the summer. The first 7, maybe 9 chapters have already been written and I intend to update once a week, hopefully every Tuesday.

Story Title: In Ruins
Author: adair7
Rating: R
Details: Edward/Bella
Disclaimer: Everything Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer.
Summary: Mysterious shadows in a photo turn into something more. He breathed in deeply, leaning in towards me and then exhaled quickly, as though he’d been punched. His breathing stopped. “Bite me,” I whispered. E/B. AU.
Link: @ ff.net

PROLOGUE @ twilight_t00bs

I had this huuuuuge plan to make everyone graphics and Christmas cheer... and then I ended up having a remarkably unfun time getting up close and personal with the porcelain features of my bathroom... so I'm sending everyone elaborate 2010 things instead.

Anyways, just because I'm dying, it doesn't mean my draggies should:




brb, getting my new fic "In Ruins" ready to post chapter 1!

I had a laugh at this one twice. Once when I pulled the reindeer bag from the box a week or so ago, the second time when I pulled out the gift inside of it. This one takes a bit of a telling to share. During one of the many late November/early December Skype calls with my mother, while she was asking me once again what I might need, I mentioned she could pack in a bag of pecans.

The house where she lives (where I did for the last third of my childhood) has a wonderful pecan tree in the backyard and by the time of the call in any other year, my freezer would have already had two or three (or even up to four on a big year) gallon bags in the freezer already. This year there was apparently bad year weather and it was not possible to send. So I put it out of my mind.

(As an aside, pecans are such a South and fall/winter flavor to me that one day while out shopping with Alice we had dinner at a nice restaurant, where they offered a pecan tart that looked a lot like a pecan pie. It really was, too. A little more solid than jelly-wiggly. But the right flavor. Which I ate the whole thing of, regardless of detesting pecan pie. Simply because it tasted right, tasted like home-thanksgiving-south-pecan pie, and there would be no other pecan and pecan-things this year.)



Yet here it is, wonderful south Texas pecans, fresh and half-shelled!

Which I may have to put out of my reach. One-third of it vanished by the end of this writing.

Dionysus Greek Sculpture Figurine - Gift Impact



This amused me immensely. (And no, it is NOT a gift request; it's out of stock anyway. It just amused me and I had to share.)

So I ended up continuing Inglourious Basterds last night with the intent to watch just a little more before going to sleep... and ended up watching the remainder. It was impossible to tear myself away. Yes, I'm way late to this party, I realize (the film came out in August after debuting at Cannes, if I'm not mistaken).

Anyway, great movie. It's not without its flaws but is easily one of the best movies I've seen this year. QT overindulges his love of long, meandering dialogue that doesn't seem to have a point... until it finally kind of does, but goddamn the performances and the sheer audacity of the entire intersecting plot made this a pleasure to watch. If Christoph Waltz doesn't win Best Actor at the Oscars this year, I'll lose all faith in humanity. Or at least Hollywood, heh. /dramatic

I called in today (yes, and I rarely do it, so I'm determined to not feel guilty) and now I'm going to get some 'clerical' stuff done - aka an overdue beta and some writing, plus getting caught up on emails and stuff. I'm also running on maybe three hours of sleep, so I'm sure a nap will be part of the equation later on. I'm a creature of relative leisure today.

A gorgeous Christmas sampler to drink during all my days through this season. It'll be an escapade of flavor adventures -- Ginger Peach Tea, Japanese Green Tea, Lemon Tea, Afternoon Tea, Darjeeling Tea, English Breakfast Tea, Raspberry Tea, Earl Grey Tea, Cinnamon Plum Tea, Chamomile Tea, Peppermint Tea and Apricot Tea!

I'm nursing a cup of the first to keep me awake long enough to do this post. It's a lovely black with ginger and peace. I'm rather pleased so far as the ginger is staying mild, while the peach likes to make its presence known just about when you swallow. The texture and taste of just biting into one.