New Year's Exclusive

Happy New Year! Well, 2008's certainly holding new things for me. For instance, this will be the first year I've ever lived alone, meaning that I'll spend a lot of my time listening to that phantom ticking noise in the lake cabin (where is it coming from and how do I stop it?!) and plotting the next great way to lure visitors out to my neck-o-the-semi-arid-land ("woods" doesn't quite fit for Abilene terrain).

My now former roommate, Amber Joy, is currently en route to her next great adventure: 13 weeks as a traveling nurse in California. (Sounds like great fun, doesn't it?) Today she's romping around at the Grand Canyon. Here's an exclusive picture of her catching some zzz's on New Year's Eve in preparation for her early morning departure. (The cats felt that they needed to get in on that awesome napping action, too.)


Aww! Isn't that sweet?! I just couldn't resist sharing. Hehehe.

Doesn't Alley look so peaceful in this picture? Well, don't let such appearances fool you! This morning as I sipped my freshly ground, fair-trade Columbian coffee (thanks, Henricksens!) in a lovely 8-cup French Press (gracias, Russ!), I heard her come onto the porch. Desperate for the company of something other than the Phantom (tick... tick... tick), I cracked the door open to greet her. She bolted in with a LIVE BIRD clenched between her teeth, and promptly let it go in my bedroom so she could play with her food inside. I managed to catch it and take it back outside before any serious blood-letting could occur, and returned to my leisured coffee-sipping while the Phantom ticked away. So begin my solo lake cabin adventures...

Look what Alley got today:

Good kitty.

I hit it with a shovel just to make sure - yep, she got it all right!
Glad I got to it before she could try eating it. (Ick!)

Grandpa always said, "The only good snake's a dead snake."
I think this one was harmless (but I'm still glad it's dead).

Mouse to Mousse: a random commentary on my week

Well, Alley (our cat) has officially lived up to our expectations! I arrived home today from spending the weekend hanging out with family and friends to discover grey and brown tufts of fur all over the front porch (and some unidentifiable brown junk - I don't even want to hazard a guess as to what that was). It was about the right color and amount of fur to be a mouse... but there was no body (!), so it's hard to tell what type of small mammal she devoured in our absence. So, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and calling it her first official mouse! Yea, Alley! This is just what we got you for! What a swell kitty!

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I was fortunate enough to get to spend part of this week at my grandparent's house with my sister and my nephew. Here are some updated pictures of Janis and Quint, and Quint charming his great-grandparents:

(Janis made that shirt for herself - she's talented in so many ways!)

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I was also fortunate to be able to spend Friday night and Saturday catching up with some of my best girlfriends from undergrad. We didn't have any elaborate plans - we just punctuated our constant conversation with meals, spending most of our time lounging around in various rooms of Tera's house. We laughed, we reminisced, we dreamed, we cried. I love seeing the beautiful women my friends are becoming and the way God is constantly shaping them. Friends are such a blessing!

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In case you were wondering, this is what I look like with straight hair:

Now we know. Here's what I like about straight hair: I can run my fingers through it as much as I want to and not worry about being mistaken for Simba later. Here's what I don't like: it took us about an hour to straighten it. My normal time commitment is about 2 minutes - just long enough to towel it dry and apply mousse. (Not quite worth the trade on a daily basis!)