New Year, New Commitment to Blogging (?)

I am pathetically awful at updating my blog, apparently. I opened blogger up today, just to see, and thought to myself, "August? Seriously?" Needless to say, it's been a while.

We bought a house. We moved in. We bought a lot of Ikea furniture. We put it together. (I know what you're thinking, but I totally helped!) Then we were inundated with family members for Christmas. A brief photo history of the holidays follows:


The Christmas tree I picked out in five minutes, then had to drag out of the back of the little Honda by myself. It sat propped up on the front steps until Lisa got home from work. It's still up, at least until Epiphany. The furniture (minus the bookcase, which we got at Target and put together) was my grandparent's. I sat on that couch every Christmas afternoon for most of my life.

Not-so-subtle indoctrination of the sister continues apace. She liked her sweatshirt! She also liked the ribbon, which she wore on her head most of the day.


The view of our back yard from the kitchen window on New Year's Eve. We got more snow yesterday, so it still pretty much looks like that, except with blue sky. It's gorgeous, really. I'm sitting at the kitchen table so I can enjoy it. I love living here.

New Year's Eve fireworks in Northampton. I took a bunch of photos, but this one is my favorite. You can see that they're being set off from the roof of the parking garage. This was around 6:30pm. Later, they raised a ball (reminiscent of Times Square, but going the opposite direction) on the roof of the Hotel Northampton and fired a cannon. It was excellent. Cold, but excellent.

I'm currently listening to the new Ani retrospective that Em got me for Christmas. We saw it in Target a few days before, and I told her that it would be worth having just for the re-recording of Both Hands. I was so right. Now, a moment to contemplate the incongruity of an Ani cd in Target, hanging out next to all those kiddies from High School Musical...

In other news, I somehow managed to finish 52 books in 52 weeks in 2007. The end was a little ugly and involved me finishing three books on New Year's Eve while trying to go to a bunch of First Night concerts. I wanted to go up to the performers afterward and tell them that I really liked their music, but I really, really had to finish reading. I finished up with the third in Madeleine L'Engle's Crosswicks Journals series, which seemed appropriate considering that she was one of the authors we lost this last year. I also managed to read Slaughterhouse Five a few months ago, in honor of Kurt Vonnegut. No Norman Mailer yet, though. I'm not so sure about that one. I've already begun my first book of 2008, The Princes of Ireland. I like it so far, but it's freaking long. Why do I pick the long ones? At least I'm working on it now instead of on December 31. Never again. I'm saving children's books for December this year.

And that, my friends, is that. Hopefully, I'll blog again soon.