The journal is updated with a year in review entry.

Here are some pictures from early yesterday morning, when the snow had been falling for an hour or so: Icing Sugar Land.

By about 4 pm yesterday we had 8 or 9 inches of snow, and it looks like a little more fell last night. This is a lot of snow for this part of Connecticut.

Today the sun is out and the snow is melting up on the roof, hanging 2-foot icicles from the eaves outside the study window.

The book reviews are updated.

Today it snowed about 9 inches in Hamden. This is the biggest snow I've seen in at least a couple of years. It's like old Pennsylvania days!

I took this picture at about 8:00 this morning, a couple of hours after it started:

The journal is updated.

And there was great rejoicing!

An interesting article from (I think) the Austin Chronicle, about online journals.

I know I'm pretty much a lightweight as far as online journals go, but Raspberry World was always meant to be something different from that. The journal is just one part of it. I like it that way.

The hundreds of hits I get for my recipes every week are enough to convince me that the journal is one of the least interesting parts of the page for most visitors. Of course there are a few who feel differently.

I was just re-reading last December's entries over at Gracie's World. This is one of my favorite journals. Gracie writes a lot better than many humans.

I've put up some pictures of the house from this weekend. If you're interested in seeing them, they're here. You can also get there through the gallery.

Christmas dinner around these parts is happening at 7 pm. I took the turkey out of the oven a little while ago. The dressing is going in next, and I am going to make green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy. Then, when the dressing comes out, my rolls will be ready to cook and everything will be done.

Just looking at that paragraph and all the pictures I've taken this weekend makes me realize how very, very lucky we are. I am so grateful to be in a warm, comfortable house, with someone I love, cooking a huge dinner with food I bought. I know I take a lot of these things for granted, but I shouldn't.

At work, a bunch of us participated in a volunteer project for the Salvation Army this month. It was one of those "adopt a family" things where needy families submit lists of things they need for the holiday, and people donate the things through the Salvation Army. I was happy to participate, but it broke my heart when I saw the list of things they needed. Basic stuff like potatoes and cereal. It certainly makes you think twice about the state of things today. I'm glad to say my group at work was very generous, but I do feel like there's more that I could be doing myself. I think my new year's resolution (besides going back to the gym) is to start volunteering again. I haven't done it since we moved to the New Haven area, but I am sure I can find some place here where I can do some good.

Mutant Christmas Trees

When we went to buy our xmas tree a couple of weeks ago, we ended up at the same tree farm we went to last year. There are tons of farms around here, but we knew where that one was, and we're lazy. When we got there, I remembered what a hard time we had finding a decent-looking tree there last year, and not surprisingly, they didn't have any trees there this year that were any better than the ones from last year. The choices might not be so limited if we could buy a taller one -- they seem to have a better selection of those -- but with these 7-foot ceilings we are kind of limited on the size we can choose.

So we were walking around looking at the trees, and most of them looked pretty okay from one side, but on the other side there would be a huge, unsightly hole. I'm easy with the whole "back of the Christmas tree" thing, but these holes were so big that you could practically see them through the tree!

It certainly made me long for Central Pennsylvania, where there were tons of high-quality xmas tree farms growing gorgeous blue spruces and fraser firs. I miss Kuhn's tree farm!

Anyway, back to Connecticut. The worst part was when we walked around to the edge of the xmas tree field, and came across these mutant trees that had been damaged by a huge deciduous tree that had fallen on them at some time. There were pines that had been bent at 90 degree angles right in the middle of the trunk, and they were still growing that way. It was really creepy, like something from that X-Files episode, Home. I only wish I had had my camera with me.

But the story has a happy ending. After lots of looking, we found a 7-foot tree with a less-than-gaping hole. And the best part of all -- it has tons of pine cones in it, still attached. I love that! It's so cool, especially with all the bird decorations. So we're happy with the one we got.

But next year we're goin' somewhere else. (Like maybe Pennsylvania.)

Update from Winter Wonderland . . .

Well, we are not getting any snow but the wind is harsh today. I can actually feel it blowing through the (closed) study window, and man, it is cold. However, the sky is bright blue and the sun is out, and when you live in Connecticut that counts for a lot.

We have the new Enya CD playing (I gave it to Marty and his mom gave it to me) and I am about to go get elbow-deep in raw turkey. But we have had a very nice morning and once I finish downloading MSIE from the Microsoft site we will call our families. What priorities, huh?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It may be strange to think of people as unreligious as Marty and me celebrating Christmas, but there is a lot of hope at this time of year, and I am all about hope.

Today I plan to have a quiet day at home with my husband and cat, and think about faraway friends and family. I am sure we will talk to a few of them on the phone as well. We will have turkey and presents and be grateful for our lives. We will probably listen to the Elvis Christmas Record a few times. Doing otherwise would be fuckin' blasphemy! (As they say in The Commitments.)

So, many wishes for peace and joy to all Raspberry World visitors. Hope you have a great day doing what makes you happy. Don't forget to tell the people you love that you love them.

Isn't this cute? It's a Hello Kitty tree ornament that Alicia sent me from California. It's all glittery and stuff.

I have spent the day working on stuff for Christmas. I made 2 pecan pies (one for us, one for next door), put together a grits casserole for tomorrow morning, and cooked a pan of cornbread and chopped all the celery and onion for tomorrow's dressing.

So tomorrow when I wake up, I can put the casserole in the oven and turn on the tree lights, and make a cup of tea. Then when Marty gets up we will open presents and have breakfast.

I have another Hello Kitty in the tree. This one is a Geisha Kitty that Katynka brought me. The idea of a Sanrio Geisha seems vaguely inappropriate, but hell, I'm game!

Oh my god! This is a girl after my own heart! I think she loves Tare Panda as much as I do. :-) Which is a lot.

Our tree is full of nesting birds.

Birds are a christmas tree tradition in my family. When I was growing up, we had a white bird with feathers and glitter (which always went on the top of the tree despite Dixie's desire for an angel), a white bird with gold braid trim and a little gold topknot, and two fat quail which must have come from an old wreath someplace. My mother must still have those decorations.

Now, I have several of these little white and red birds that I bought in State College, which I have used in wreaths but mostly use every year on the tree. I usually put them up near the top, but I have never found a bird to match the glittery one we had when I was a child; that's why there is no bird on the tip top this year.

The brown bird with the plumey tail shown here is a new bird that Katynka brought us this year. Below it and to the right (above the sitting white bird), you can see a little frosted glass dove which I bought for my aunt Mamie when I was in high school. I also have a tiny gold bird clipped to the tree that is not shown, a gift from Mary years ago. (The multi-colored star in this picture is one of paper stars Marty and I folded for our first Christmas away from home.)

And then there's one other bird, farther down, sitting in a nest with some eggs next to the trunk of the tree:

I can't believe it's this close to Christmas and I have not managed to see The Year Without a Santa Claus or How the Grinch Stole Christmas yet. (I mean Grinch Classic, not Neo Grinch.) Despite not having lived in the US during most of my formative tv-watching years, I have to see them every year now that I am in my 30s. Luckily both of these are coming on tomorrow.

Tonight Marty and I watched White Christmas, the old movie starring Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby. It has always been one of my favorites, so this year I shelled out the 7 bucks and bought myself a copy. Big spender!

Danny Kaye is soooooo swishy in that movie. I can't remember what I thought when I was young, but now I think he seems like a big old queen. I love it! He's always been a favorite of mine.

Ugh, I just wrote an entry here and Blogger seems to have . . . eaten it. Or something. Anyway it didn't get here.

It was mostly whining anyway. The main point was that I am busy. I should be back within a week or so. I am hoping to use the long weekend to get some things done, including updating and reformatting the book review page, and reformatting the music page.

Happy solstice! The official happenin' is at 1:37 pm GMT, which (I believe) is 8:37 am EST, about an hour from now.

I'm with Rolling Stone. Scott Weiland is definitely one of my people of the year.

Is it just me, or does my christmas tree have rabbit-ears antennae on its head?

Ta-daa! If you click on the picture you can see a larger image.

As you can see, we decorated our xmas tree today. We decided this year to put it in our dining room, which has a nice window area so you can see the lights from outside.

Unwrapping the ornaments and all the decorations is nearly as much fun as opening presents. I have my favorite ones, of course. The paper stars Marty and I folded for our first Christmas away from home together are old favorites. That year we had a tiny tree with just those stars, and popcorn and cranberry strings. It was so pretty.

I also love the ones I got at Dank's in State College, Pennsylvania. That's an old department store that has gone out of business now. Mary and I would go when we were graduate students and buy ornaments. They had a great xmas section in the basement. We got these sets of German glass ornaments and I got a bunch of suns, stars, and moons. I love all of those.

I also have a lot of my great aunt Mamie's ornaments, the ones I remember from her tree when I was a child. She had the strangest things on the tree, like wooden spools threaded on yarn, a felt hat from the Mary Poppins doll, and old clip-on earrings. The yarn and spools ornament was on her tree when I was a baby, and I liked to play with it when I was just starting to walk. I hang it low so Ziggy can play with it now.

One more picture of the tree. I always take this shot, the tree with the lights off, and it never turns out. But it's my favorite picture of the tree. so here it is (and you can see the bigger one if you click on it).

A picture Sonal took of my adorable cat Ziggy a few months ago.

Today Ziggy is hanging out in an even bigger box. We are unpacking the xmas decorations and he seems to be enjoying it considerably.

So, is everyone enjoying the new search engine? I know I am.

I updated the journal tonight with a recollection of some of my early Internet experiences. I'd forgotten a bunch of this stuff until I started writing about it. I love how writing works that way, how it makes you remember.

We got some snow today and I was amazed upon my arrival home how bright it makes things outdoors. I can actually see my way around the yard after the sun goes down, because what little light there is reflects off the snow. Let's be grateful for such small blessings.

Finally, please continue to be patient as I work on the environment here on Raspberry World. The redesign is coming along and I know there are still some problems with navigation in a couple of spots. Also, I haven't gotten around to finishing the book page or the music page so it still has the old look. Soon, my pretties. Let's hope by the end of the year, anyway.

Thanks for being patient.

Zippo and Ollie made me smile. But I really visit for the Cat of the Day.

Oh my god!

I just looked out the window into my back yard and there were 13 squirrels sitting on the lawn in a space of about 25 square feet! Then they all started darting off in different directions and it was like a squirrel stampede! Goodness knows what they were up to.

This morning we are getting our first snow of the winter (I'm not counting the aberration that happened for 1 hour the weekend before Halloween). We have a little bit of white on the ground now and I guess we're supposed to get a couple of inches before it's done. It's days like this that I'm glad I don't live in Michigan. How you doing out there, babe?

Well I have been building up my Amazon wish list because I hear they are having a contest where you can win everything on your list. So what the heck? I figure I'll get mine ready just in case.

I've added a search engine to Raspberry World. You can jump there from the links to the left, or scroll down the page for a box to type in.

I haven't added links to it from all the pages on Raspberry World yet, but I'll try to get to it soon.

This should help all those poor souls who are still getting here by way of the pecan pie recipes that have moved. :-)

Let me know what you think of the search engine . . .

Remember . . . hope . . . love safely.