Happy New Year 2009

So, here I am, sitting at the dining room table with a pair of cans on my ears (those'd be the precursor to those buds that come with your iPods), listening to a CD that iTunes doesn't seem to be able to identify the tracks on (since it's a mixed CD), and chuckling to myself because there's a preposition I'm ending this sentence with. Oh yeah - when you set the bar this low, there's no end to the good times.


We got a couple of snowstorms right around Christmas, and another couple inches the other day. Our Muscovie Duck, Ed, decided that instead of outrunning the snow, he'd literally lie low and see what happened. As you can see, the first inch or so sort of rolled off his back like so much (frozen) water.

Christmas celebrations were pretty low-key this year at the Smile Moon household. Mrs Smile Moon and I had agreed to limit our gifts to each other to just about nothing, preferring instead to make sure the kiddies had some fun stuff to open. Unfortunately, the agreement had been made AFTER I'd already bought a few things for her. I can only grin sheepishly in my defense, but she did get a really pretty little bracelet from an Etsy shop, a 'Best Of' collection from Plastic Bertrand (mostly because it was the only place I could find the lost track "Jacques Cousteau," which would otherwise have remained a lost track if it weren't for the fact that she remembered the song so fondly from her high school French labs), a few things to read (because that's the way she rolls), and a few choice stocking stuffers.

[Why do I always substitute Weird Al lyrics whenever I hear Michael Jackson singing "Beat It" ? It can't be helped, I swear! Oh, and I guess you can figure out at least one song on that mix CD, eh?]


Probably the best present we got was a Belgian Waffle maker from my uncle and aunt on Christmas Eve. It's already gotten a lot of usage in the couple weeks since. You can also see my Mighty Mug (featuring one of the famed Viking Kittens of Rathergood fame) in the photo above, another favorite Christmas gift from years past. Mrs Smile Moon might just contest the waffle maker being "the best" present, because she got a really sweet blender from a friend of ours too, which really does look like it'll do everything but sew my fingers back on.

We found ourselves with a much busier social calendar for the holidays this year, too. It was crazy - I think we ended up at no less than four holiday parties and open houses. The lamest by far was the New Year's Eve party we tried hosting at our house. Due to illnesses in our friends' families, it ended up being just us and a whole crapload of our kids' friends staying over. You'd think that'd be crazy enough, but it was tamer than I'd like to think could happen at our place - one group was over here shopping for boots online, another group over there checking out youtube videos, and there's Mrs Smile Moon with a few other kids working on a jigsaw puzzle. I'd show you a photo of the procedings, but you'd only find yourself waking up in an hour with an imprint of your keyboard on your forehead.

On a positive business note, I was good boy today and downloaded all my financial info from Etsy and Paypal for tax preparation purposes. [Yes, I was a good little doobie and registered my business when I started it back in March 2008.] I just need to start sorting through it all and try to make sense of it. I'm no accountant, but I should be able to figure out all my business stuff, but with my oldest one in college this year, that's going to throw a whole bunch of new things our way tax-wise, so I think I'm going to break down and let a professional have a stab at my return this year. Ugh - I'm not looking forward to it!

I AM looking forward to getting back out to the workshop, though. I stayed away for the duration of the Christmas break so we could function like a family unit and play some games (Pentago, Trouble , Laser Battle). I swear, though, there were some mornings last week when I woke up working out solutions to how I'm going to tackle some of my next projects! I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but at least I know I'll be able to hit the ground running when I get back out there!