Backdated Holiday and Vacation Posts

I'm a bad person; I didn't use any of my month and a half of vacation to blog. And now, looking back on all that I did, I don't want to type it all up at once. But I did take photos, so now the plan is to backdate small posts with the photos to remind me. Watch this space for backdated posts for December 2007 and January 2008. Because I'm a bad person. :)

Visiting My Family for Christmas

Forrest finished up his finals and we drove from SLO up to the Bay Area on the 19th to spend Christmas with my family. My parents did most of the cooking for the 15-plus–person event; here you can see my mom's tasty chocolate crinkle cookies. Not all of the dough made it into baked cookie form. :) She also cooked several other desserts: Russian tea cakes, snickerdoodles, pies...

I started working on Lisa's present, a stuffed purple moose, but I didn't finish it before Christmas-present-opening time. However, she didn't finish my gift socks either, so it's fair.

We had an unusually large Christmas turnout this year. In addition to the usual suspects that we also go camping with every summer, my mom's cousin showed up this year along with her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. I hadn't seen the son and daughter-in-law since they got married, so it was nice to see them again. The traditional corn-in-wine sneakiness and pea-flinging fun went on, as did the yacking chatting late into the evening.

During the down times, Forrest entertained himself by doing things such as this battery experiment, or seeing how many 9-volt batteries connected in series it takes to kill a Christmas light. My dad got out his tools and helped Forrest. I think my father and my boyfriend are bad influences on each other. :P

This post is backdated; it was actually written on January 23, 2008.

Finished Plushie Chicken

I finished the chicken! Since it's a gift for Forrest, and I was flying down to California to see him on the 15th, I didn't have much time to work on the chicken. I almost finished it on the plane. When I landed, I had myself a one-legged, unlabelled chicken. :)

Luckily, Forrest had a final to take today, so I sneakily finished up his chicken gift while sitting in his living room. Isn't it cute? (Don't talk to me about the "fact" that headless chickens don't have eyes on their neck-hole, nor are they smiling there. These so-called facts do not concern this plushie chicken.)

This post is backdated; it was actually written on January 23, 2008.

Last Day at BillMonk & Obopay

It was fun times at BillMonk, but things change and today was my last day working for Obopay (BillMonk's parent company). Eric, Gaurav, and I (the remaining BillMonkers) met up with Chuck, Christina, and Josh (the former BillMonkers, minus Scott who couldn't make it) for a final farewell lunch at a yummy Thai-ish restaurant. It was good to see everyone again.

I hope I'll continue to see them all, since I consider them friends as well as (former) coworkers.

As for BillMonk, I'll be staying on the Obopay payroll as an independent consultant to keep the site up and running.

This post is backdated; it was actually written on January 23, 2008.

Homemade Stuffed Animals

I'm not sure where I got the idea into my head, but I've decided I want to try some hand-stitched stuffed animals. So that I would (sorta) know what I was doing, I skimmed the relevant books at the University Village B&N:

• Plush-o-Rama: Curious Creatures for Immature Adults
• Plush You!: Lovable Misfit Toys to Sew and Stuff
• Softies: Simple Instructions for 25 Plush Pals

I've started sewing a plush rotisserie chicken (it's an in-joke gift), from a pattern I drafted from scratch. Google Image Search was helpful in reminding myself about the details of the chicken form. :) It turns out that the pattern pieces need to be significantly larger than I expected, so when I cut out the real fleece pieces I gave the pattern a one-inch margin.

The chicken is coming along nicely!

This post is backdated; it was actually written on January 23, 2008.