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Monday, December 26, 2016
Christmas Post
Merry Christmas. :) Hope everyone had a nice holiday. We have had a nice laid back holiday weekend so far. Can't complain at all. :)
Friday I was off and we went to the movies to see "Rogue One" followed by lunch in Oxford at 121. Then on Saturday (Christmas Eve) we had a follow up appointment at the vet with Bailey to make sure she's healing ok (she is!) After that we headed to Stew Leonard's to pick up some food for dinner and the next day (what a madhouse!!) and then had lunch at the Marketplace before heading home and catching up on some of our TiVo shows and movies. Had a yummy feast of shrimp cocktail, cheese & crackers, Brie & baguette, broccoli & dip and wine.
Yesterday, Christmas morning, we opened our gifts with Mike's sister and nephew (my niece is in Georgia at the moment visiting her boyfriend) Mike spoiled me with a Kindle Fire HD10 (that thing is massive!) and a bunch of Outlander themed gifts (the special edition season 2 Blu-ray plus a shirt and a shopping bag) Plenty of other nice things (PJs, tea, movie theater gift card, gloves, a cat broche and more) After our gift exchange we hung out at home for a bit, had more of our food and eventually headed to the movies to see "La La Land". After the movies we stopped into TKs for a bit, as they were open and actually quite busy. Had some Cajun wings. Been ages since we've been there.
Today we slept in and puttered around the apartment for a bit. Going to head to the movies for movie number 3 of our holiday weekend "Passengers". Going to stop at Hallmark after the movie to pick up some Christmas cards. Kind of a tradition for me. Already bought some Christmas labels and wrapping paper online as well. Always good to stock up on that stuff after the holidays when it's on sale. :)
Well that concludes our holiday weekend. Can't believe it's already back to work again tomorrow but I can't complain as it's another short week really. 2016 is almost at an end. Let's hope 2017 is a better year but I am really not too sure. I guess we will just need to wait and see to find out. In the meantime I hope everyone's happy and healthy and had a nice holiday weekend as well.
Letter/Mail Update: Received a letter/owe a reply to: Jessica/DE, Celia/MA, Lotte/Denmark, Bianca/Germany and Eloine/NY.
Posted by Hanna at 12:10 PM in Food and Drink, Holidays | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Holiday Prep, Sacher Torte & the vet
Another busy week. Can't believe it's already Christmas next week. Where has this year gone? It's crazy. I was laid off from my old job the day after the 4th of July holiday and now it's already Christmas. At my new job for about 5 weeks now. Time is definitely flying.
Was a busy week at work with holiday stuff (Secret Santa, Pot Luck, Holiday Party and more) so the week went by pretty quickly. Friday we had our Holiday Party at Mazzo. Had been there only once before but they have a pretty big banquet room upstairs. Had a fun time. Good food, open bar and karaoke. I am not a karaoke person but I did have fun watching everyone else. :) I am not the type of person who enjoys dancing or karaoke. I can't sing and I am terribly uncoordinated so those things are not fun for me at all. But I still had a good time hanging out with everyone and watching everyone else. :)
In less fun news also had to bring our new cat Bailey to the vet. During her check-up a few weeks ago they detected a small mammary tumor so we scheduled an appointment for her surgery. Before the surgery they took an x-ray and then also discovered that she had 7 bladder stones that needed to be removed. So she ended up having two procedures done at the same time and stayed at the vet from Thursday until Saturday morning. All things considered she's doing well and is dealing ok with her cone. We will need to bring her back to get a bigger cone though because when she twists just the right way she can reach her stitches and that's no good of course. All in all she's being her usual cute self, purring, eating and just rolling with things. Unfortunately the whole thing was not cheap but what can you do? The food she now has to eat isn't cheap either but I don't want her to develop more bladder stones so it's necessary unfortunately. Well, the good news is that the tumor at least hadn't spread yet so that's good.
So I am spending the weekend hanging out with her. Wrapped my gifts for the people here (the stuff I didn't mail), wrapped up some cake and cookies for people. Oh that's right. I didn't mention yet that my lovely parents sent me a delicious Sacher Torte straight from Hotel Sacher in Vienna. So yummy. I am enjoying it very much but since it's a big cake I figured I would share with other people as well. :) So I made some packages for people, put away my laundry and worked on some other chores.
I have a big pile of letters to write as well but I am not sure I will get to those today. Think I will read some more in a bit after I finish my tea. The weather has been all over the place this week as well. Some super cold temps with crazy windchill, then some snow on Saturday (which didn't make the trip to the vet very fun) and today pretty warm temps but back to cold tomorrow. Rollercoaster of weather, guess that's New England for you.
Letter/Mail Update: Received a letter/owe a reply to: Jessica/DE, Celia/MA, Lotte/Denmark, Bianca/Germany and Eloine/NY.
Posted by Hanna at 05:19 PM in Food and Drink, Holidays | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, December 12, 2016
Holiday Baking
And yup it's Monday again. The holiday season definitely seems to be racing by at lightning speed but then I guess that's like that every year. I have tried to be prepared and have somewhat succeeded but not altogether. I mailed all my Christmas cards and packages. The last batch of domestic packages went out a week ago so that's all set. I have heard from a few people who have received theirs so that's good. It cracks me up watching the speed the mail travels. A package from CT to Brooklyn, NY took 5 days where a package from CT to L.A., CA took 6 days. Makes no sense at all. Haven't heard from a friend in Delaware so hopefully that one will arrive soon-ish. Who knows about Oklahoma and Seattle. Guess we will find out how that goes. I did try to mail everything on the early side exactly for that reason.
This weekend I spent a good amount of time with my friend Jana, hanging out and baking cookies. It's become somewhat of a tradition we developed over the last few years. This year we decided to make a variety of cookies and ended up with two recipes from her Russian grandmother (Rugelach and Farmers Cottage Cheese House), my mom's Linzer cookies, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies and Chocolate Sambucca cookies. Quite an interesting mix. I think the Linzer and the Rugelach ones were my favorite. :)
Let's see what this week brings. Woke up to a wintry mix (some snow, now rain on top of it) so hopefully the ride into work won't be too bad. We're doing a version of Secret Santa at work this week plus there is a potluck one day and on Friday we have our office Christmas party.
Oh, forgot to mention Saturday we also went to the movies and saw "Manchester by the Sea" which was really good. Definitely a film I would recommend. Have a feeling it will end up with an Oscar nomination but we will see. Few movies out and still coming out over the holidays that I want to see so we may end up at the theater a few more times over the next few weeks.
Letter/Mail Update: Received a letter/owe a reply to: Bianca/Germany and Eloine/NY.
Posted by Hanna at 07:21 AM in Food and Drink, Holidays | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, December 04, 2016
It's the season ...
And somehow it's Sunday again. I am getting used to having both Saturday and Sunday off but the weekends definitely still fly by quickly no matter what.
The week went by pretty fast. My international cards went out on Monday. Wrote my US/Canada ones on Tuesday night so they went into the mail on Wednesday. And later in the week I put up our decorations and the tree. Also packaged up my domestic Christmas packages so those will go into the mail tomorrow for the most part. My international gifts went via Amazon and Target this year. Decided that was better as most of my packages disappeared somewhere in the postal system last year. So this has had a better success rate so far. :)
Yesterday, Saturday, we went to the movies and saw "Fantastic Beasts and where to find them" in IMAX which I thought was pretty good. Today slept in and then stopped at Kohl's to return some items I bought online and pick out something else. Took forever. This is why I swear by online shopping normally. Ugh. Went out to lunch after and going to catch up on some things on our TiVo later.
Letter/Mail Update: Received a letter/owe a reply to: Bianca/Germany.
Posted by Hanna at 04:13 PM in Food and Drink, Holidays | Permalink | Comments (0)