Plus, I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music. It takes a lot of my focus, which leaves me little time for anything else.
Sidenote - 98 Degrees, "The Gift" was, is, and always will be one of my very favorite Christmas songs. Also, Fact (and common knowledge): Mariah Carey's 1996 Christmas album is the best ever Christmas album by one artist, hands-down. Even the Amazon.com customer comments recognize this. Because duh.
Also, I've been pretty busy making pretty things and creating a general air of festive merriment and good cheer around here.
Like what, you ask? Oh, just decorating and stuff.
First, there was this gem I'm pretty proud of - our Thanksgiving dinner table Mayflower centerpieces at our ward activity. They were a total hit. Particularly the fruit snack sharks. I just wanted to give it a more real feel, you know?
Then, when I got out of work Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my roommates were all gone and it was the perfect time to blast Christmas music and officially get into the Holiday spirit by decorating my tree. It is now fully complete with an angel tree topper. I'm pretty proud of my little guy.
And my post-Thanksgiving/lazy Friday activity - I made a yarn wreath for our front door while watching any and every movie the tv told me I should watch. There was a lot of Harry Potter going on here. But it started out on a great note with a little Sixteen Candles; I knew right away it was going to be the best day.
I'm really proud of that wreath. It looks so good on our door!
Then Abby and Co. came and spent Thanksgiving afternoon/evening with me! I love family, aren't they the best?
Oh and then, I went on a card-marking binge - I offered a set of 10 homemade birthday cards for an auction our congregation is doing to raise money to get Christmas gifts for underprivileged families in the area. This is an annual tradition for us, and it always brings in a good amount of money and reaches a ton of families. So I was glad I could participate in some of the offers this year.
My personal favorite:
And a sampling of the others:
Needless to say, I had a really, really great and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday. I didn't even leave my house on Friday…and it was wonderful.
And then Monday rolled around and it was time to get back to the real world…
And how do you get back to reality any better than with this??
My first jury duty summons!
It was very exciting, friends. I got pulled up for the general jury selection. There were 20 of us, and 12 get chosen at the end, after the prosecution and defense strike 4 people each from the list based on answers to their questions for us about different things. Mostly, "do you have a problem with this or that? Would it affect your judgment of this or that?" We had a few people with problems to different things that were big enough that they were excused right away and replaced with other people in our group. But as the questioning went on, I felt like we didn't have too many people in our group that were giving responses that would pull them off the jury - we had about 4 people who answered opposite of the crowd, so I figured the attorneys would strike them off, just because they need to get rid of 8 people. And I was getting more and more unsure that I'd be a good and partial juror, listening only to the arguments of the court and blah blah blah, and there had been a number of questions where I thought, "I could probably have said something there that I disagree with…" so when another question like that came up, I took it! Everyone probably thought I was crazy because it really wasn't a big deal, but I figured I was helping more than anything - it made the attorneys' job of lessening the jury easier.
And when the time came, I was struck out. I stayed to listen to the opening statements, though - the prosecution was much more engaging and persuasive. But I don't know how it turned out; I forgot the defendant's name and I haven't really felt like putting much effort into tracking down the case. But I'm just glad I wasn't on the jury. It was just kind of a smaller case and even with just the opening statements, I had all sorts of ethical dilemmas and worries. Thank goodness there are better people out there in the world who can shut their own feelings off and look at the case according to the facts and arguments provided…because I've learned that I cannot.
Anyway, that's boring, so let me leave you with something a little more exciting:
ROOOOOOAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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