Merry Boxing Day!

As there was no Christmas Day post, I am supplementing it with a Boxing Day post. We are foreigners, so yes, we celebrate Boxing Day. This holiday, however, coincides with my little brother's birthday, who this year turns the big 2 -1, and so Boxing Day has been over-shadowed by the celebration of legal consumption of alcohol...

As there is not much to say, and a picture is worth a thousand words, I have decided to instead post some photos of my holidays. Enjoy.

This is quite possibly one of my favorite trees at my family's house:

This is my Papa, wearing the lovely paper crowns that come inside every holiday "cracker", which also come with either a cheap game or musical instrument, and a set of beyond cheesy jokes. Man, the English sure do celebrate in style.

Here is our annual Christmas Pudding, complete with flaming brandy sauce poured over the top. I was not the lucky one to find the dime this year...

And here is my adorable brother at his monumental 21st birthday dinner. Don't ask me why I look younger than him in this photo... Most women would probably take that as the best compliment ever. I, however, do not. As I seem to be constantly surrounded by people ranging from 5 - 25 years older than myself, accentuated youth is no perk. Oh well. I love my brother's smile in this photo.


Happy holidays, and please send word of how this time has passed with all of you!!!

God bless us, every one!!! (à la Tiny Tim)

Sitting here with my morning cup of tea before heading off to work, I have just seen a segment on the news where they tell you a kind of uplifting, hopeful story about America.

Apparently there is a town - El Dorado - in Arkansas, where an oil company that has been locally owned and operated has chosen to make a promise to their community for the next 20 years. The promise is that, any child who attends high school in El Dorado for at least 4 years, can attend any university in the country. Besides providing the added assistance needed for the students to receive help in applying for university, this company is donating up to six thousand dollars a year towards their tuition.

The plan has worked. While the rest of the country has seen a %5 drop in the real estate market, El Dorado has had a %15 increase. The plan has been in effect for about 5 years now, and a town that formerly had a college-educated population of %5, is now well on their way to making a substantial regional change.

Call me sap, but I love stories like this. It's just what I need on this Christmas Eve morning to give me the hope I need. Watch out world, here comes El Dorado!!

On an unfortunately heavier note - please say your prayers for a dear friend of the Werk family who has braved an unfortunate accident, and is spending his holiday in the hospital with a fractured vertebra. This man, by all accounts, should be a vegetable right now. It is only by a miracle that he is a fortunate as he is.

My best wishes and love to everyone for this Christmas!!

The calm before the storm

Today, I was unexpectedly given a much needed day off work. Timing could not have been better, as the pre-holiday obligations had been piling up, and life had suddenly thrown at me several bumps in the road to deal with in the way of leaky weather stripping in my car, and a lost Christmas shipment by DHL. I have spent the day running last minute errands (rather efficiently) and completing (almost) all the phone calls that needed to be made.

I am getting excited in looking forward to time of celebration and reunion with my entire family, and close friends. Now that I am finished with my formal education, for now anyway, I am also adjusting to a new holiday schedule, which no longer includes any real "holiday" to speak of. Yes, I am celebrating this wonderful day with loved ones, a good meal, a midnight mass, and gift-giving, just as always, but this time will no longer be associated with returning home from a faraway land, with enjoying the respite after the hell that is final exams, and the weeks upon weeks of downtime holding no obligations of any kind. Instead, I am working everyday on either side of the 25th, and will have to rush from work to my brother's birthday dinner on the evening of the 26th.

I am not explaining this as a form of complaint, just as a musing on my shifting and changing routine. I am happy in looking forward to making my one day off a special one, and am beyond grateful to have the work that I do.

Note to self:
Accept and enjoy the silver linings that life has to offer

The 7 year itch

I have recently been getting the urge for change. I don't know whether or not to write this off as the anticipation to start a new job/life, or if I really want to do, what I think I want to do - chop off all my hair....again.

At the age of 17, I suddenly decided that I needed a new look, and so went from having quite long, flowing locks, to sporting a boy-cut in the style of Sharon Stone, circa 1995. I am getting a similar urge again. The reality, however, of just how much work it is to have such a cut, and worse to grow it out, is the only thing holding me back. I am planning to hold off until I am fully immersed in moving and starting the new gig, and then will reconsider.

This may seem like an extremely superficial concern to express, and to do so publicly to boot, but it is a musing nevertheless. here is what I am thinking. Input is appreciated.



I, of course, realize that such a coiffe will not automatically transform me into Sienna Miller, but one can dream. Can't one?

I have just been sent home from work for the second day in a row. I don't know how much more of this cold I can take, but I am giving my body a deadline of 24hrs from now. I have a birthday party to go to, and I REFUSE to go to bed early on yet another Friday night. REFUSE, I tell you.

Uncle Dick....

...Which, if you haven't grown up with a cockney rhyme-slanging parent, means that I am SICK.

My poor mother, who can normally soldier on through any ailment, has been lying around the house like a zombie for the last few days with a terrible cold. Both my parents have just left this morning for San Francisco to celebrate their anniversary, when I know my mother would much rather be laying in bed with a warm cup of Theraflu. As my gift to them, if you can call it that, I am staying close to the homestead and looking after the animals while they are away. My mother's gift to me was to leave me with early stages of the very same cold that has been plaguing her.

On a lighter note, I have just today secured the details of my future job in Santa Monica with my future boss-lady to be. Very exciting, entry-level stuff, I tell ya. So it looks like as of Monday, January 7th, I will be entering my intense 3 month trial employment with Sleeper Films Inc. Anyone want to host me, or better yet, help me in the great and impossible housing search?!?! You will have a VIP pass to any and all future soirées I am able to throw in my new pad.

Ok, that's about it for the day. I made it through 2 hrs of running the various errands I had to complete on this, my last day off, but now I am off to drink copious amounts of tea, and take a blast of multi vitamins approximately every 4 hours.

A Request

Go outside and listen to, and smell the rain.  Then, thank the heavens that it is falling on our parched state.

p.s. Mind the toads

Tis the Season

I like my job. It is relatively easy, the company is good, the view has no equal, and I am offered a glass of wine at the end of each day. That said, there are times when I have to question, laugh, and cringe simultaneously at what I have gotten myself into. This is one of those times.

The winery's Christmas party for some of their wine club members is this Saturday, which means ALL employees must work. There will be about 400 guests coming, and hopefully going, between 11am and 4pm. I, of course put in a good few hours work on either end of those times. My mission yesterday, as I chose to accept it, was to assemble 30 cases with a seemingly random selection of wine and gifts, re-secure them, and then wrap them ( you heard right) in holiday wrapping paper. The grand finale was to stack all 30 of these cases into a pyramid against the back wall of the tasting room. A little Christmas tree of alcohol, if you will.

After 7 hrs, 90 reps of lifting a case of wine, a pulled back muscle, and a condolence from my manager in the form of a nice glass of Shiraz - this was the end result.

Needless to say, a job of this sort tends to bring one closer and closer to the brink of insanity. I was no exception. By the time there were only 5 cases remaining, I had run out of two of the three patterns of paper I had been using. Damned if I was going to break the pattern, I succumbed to a level of commitment (a.k.a clinical psychosis) that I would wish upon no one - I began "sewing" the left-over scraps of paper together so that the pattern could remain consistent. Yes, I know, insanity. The following photo is an example of said insanity....
Yes, that would be a case of wine wrapped in a combination of all three types of paper that had been used. I think it is b-e-a-utiful. My manager does as well, so I'm standing by that, and the rest of my artistic, holiday work that has been done in the tasting room these last few days. If you care to take in some of this creativity and holiday festiveness (is that a word??), please stop by....most of it will be gone by Saturday morning, so just think of this as something is the same range as a solar eclipse, or the grunion run.

Christmasification

I love my family's house. It is a home. Everyone I have shared our home with is blown away, but I must say, we out-do ourselves come Christmas time. Christmas has come earlier than usual to our home this season, as my parents decided to throw a dinner for our neighbors. I have spent the last few days getting in the Christmas spirit. This is just a little taste of what we have to offer chez nous.

It was such a wonderful evening, in fact, that today I am a bit sluggish. I am staying in sweatpants, skipping the shower, and catching up on my computer work and eating left over beouf bourgonion all day. I have a Netflix delivery to watch this evening, and get to sleep in tomorrow. La vie est belle.

The Road

I am concerted out.

I had tickets to see the amazing Phil Wickham at a venue in Ventura last night, but had found out a little while ago that another group I had wanted to see were playing at a club in Santa Barbara. I am not usually one to go on a concert crawl, but this was an exception. I picked up my music-going buddy, we headed off to Ventura and enjoyed an amazing performance by Phil. Right as he announced his last song, Angie and I contacted our liaison in Santa Barbara and discovered that we still had time before the main act went on. All in all, an amazing night.

Two totally different shows, both wonderful in their own right. I have never attended a Christian Rock show in it's entirety before, and that in itself was worth the experience. Besides the fact that we both felt about 10 years above the general age group in attendance, it was beautiful to see such an obviously amazing talent, and genuine person so openly committed to, and passionate about something. I only wish that I was that easily and unabashedly committed myself. This has been becoming a recent journey for myself lately, and it will be interesting to see where it takes me. I am open to all possibilities, and am finding more and more value in surrounding myself with people of character, direction, and moral grounding.

I am not sure what this entry was about. I feel I have rambled on a bit, and not in the ACDC way.... I can't help but hear that song in my head now. So anyway, just a little update on myself. I will leave you with that, and the advice to look up the artists Sea Wolf and Phil Wickham.

Me gusta la musica
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