All I wanted was to send my brother, super political geek potuspete, an e-card for Super Tuesday. No one seems to care that much out there in the blogosphere, so I had to make my own. Yes, I have mad Paint skillz, and yes, this came out exactly like I pictured it in my mind. Click for a larger version, which looks much better (comparatively).

So I'm really not good at keeping this thing updated on a regular basis. Then again, it *was* the holidays and super busy. I pretty much spent the last two weeks of December baking, knitting, wrapping and giving. Oh, and getting too! Hehe, I got some really nice gifts, including the two big gifts I wanted:

- Canon Powershot digital camera
- Keurig Coffee Maker (awesome single serve coffee maker)
- a lot of knitting books
- gift cards (Kohl's, Starbucks)
- sushi plate set (from my mom) and a sake set (from Tracey) for me and Dave
- neat convertible gloves/mittens

So, yeah, Christmas was nice. New Year's was pretty uneventful, as Dave, Peter, and I stayed home, made dinner (yummy steak sandwiches), and watched 30 Rock. Yesterday, Dave's family wanted to go to Boston for Cheesecake Factory and Faneuil Hall, so we braved the snow and drove over. It was a lot of fun, despite the long annoying drive.

Stay tuned, I'll prolly do one of those 2007 year-end surveys.

Well, I already knew that, but I just introduced him to Peppermint Patty shots, hee! And he made a drink for himself using a recipe out of my latest issue of Bust, a Merry Irish(wo)man. Again, hee! I'm not a huge fan of the drink, but it is more drinkable than I thought it would be. (Whisky, coffee liquor, and peppermint schnapps)

Time for knitting and Comedy Central. Mmmm, relaxing!

Last night was really interesting, due to a crazy thunderstorm that raged through Western Mass right as I was leaving work. Dave and I walked to our cars and we just missed the rain starting. Driving home, I witnessed some crazy lightning and torrential downpours, but it didn’t seem like that bad of a storm. I was wrong.

At home, things were crazy as usual as Sara came by and the rest of us tried to figure out dinner plans. That’s when the power went out. We were all annoyed but hopeful that it would turn back on again soon. Pete and Sara left for the mall, but quickly called us to say that they passed 3 trees that fell on one street. One had fallen on the powerlines and was the cause of the power outage. We got dinner at Subway, and I called Dave to bitch about the heat. We made tentative plans to watch a movie at his house rather than mine, which was the initial plan, but it was all dependent on whether his brother was home or not. So I took a shower and tried to read in the meantime, but ended up napping. The power was still out at this point, so when Dave came over, we ended up driving around aimlessly with Andrew. We took Dave’s laptop so that we could see what wireless networks we could pick up, which was fun just to see what people name their networks. (The winner: “GetYourOwnNetwork”) Sounds lame and dorky, but that’s us!

On the way back to my house, we see the police have blocked off the area by the fallen tree but no one is working on its removal. We hang around in the dark talking with Pete and Andrew, and then Dave and I went to get some food. By this time the tree was gone and Comcast was working on the power lines further down the street. I asked one of the workers what the prognosis was, but he looked really confused and we just kept driving by anyways. It was so surreal driving around my neighborhood in complete darkness. Driving through Chicopee on the way to Dave’s to pick something up, we could tell where the town lines were, because Springfield houses were dark and Chicopee’s were blazing. Jerks.

After eating, Dave and I tried to watch The Aristocrats on his laptop, but the extra battery took up the CD drive so we thought we were stuck. Then I remembered that I still had Auntie Carol’s portable DVD player so we were able to watch the movie after all. It was so unbearable just laying there watching the movie together because it was so hot and muggy. I was working up a sweat doing nothing. After Dave left, I tried desperately to fall asleep but it was so hard. I must have eventually dozed off, because then I woke up at 3:50 AM when the power came back on. My printer started to make a lot of noise, then my AC was blasting. It was such a welcome relief.

I’m pretty well-rested considering, but man, it’s going to be awhile before I take power for granted again. It was fun at first, the whole house lit only by candles and going outside to complete darkness, but trying to sleep in those conditions are awful. Hopefully we’re spared from a power outage like that for awhile.

It's gorgeous out, solely because the sun is out and it's over 60 degrees. I'm depressed just thinking about the fact that it's supposed to rain for a whole nother week. Bah!

Last week was my birthday. It was an okay day; I always look forward to May 10th with such hope and I usually have the worst luck on that day. For example:

- I found out my douchbag ex was cheating on me several years ago on my birthday.

- While is Scotland on my birthday, I managed to wind up with the world's worst hangover and then subjected myself to my grandfather's driving.

- Two years ago, all senior work was due on my birthday, so I pulled the best all-nighter ever, the perfect way to finish all college work. Documentation of the all-nighter is here, which is pretty hilarious, if I do say so myself.

- Last year, Tracey and I headed out to Wrentham to the outlets and my car died on the side of the Mass Pike. I spent the majority of my birthday in a random autoshop in Worcester.

This year wasn't that bad, honestly. I took a couple of days off of work and I hung around the house. I wasn't feeling that great but it was nice to just relax. I was in a bad mood by the time my family and I went to dinner because of a lovely combination of the following:

- severe cramps
- discovering I only had a week to finish my Finance class (i.e. finish half the material and take the exam)
- my cat fucking biting my toe and giving me three puncture wounds.

Thankfully dinner was a lot of fun. Auntie Carol and Scott met us in Northampton and the food was really good. I got some loot too!

- Money towards a new bike from the 'rents and AC
- a bucket o' margaritas
- the third season of Scrubs (YAY!)
- a SWEET camera from potuspete!!
- a cute Starbucks mug and giftcard

Here are some of the pictures from dinner, they're pretty funny!
( My family's crazy! )