Bad blogger, mega update

I have not been very good at blogging lately, and don't expect anything too stellar out of this one, either. I have waffled between very high highs, which are difficult to put into words which do it justice, and very blah lows, where I just don't feel like doing ANYTHING.
Christmas was good over here. Christmas Eve was at Chris' Mom house with the fam damily. Was wonderful to see Steph and Nathan again--I didn't realize how much I missed them until I saw them. And then everything was so rushed, and they were back in Alaska mere days later. Feel I didn't get enough face time with them. Got lots of time with Chris' Mom and Bapa, though, since not only did we spend Christmas there, but then spent the next Saturday afternoon at Bapa's house helping him set up his new TV he bought himself, and work out some computer issues he was having. And far too little time with my Mom, who was there and gone. But I was so so happy I got to see her at all, and I still love her and Bill together. He is good with her. He seems to "get" her. She still has a tendency to strongly absorb the men she is with, and Bill is no exception, but he has a gentle side that seems to feed into her on a level I haven't seen another partner of hers able to nurture. So it gives me a little peace to know she is with him.

Christmas Day was sleeping in, opening some more presents, and then dinner with friends. We went for Indian buffet, and then came back to my house to play with...

Oh yes.
Did I mention?

I got a PS3 and Rock Band for Christmas.

Chris was very naughty to spend so much this holiday, but we are getting our money's worth! He had me open it three days before Christmas, so I could have it over the full holiday weekend, which was super cool. He tried to trick me by giving me just the guitar from Rock Band, and the game disk. DUH! :) The PS3 is a bit of a pill in the user-friendly department, and those heating issues are the real deal. It's a brick. But it's MY BRICK! Oh, and he got me Time Crisis 4! :) Haven't played it yet, but mainly because I have been so tied to RB and WOW lately, I need some down time from games and screens. I have been knitting and listening to music to try and offset it.

Anyway, so we have been rocking a lot. Amy and Erik came over the Sunday night before Christmas and we played hours and hours. Then again on Christmas Day. Then again on the weekend. Then again on New Years Eve. And we are getting together again tonight with Renee to rock some more. I am in the middle of a defective guitar exchange with EA which allows us to have two (differently-abled) guitars for a couple weeks, and we are taking advantage of it while we can (they aren't selling individual guitars until February at the earliest, so this is the only way to have a basist in the band for PS3 players).

Next game I must have: Resident Evil, the Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii. Maybe then the Wii will get a little attention again. Poor neglected Wii.

Been feeling really at loose ends lately. So it was a real treat to get together with Renee yesterday and hammer out some WORK. I love my time off, but this Virgo needs some structure and grounding, and getting with Renee to work on troupe and class stuff really helps focus me. And I feel better today as a result, and felt motivated to organize a few other things (laundry, dishes, banking, etc), which includes this blog entry, certainly. Chaos begets chaos, and order begets order in my life. And I have been missing some order, and spiraling into a bit of a personal chaotic wad. It's S.A.D. at work, too, which I have to combat with ORDER.

Part of that work was finally restructuring my classes to really codify the level content again, reinforce our plans for the changes we implemented from the FatChance study we have done lately, clean up the inFusion format vocabulary, and get the class content lined up with that track. I was thrilled to be able to go to my web page today and finally rename my class levels, as I had been planning, and put up the first content on the new Student Resource Center, which included level content outlines. Seeing it all written out nice and neat did my heart good.

Guess I better get back to it. I need to create a 2008 calendar ASAP, as registrations have been slow thanks to people not being sure when classes begin again!

*trotting off to code*