The Rest of Our Lives Will Be Just Like Christmas

Merry, Merry my friends.

Obligatory music video to follow. You guys all know that I l.o.v.e. Frightened Rabbit. What a special treat, I might even say a Christmas miracle, that he has this tune. We did a White Christmas themed radio show last night. Yep, we did our show on Christmas. It was really fun actually. Last year, we went skiing on Christmas. This year, KWVA. Next week, first show of 2011, I will be flying solo, as DJPJ will be setting up for the second annual New Year's Day Funk n' Balls performance. I'm pretty sure the radio show'll be themeless. So anyway, because just about everyone I know had a white christmas (some first the first times in their lives. Come on you weather controlling aliens, I know my Montanans and New England folks will make me jealous, but Tennessee, really?) I thought we could give ourselves one. Musically, anyway.

Frightened Rabbit - Best Christmas Song Of All Time

I hope all your Christmasses were as lovely as mine. I had the best of both worlds because I was lucky enough to go see momma, papa and brother bird and still get home in time for the actual day with my man.
Check out what I got for Christmas...... drumroll... bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm....

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Look how fast my hands are moving... you can't even see the sticks!

Just call me Pigeon White. Maybe one day I'll be good enough to play with a pseudo-brother-guitar-god, creating one of the best rock combos of all time because I can play just as well as some sixth grader practicing in his garage. Just kidding, Meg, I think you're great. Really. And, while you're listening to me, how about getting over that stage fright and getting back on the road?
How does someone get stage fright AFTER years of touring? I'm just sayin...

AND I'M JUST KIDDING about getting the drums. I don't get to keep them, but I did get to play them. These drums are on loan from Brad. The aforementioned FnBs have been practicing here and leaving their equipment much to my, and my dog's, delight. Actually, I am not sure if Floyd is delighted or absolutely terrified... you be the judge.

Goes berserk to the beat of the drum

Back to the reality. As you may know, Florida is a great place for birdwatching. And, as you may also know, my relationship with birds is a complicated one. But I partook in: 

Some owl stalking, although we were careful to not molest the birds in any way, in accordance with the posted warnings. 

Well, that's my mom, but I was there too. 

It was a two hour drive to see this guy. Each way.

Totally worth it. I am being serious. 

Plus, the route guidance took us through a Wal-Mart parking lot to get there. It doesn't get much better than that.

In bigger bird news, we went to Jungle Gardens.

Birds Galore.

I saw some flamingos.

I fed a flamingo. 

OH EM GEE.

Scared for my life at this point. 

As you can see, I was not able to look directly at the bird while feeding.

Photo credit: Mom (good job getting the shot while convulsing with laughter)

I actually was *ok* until a big duck snuck up behind me and pecked my leg. That was the end of that. In other animal encounter news, my parents' "foster dog" Ernesto bit me. I honestly don't think I have ever been bitten by a dog before. Ernie is a fiery one. I can't say I was too sad to see him go back to his original foster person due to repeated bitings. My parents are getting a new one in a couple weeks, Atari. I named it. 

Just to finish up with the animal adventure section of this post, I met my brother's pride and joy, Winston Thelonious Monk.

This is a real cat.

And this is after I cleaned the eyes. And check out my ring! Instant classic. 

Photo credit: Brother (again, good job getting the shot while convulsing with laughter)

This is what xmas trees look like down on the gulf coast. Beautiful. 

We went to several movies, tis the season (for Oscars, hello). 

The Tourist: Great, fun little movie. Can you go wrong with Johnny Depp? No, you can't. Especially in cute cotton pjs. 

The Social Network: I felt really excited to see this one, because I have been reading about Zuckerberg for years in Fast Co. and Business Week and such. Great movie, great dialog... I liked it a lot, but what are all these people saying it was the best movie of the year? 

The Fighter: Great, intense movie. Can you go wrong with Marky Mark Wahlberg? Can you go wrong with Christian Bale? No, of course not. And, being born and partially raised in New England, I kind of don't believe that Bale isn't really from Lowell. My dad grew up in the next town over (from Lowell) and he was buying it too. If Bale doesn't get the Oscar, I'll eat my mittens. It was like Intervention, but even more real. And the mom deserves one, too. There are some early Oscar predictions, as you can imagine, I get into that kind of thing. This year will be the first one in a while that I have seen a lot of what I am sure will be contenders. My man and I are going to see Black Swan tonight, so I'm covering all the bases. 

Anyway, I had a great time with the fam in Florida. Of course, I didn't get too much work done.

 

This is the textbook I'll be teaching this quarter. I brought it all the way to FL.

What you can't see is that I am on page 3 or something like that.

Back in waterworld:

Xmas Eve

Xmas AM

It's a good thing Floyd doesn't believe in Santa anymore, because how could we explain how he got a gift even though he has been bad all year?

I ordered my man the Keith Richards book for Christmas, delivered free with the wonderful student Prime account, and I told him to just put the Amazon package under the tree. But I forgot that I ordered something for myself as well. You can just imagine the excitement when he opened this:

Even better: what you can't tell is that it's 1270 pages. 

And for me.... I got totally spoiled, as usual. One of my favorites:

Is this gift as good as a drum set? I think, yes. 

Choose whatever metaphor you like

Have you missed me?

Because I missed you.

The good thing about not writing a blog for a while is that there is a lot of material.
Right?
Hmmm.

 Look at those gd'ed hippies!

The big news around here is berrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that's my drumroll)........ I want to be a drummer.
IT SNOWED! I take this to mean that all my complaining worked!

Unfortunately, this beautiful snow is long gone now and not to return.

But I sure appreciated and enjoyed it while it lasted.

So today is my first day of vacation. I am not doing anything school-related all day. All blog, reading (pleasure reading, NOT journal articles or text books), shopping, groceries, radio show, run. I better get this day going.

Except I did have to email a student who had an 86.1 average why I couldn't give him an A-. Those crazy kids.
So reading - I am reading The Help, partially on the recommendation of my fellow blogger and friend. It's a great book, I am plowing through it, happily, because I have a long plane ride to Florida coming up and I am hoping to bring The Girl Who Played With Fire.... Christmas Break is the time to reduce that stack of "to be reads" and add to it of course, what is a better Christmas gift than a book?

So groceries - I don't think that a lot of vegans are reading this blog, but on the off chance that some other crazy vegan is googling around and finds me - we have been eating GOOD lately.
I just found a recipe for VEGAN FETTUCCINE ALFREDO! I have tried a lot of this lady's inventive recipes, all are delish. Dinner tomorrow. I wanted to make it tonight, but my man is getting together with his band this afternoon and then we have radio show at 8pm. He doesn't want me to get mad at him when he gets in the door at 7:35 and we have to eat in the studio. Again.

You might think friends, that being a vegan is not fun on Thanksgiving. And you may have even teased me... one word - TOFURKEY. It's good. Believe it.

Before our home meal we had a pre-Thanksgiving meal from Cornbread Cafe, which was amazing. I love that place, but I have to admit, after every meal I feel like I need to sit on the couch for two hours and watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It's all their fault I tell you.

My man and I have to split when we go there. 

And, jumping ahead, we ate there again last night and had the Eugenewich. Unreal. Any food that causes spontaneous moaning is, embarrassing, yet wonderful. It is southern-fried tofu, barbecue sauce (what is BBQ sauce? Seriously, I want to know), fried onion rings and carrots, tomato, soy cheese...

But for the "homemade" part.... Look at this dork!

I can't believe how predictable we are. But we had tofurkey for the first time and it was so good. So good.

Look at that Mound on the right! Momma bird loves 

to tell me how my man is always hungry. He's fine! 

We ate early and headed to good old KWVA. It was a nice way to celebrate. I am thankful for our radio show. Last week we did a 90s show that was FIERCE if I do say so myself. My man heard the "Best DJ in Eugene" (as voted by Weekly readers) say something about how 90s music sucks and the 90s were the worst decade musically. Well, we had been planning a 90s show for a while and that was all it took to challenge him to a music-awesome-off duel. It was really fun. Tonight we are doing "Some Like it Hot." We have been watching some classics lately and getting inspired. Last night it was Citizen Kane. What a fantastic movie, I forgot how great it is. Wow. Rewatch it if you haven't lately! Call to action alert!

Tangent - in order to get really psyched (90s!) for the 90s show, we went to the midnight showing of Pump Up the Volume. My Christian Slater Supercrush returned in full force. Also, we were the ONLY ones in the theater. Afterwards (like around 1:30am) we decided to grab a beer and went to Max's. Didn't realize at the time that

1) super close to campus 

PLUS

2) night before last Duck's football game

EQUALS

Pigeon's students present. And wasted.

At least I was sober.

See you soon guys. xo