Yesterday was biz-zay.  It was Laura's birthday.  We had a traditional Easter ham dinner at home, and carrot cake for dessert.  I also had to finish polishing the pilot to submit it.  The deadline was today, but I don't like leaving online submissions till the last minute ever since the time it took me three solid hours to finally connect with the Nicholl website when it was overloaded with people trying to submit, and I freaked out, as one does.  I was distressed at finally just uploading it, because every time I read it I found one more typo, or place with two spaces between sentences instead of one, or a double dash that should have been a single dash, etc.  But I finally just did it - I can't imagine that there are many cleaner screenplays that get submitted, honestly.  I'm a bit of a stickler for format, and most people aren't.

Today's my last day subbing for this long-term maternity deal.  It's been nice having a steady job for six weeks, instead of never knowing if I'm going to be called in or not.  Also, it's been VERY nice getting paid nearly full-time for doing a part-time job.  But I am looking forward to having a few days off.  I want to buy clothes and make-up and such, and I hate shopping on the weekends.

You know those Toaster Strudels that are filled with egg and meat and cheese?  I know I should find those disgusting and gross and against all laws of what is acceptable breakfast food...but I like them.  I know!  I have such a degraded, awful palate.  But they're tasty and easy and the fat content is a little high but if I come home and have oatmeal for lunch it balances out.

Did anyone watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives tonight? They covered Kansas City BBQ, and if you did watch, or catch it later, the third joint - Johnny's, with the deep-fried smoked chicken - is our regular place. I've been going there for as long as I can remember. I kinda feel like I was just on TV. Like, that's our waitress! We sit at that table! So if you want to see what the best BBQ in the world looks like, there you go.

I've been writing like a crazy fool the last few days...unfortunately, it's on that fanfic, which I can do nothing with. But it's been fun doing something that I don't have to worry about what happens next or anything, and I've enjoyed the whole process of writing prose. Right now I'm at around 10,000 words, which is ridiculous. Ridiculous! Oh, well.

We're hosting the Christmas get-together this year, so the past few days have been biz-zay. We're doing the serious kind of cleaning, you know, washing curtains and dusting mini-blinds and polishing hardwood and vacuuming couches. Yesterday Mom and I made all the desserts: chocolate toffee cheesecake, carrot cake, fudge, and sugar cookies. Ugh, the sugar cookies; I used pretty holiday cookie cutters, except that I can never get the thickness of the dough, its temperature, and the oven's temperature right, so they either were crispy little burnt things, or they puffed out so much you couldn't tell what they were. I ended up taking, like, almost two hours decorating them so you could tell that the bows were bows and the presents were presents.

Today we're making the barbeque brisket and ham, and putting together everything else, besides cleaning up again because cleaning in advance never actually works. We're having my dad's brother and his wife, my Uncle Paul and Aunt Debbie, over, along with my cousins Duncan and Elliot and their wives (my other cousins, Angela and Kaitie, can't make it). And Gamps, of course. We're going to have...twelve people in the house? We don't have room for twelve people in the house.

Speaking of my cousin Duncan, I had forgotten to post some of the pictures they took with his baby daughter Ashlyn, who happens to be my grandpa's first great-grandchild. Kindly check out the happiest baby in the entire world.





You can kind of see Heather, Duncan's wife, there. Hee.





Four generations! I love how my grandpa is not actually looking at the camera. There was not a single picture where all three men were; if my grandpa did, then my Uncle Paul wasn't. I don't know.

Halloween weekend was crazy! Sarah told me at the beginning of the week she didn't think she'd go trick-or-treating; she told me Thursday night she was. So I spent Friday running everywhere getting the components of her costume, which included buying pink netting at Hobby Lobby and making a tutu with Laura. She was having her friends over here, and I was going to drive them around Saturday night, so there was a lot of cleaning during the day. I also decided to make a cake and my mom wanted Halloween cookies, so in between cleaning, I also got to cook.

Oh yeah! And we carved pumpkins, too. (Click for full size.)



Guess who carved what for cash and prizes!



My amazing cake.



Sarah in the early stages of preparing. She had a moment where she could have chosen to go as a pretty, pretty princess or ballerina or something like that. Instead, she chose...



She's Old Gregg!



Yeah!



Sarah and her friends. That pirate outfit was crazy; she had pirate heads screwed into shoulder pads. Amazing.

And if you're unfamiliar with Old Gregg, as I might well imagine you are, here's a primer. I'd say he's Sarah's favorite non-regular TV character of all time; we've been hearing her say things in an Old Gregg voice for at least a year now. The show is The Mighty Boosh, arguably the strangest thing I've ever seen in my life.

You may remember me telling you last year about Laura and I making and canning great quantities of applesauce, apple butter, and pear sauce. This year, we're getting a little more ambitious. From my Grandpa's garden, Laura took tomatoes, bell peppers and jalapenos and made salsa; from my uncle's garden, we took cucumbers and made pickles.



The jar on the right contains Polish dill pickles, to which we also added garlic and red pepper flakes to standard pickles. They're going to be delicious.

We also love to make tiny pies. Here are chocolate pudding pies with a Drambuie ganache layer at the bottom, and meringue on top.



They're like pies for babies!

I like doing end-of-the-year memes, but not the one Catherine and Alyssa did, since it seems designed to expose me as a gigantic loser. So I thought, I'll go with a tried and true favorite: I'll post the first line of the first post of each month. I opened up my blog in a second tab, and started copying and pasting.

But it didn't work this year! Half the posts were my 100 movies, 50 books thing, which is stupid, and then the others were, like, "Hey guys." So I'll find something else!

We went to my aunt and uncle's last night, and as we walked through the door, it became clear that a great tragedy had occurred. My aunt? Had made ham, barbeque brisket, rolls, and hash brown casserole for dinner. WHICH IS WHAT WE HAVE EVERY CHRISTMAS EVE OURSELVES. My mom had already cooked our brisket earlier that day! No one said anything, but the whole meal, it was like, "Mmm, this is delicious. I'm really excited about eating the EXACT SAME THING in twenty-four hours."

Started some holiday baking today with Sarah, who stayed home today and yesterday from school because she's been sick for about three months and two doctor's visits. She's on, like, eight different medications, so hopefully she can finally kick this. We did sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and butter pecan turtle bars; basically, what we could make with the ingredients we already have in the pantry. We're missing some of the "specialty" things, like condensed milk and cherries, so maybe later this week. I think this is the latest we've ever done cookies for Christmas; usually we have everything done and in the freezer three weeks clear. Maybe my mom won't freak out this year when everything's not already eaten before Christmas Eve, like in years past.

BFCA nominations came out today. They're one of the better Oscar prognosticators, mostly because I think they try to guess the Oscars as much as possible, so they're more relevant. I continue to be amazed, perplexed, and ANGRY that Clint Eastwood keeps picking up best actor nominations/wins for Gran Torino. Look, I've seen the trailer, and there's no way, NO WAY, that Clint gives one of the five best leading male performances this year. The movie looks like two hours of "Get off my lawn!" IDGI. I am really happy to see Cate Blanchett picking up notice, because I didn't think there was any way she would pick anything up this year after double nominations last year. Either she is absolutely smashing in Benjamin Button - too much so to ignore - or she's going to become a perennial nominee like Meryl Streep.

Look at Brangelina being totally cute!