I'm turning into Maria!

I'm on some new medicine, which so far is working great for my pain issues! Unfortunately it is messing with my sleep patterns. I am wide awake at 3 a.m. and sleeping in until 11, which is highly, highly unusual for me (normally I'm barely standing at 10:30 and on the go at 7).

Hopefully I can fix things before I go back to work, but in the end I'm not too worried about. It will correct itself or I will just adjust to the new sleep pattern, no worries, especially since the intended medicinal effects seem to be working.

Tonight I stayed up late playing Gemfire, a fantastic NES game that we used to play when I was little. It's the only strategy-esque game I've ever been able to do well at, probably because of its simplicity, and I'm doing much better at it now that my brain has developed past 8 years old. I'm a lot better at the logical thinking these days.

I also absorbed about half of Jurassic Park this evening, which I haven't read in ages. My mind devours books, grom grom grom!!

Night everybody!

Christmas Times

Merry Christmas times to all! The holidays have been really nice, if not shaken with the feeling of impending change. I think this year was a "transition" Christmas.

My parents sold their house (yaaay!) but found out that the condo they had intended to buy had been sold out from under them (boooo). This caused much undo stress, but they have found a place to rent for awhile downtown. Still, come January 31st, the house will be gone, items will be shuffled into storage, and madness will ensue.

On Christmas night we had a great get together at my parents' place. Normally Nancy would always host a dinner on Christmas night, so we decided to host a shindig in her honor. We must have lit every candle in the house (Nancy loved candles) and we had Oysters Rockefeller to toast in the New Year (another Nancy tradition). The party doubled as an official "goodbye" to our house, but in spite of sentiment, the evening was full of laughter and good times and no tears.

It was quite a practical Christmas for me, gift-wise, I got a bike mount for my car, which is exciting. I also got metal mixing bowls, which is very exciting, for now I can make meringue pies! My grandmother got me a silicon muffin tin...which...I suppose can't really be called a "tin" at all....muffin silicon? Anyway! This, along with Scott's gifts of a new grater and juicer, are indicative of much baking and cooking to come.

In spite of the rain and cold, it was a very warm Christmas. I hope everyone has had a pleasant holiday season!

Oh yeah

Also, I'm doing some change-arounds with website hosting and such, so my wertle.com email may not work for a day or two. In the meantime, if you need to email me, send it directly to my gmail account.

Thanks!

ACCOMPLISHMENT!

Ladies and gentlemen, today I mailed in my graduate school application! HOORAY! Now I can spend the holidays NOT WORRYING ABOUT IT!

Yaaay!

Many many thanks to everyone who helped me in putting the application together.

Photos n such

I just wanted to share this picture because I think it's really good. It's of all the cousins in my mom's side of the family from Thanksgiving (and second cousins). Growing up, the cousins were quite close, so it's nice to have a photo of us all.




Also, did you know that I've gone all this time without ever linking anyone to my photo gallery from my Japan trip I took that one summer? I am a bad person. Here is most of them, I still have yet to upload them all. Oy!