The Sunday Salon: Josh and Other Excitement!

Wow, it's been quite the weekend! Tons of excitement around here!

First off, I got the mail on Friday and found there a little surprise from Deanna (Ibeeeg) from Polishing Mud Balls. I knew she had something up her sleeve, but when I opened it I couldn't believe my eyes and nearly hyperventilated right on the spot! Inside was Josh Groban's new cd... and it was SIGNED BY HIM!! Personalized to ME! I guess Deanna's mom was lucky enough to see him at a signing in Chicago and so she asked her to get this for me. How well she knows me already!

Oh my. It's still freaking me out actually. If only I could have personally been there too. Maybe some day, huh. Anyway, thank you so much to Deanna... isn't she awesome though?

And then, Christmas came early when we all got new phones on Friday. I thought this day would never come. But come it did and now I'm in the process of learning what a "smart" phone can do and how to text on a touch screen. It may take some getting used to! But it will happen, and I'm going to have tons of fun with it!

Also on Friday (it was overload on Friday I'm telling you) we fit in Harry Potter. I enjoyed it. My brother said  there wasn't enough comic relief, but I thought there were quite a few cute and funny moments. Bummer we have to wait longer for the conclusion to the whole thing. I'd totally forgotten the book, but as I watched, it started coming back to me.

Finally on Friday we had a little mini family gathering with my side of the family. Ate more pie and played Catch Phrase a bit. And I showed my sister the above tidbit and we squealed like teenagers! Yeah, she gets it.

Saturday I got a much needed haircut, hung the outside Christmas lights and did just a teeny tiny bit of Christmas shopping, but at least I can say I've started. To those who can say they have finished, I say you are amazing.... or crazy... one of the two.

Oh then there was Thanksgiving of course. This was with my husband's family, the side of the family where we've had the recent and still raw loss. So for the most part, it was a fine Thanksgiving, but there were also moments where we just wished things were normal and we were ALL there, without that "someone is missing" feeling.

Earlier in the week there was the BIG BLIZZARD of 2010! Wow, I've never ever EVER seen the news and the weather guys get us all worked up about an approaching storm like they did this time. They sent everyone home early from nearly everything and we proceeded to batten things down and hunker down, prepared to light a fire and cozy up with the family all safe and sound. And we kept saying to the kids... "any minute it's going to get here!!" And then we waited, and waited and waited. We built the fire, watched a movie, told the teenager she was confined to home and waited, and waited and waited! Finally, we went to bed, and heard nothing all night long. We got up to absolutely no change. Yeah, for us, the blizzard never came! It was the most anticlimactic non-event we've ever experienced! Pretty funny. (Places just a bit north of us did get hit though, some harder than others. But still, I think we have had WAY worse than this in past years.)

Whew, like I said, it's been an exciting week!

And yes, I've been reading. in and through and amongst it all. For the last few days I've been totally loving North of Beautiful. Really loving it. I also finished Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, which was very fun too. Ugh, I'm getting massively behind in reviews. But still, I had hoped to read much more than I did during this vacation weekend. Isn't that always the case? Oh, well.

Well, so I think that's all I had to report on. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, whether it was a holiday for you or not! Now, on to December!

Oh wait, a video... the song Josh signed on, and one of my favorites on the new album: