Here is a wacky story about a Friday night and how I spent it boiling water. Oh, you thought a watched pot didn't boil? You are wrong, my friends. Not only does a watched pot boil when you're doing it right, but a watched pot boils even faster when you're standing over it taking pictures. Take THAT, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable! Huh, I guess it's not quite as catchy.

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You guys, I am enjoying the heck out of my French classes. The HECK, I say. I am enjoying them so much that right now I almost---almost!---want to leave the comfy couch where I'm sitting under a blanket with a glass of wine in my right hand and a square of dark chocolate at my left, and find my iPhone so I can use my new French dictionary app to look up "heck" in French, or at least a reasonable equivalent.

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One of the things Sean and I said we were going to do in 2010 was to take more day trips and weekend getaways to the area around San Francisco. As you can see, it's almost the end of 2010 and we've pretty much failed ourselves entirely, but we did also have "buy a house"  and "get new jobs" on that list, so we can probably call it even.

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By now, our new range has become a part of our happy little family. In fact, we don't even call it our new range anymore, we just call it our range. How quickly one gets used to luxury, eh? This from a girl who only had grotty rental stoves for the better part of her life, and certainly never had one with double ovens or special Turbo Boil burners. I've basically gone from driving a Ford Pinto to racing a Lamborghini. I've gone from dating Jordan Bratman to marrying George Clooney.

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I really hope you have a Trader Joe's near you, because otherwise, what I'm about to tell you is going to make you really cranky and frustrated. On the other hand, your ass will probably remain the size it is right now, while the rest of us will be buying new jeans come January.

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Well looky here, a Bad Decision Tuesday! I haven't written one of these since February, which was pretty much almost a whole year ago. We all remember Bad Decision Tuesday, right? My beret was a bad decision, and so were my overplucked eyebrows.

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You know what? I love Christmas. I don't mean I'm the sort of person who plays Christmas music in November or puts her tree up the evening of Thanksgiving---I'm actually pretty slack on both accounts; I haven't even sent my cards out yet, which is what I'm actually supposed to be doing right now instead of writing a blog post, oh how about that---but more that I just love the feeling, a week or so before Christmas, that only good things are coming up in the near future.

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What's supposed to be happening right now is that my dad's supposed to be on his way back from LAX with my brother and sister in tow, hearing all about the movies they watched on the 11-hour flight from London and the woman in 36B who got drunk and wouldn't stop snoring. I'm supposed to be in the front seat, tagging along for the company, and my mother's supposed to be back at home with a roaring fire in the fireplace, putting the finishing touches on her Hurrah, We Are Reunited!

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They flew from Gatwick into Las Vegas last night, after a three-day delay. My dad made the eleven-hour, 650-mile round trip journey to pick them up and bring them back to San Diego. Everyone go hug your dad right now! Ours has been excused from giving anyone a Christmas present for the next four hundred years.

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Did you have a lovely Christmas, if Christmas is one of the things you celebrate? I certainly did, right up until about an hour ago when I found out my 9:25pm flight from San Diego to San Francisco was delayed until 10:50pm. Of course I found this out right after I'd waved goodbye to my dad at the airport and checked my baggage, thus leaving me no choice but to take a seat at Gate 10 next to the man to my left---who not only smells suspiciously of feet but also has the charming habit of humming tunelessly---and entertain myself for close to two hours.

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