Best of 09: Car Ride

December 19th: Car ride. What did you see? How did it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?

After my grandmother's memorial my family went to a gorgeous town in Southwest Colorado, Ridgway, to spread my grandparent's ashes.

I rode down with Mike and my dad in my dad's Prius, and the rest of the family piled into my mom's (totally kick-ass) RV.

(There were too many of us to all fit in the RV and I get carsick sitting in it while it's driving on a straightaway, let alone while it's driving over mountains.)

At one point we needed to call the RV.

My dad decided that rather than allowing me to call my brother, who was trapped in enjoying the RV with our whole, entire, extended family, he would use his trusty voice-activated hands-free phone thingy.

Dad: Phone (waiting)... Phone... PHONE!!

Condescending lady who talks from the voice-activated hands-free phone thingy (seriously, listen to the robot lady's voice next time you're in a car that talks to you... she is totally judging you): Phone. Please choose how you would like to place a call.

Dad: Name... Name... NAME!!

Lady from the voice-activated hands-free phone thingy who thinks she's better than us: Name. Please say the name of the person you would like to call.

Dad: AJ... AJ...

Me: Dad, why don't I just dial?

Dad: No, this is way more convenient. AYYYYY JAYYYYY.

Lady who has lost all respect for us (I don't really blame her) from the voice-activated hands-free phone thingy: Calling Annie.

Dad: Shit.

Best of 09: Shop

I have five dogs in my house right now. Five noisy, dirty, barking, far too energetic dogs. Plus, one of them figured out how to escape from the backyard, so they're currently being held hostage inside.

Needless to say, this puppy playgroup is making it hard to concentrate.

Therefore, this is going to be short and sweet.

December 18th: Shop. Online or offline, where did you spend most of your mad money this year?

Target (because we buy our food there) and various bookstores (because I'm a whore for books).

Holy motherfucking shit. A dog just barked on the TV.

Oh the insanity.

Best of 09: Word

December 17th: Word of phrase. A word the encapsulates your year. "2009 was___."

2009 was geeky.

It was full of blogging conferences and tweeting and vampires and comic books and television shows that break out into song and iPhones and scrabble and Lady Gaga and writing letters to my dogs and MARISKA HARGITAY and advent calendars and, of course, coming out as a geek in front of hundreds of other geeks.

Yep... 2009 was pretty damn geeky.

Best of 09: Tea

Still going strong on the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

(Crazy, I know.)

December 16th: Tea of the Year. I can taste my favorite tea right now. What's yours?

This question makes me laugh because I remember reading Gwen's tweets and blog post when she decided to give up coffee a few months ago.

I don't like regular coffee, and if I'm having espresso, it's mixed with a whole lot of chocolate and other flavored syrup. But, since I prefer to eat my calories rather than drink them, I tend to stick with tea.

(And hot chocolate... I love me some hot chocolate.)

When I lived in Australia I became a very big tea drinker. I had English Breakfast tea everyday, multiple times a day. I'd go out to coffee shops or restaurants and sit with a pot of tea and read a book.

After my English Breakfast tea bender, if you will, I came home and sort of lost my desire. I still love tea, and drink it on a regular basis, but I don't have it nearly as much as I did in Sydney.

I like the act of drinking tea. Waiting for it to steep (well... I can only wait a couple of minutes before I just go for it... so maybe I don't really like that part), adding just the right amount of milk and sugar, sipping it sip by sip.

(The "sip by sip" thing drives Mike crazy. I'm sorry, Mike, but tea is meant to be sipped, not gulped.)

This year, I found a great spice tea from Celestial Seasonings: Bengal Spice. It's got cinnamon, ginger and cloves, and it tastes a lot like a chai. I like mine with a little bit of milk and sweetener, or made into a cambric (a tea latte).

I also really like chocolate mate... because it's chocolate flavored tea.

(Enough said.)

Best of 09: Packaging

I've been dreading this question since the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge began, but here it goes.

December 15th: Best Packaging. Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?

Seriously? I feel like the only way that you would have an answer to this is if you actually saw something that made you yell "that is the best packaging I've ever seen!"... and I don't think that I have said that in 2009...

I guess I will take this opportunity to give props to Apple. The packaging they use is minimal and sleek (just like their products). Every part of the package is used (it irritates me to no end when something comes in a package that is mostly empty space or filled with disposable paper or plastic).

When you get an iPhone (as I was able to do this year) (HELL YES), the box is pretty much the size of the phone. I love that. No mess, no trash, all awesome.

It's not some amazing concept, and it's not new to 2009, but I still think it's pretty cool.

Also, it's the perfect size for your Golden Retriever carry.

Best of 09: Rush

December 14th: Rush. When did you get your best rush of the year?

I would say the biggest rush I had this year was speaking at my grandmother's funeral.

I didn't think that I could do it. I didn't really want to do it. But I felt so much better after I did.

I felt relieved that it was over.

I felt proud that I had stood in front of 60 plus people and spoken coherently.

I felt happy that I was able to make people laugh instead of cry.

In it's own way, that experience was "a rush".

And, if I'm going to be completely honest, I got a rush when they sang "Somebody to Love" on Glee:

Best of 09: Best Change to My Home

December 13th: What's the best change you made to place you live.

A few months ago I got a call from Mike on his way to work. He was biking near Family Housing by campus, and he saw a bunch of stuff out back with a big sign that said "free".

Among the old TV sets, used strollers, and beat up snowboards was a big drafting table.

I had been wanting my own desk for awhile. Mike has his own work space, and I usually just moved my computer from the kitchen to the living room and kept all of my shit important documents and prized possessions scattered throughout the house.

I met Mike over there when he got off and saw the table. It was huge and white, the paint was cracking on the surface, and there was the faint outline of a big cartoon man with an afro smoking a gigantic blunt.

It was perfect (?).

We (Mike) hauled it to the car and took it to his parents house. Mike spent over an hour making the surface smooth with an electric sander. We then got some pretty blue contact paper with flowers all over it.

(It's not as eccentric as the humongous weed smoker, but I've made my peace with that.)

It's great to have my own space to blog and read and keep my stuff.

This also led to another change to our house: in order to fit my awesome pretty blue table in the house, we had to get rid of the last remaining piece of the famous "duct-tape couch".

So, this change is somewhat bittersweet.

(For Mike. Apparently he had a deeper attachment to the couch than I thought.)

(Me? Not so much.)

Also, I finished my Christmas decorations:

(I added the Torah after the fact... because it's Chanukah. Also, I couldn't get my hands on a real one.)

(I wrapped those presents in pages from a giant coloring book. So, after my family and friends open their presents, they can have some craft time. It's like two gifts in one. I am generous.)