Yes, that's our balcony!  Festivus for the rest of us.  It's been a long long while since I updated, so here's the news:

Skool it out for winter!  I have one more week of vacation before we start again, after a total of five weeks off.  I've been doing nothing but sleeping, reading, and doing wedding-planning junk, including designing my gown, which I am sewing.  And no, it's not going to look anything like my past Halloween costumes.

Skool starts on January 14, and I will have 6 weeks of clinicals at a big horse vet, Albuquerque Equine.  I'm pretty excited about that, and about the fact that I have only this next semester and then I graduate.  I had a little adventure last semester during clinicals; on my second to last day, an angry cat tried to eat my right index finger.  He bit a big chunk out of it, and pierced my fingernail.  I went to urgent care and got on antibiotics, and on my last day of taking them I broke out in hives!  It must have been an allergic reaction to the medication, but there was nothing I could do except take Benadryl and try not to scratch.  Lee had fun pointing at me and yelling, "FREAK!"  The hives went away, but it took almost a week for them to fade completely.

Lee has been working on his PhD stuff from home, since UNM is on winter break too, so it's been fun goofing off together.  We've been playing a lot of Scrabble, and I've been kicking his ass, but he takes it like a man.  We went sledding on Sandia a couple of weekends ago, using blow-up floaty rafts that are meant for the pool.  They worked ok, but then it got too cold and the plastic froze and tore.  I tried sledding on my blow-up whale floaty, who is named Shamu, of course, but he didn't work well at all.  We had fun, but I was glad when the "sleds" broke and we could leave, because my feet were freezing.  There are photos at Festivus and Sledding, showing me, Lee, Shane and Dayne.  If you look closely, you can see Shane molesting Shamu in the show.

We went to Lee's parents' and grandparents' houses on X-mess eve, and had tamales and homemade tortillas.  Lee went back the next day, but I had had enough of the holiday togetherness so I stayed in bed.  He brought home posole for me for dinner.  I was sick for New Years Eve, so Lee went to his brother's house for a small party, after which the group played dodge-ball in a church gym.

Here's some really old news: I made Lee and myself bunny suits for Halloween, and went on the BikeABQ Halloween bike ride.  Here's our photo: Bunnies!  We had a lot of fun on the ride, even though the uphill return trip almost killed me.  We also made alien jack-o-lanterns: Alien-o-lanterns

I've been thinking of remodeling the kitchen in my condo.  I've had a few guys out here to give me estimates, and although it's a lot of money, I think it will make this place much more livable.  I'd knock out the wall between the narrow galley kitchen and the "dining area" (which is uselessly small as it is) and turn it all into one big kitchen area.  We also need a place to put the *3* bikes we have in the house, so I'm designing a narrow storage closet where they can be hidden but accessible, and which will blend into the other cabinetry.  I think that I will go look at some cabinet choices today once Lowes opens.