Better late than never... Happy 2008!

I'm baaaaaaack...

It's been forever, so I forced myself to make time this morning to update the blog on what's been going on. We had a great holiday, though it seemed to fly by. Christmas was OK for the most part. The day after Christmas, though, Erin's dad fell in our house and the poor man broke his ankle literally in half. He also tore all of the ligaments in his upper thigh. He's currently hanging out in the Greenville Memorial rehabilitation center and making the nurses crazy. They expect to release him soon, though.

The high point of the holidays was the New Year's party we had. My GOD! What a great party. There were 15 people, which doesn't sound like a lot, but our house is very small, so it seemed like the place was pretty crowded. It was chilly (around 38 degrees), so we borrowed a big industrial space heater from one of Erin's aunts and put it on the back porch for the smokers (and to increase our space). The back deck was lined in white Christmas lights, so that plus the heater made everything out there really beautiful. Inside we didn't decorate much, but we did have a great spread of food - brownie cheesecake bars, cranberry brie bites, cheese balls, ham dip, chex mix, chicken empanadas, the works. We made everything ourselves, too. And we had souvenirs for our guests to take home - we found champagne flutes imprinted with stars and a gold "2008", and we put silver, gold and black beads in the flutes along with a sparkly noisemaker and some silver and gold star confetti. We passed them out to everyone at 11:45 or so, and then we provided a champagne toast at midnight (everything else was BYOB). We bought five bottles of champagne for the party, and once the inital toast was given, I gave one of our friends the title of "champagne fairy" and asked her to keep the glasses filled until the champagne was gone. There was music, silliness, dancing, and a whole lot of laughter. It may go down in my personal history as one of the greatest parties ever.

In other news, I've decided to make an initiative this year towards finally getting my fiction published. I've planned out a fairly agressive campaign that, hopefully, will end with me having sent out 50 submissions by the year's end. That's one sub a week, so it shouldn't be impossible. I figure that statistical probability is on my side - if I send out 50 subs, at least ONE person is going to like my work, right? So, here's hoping. I'll update on that periodically.

Everything else is the same old, same old. But on New Year's Eve I toasted with several people that this was "OUR year", so maybe soon, things will change and I'll have more exciting or interesting things to post about. Well, here's hoping.

Happy belated New Year, all!