That means goodies to eat, like Lebanon Balogna:

Cougar Cheese from Washington State University:

And pretzels from Pennsylvania:

We also got our Christmas tree up. We had to put it in a new place (where we normally have the futon), but it looks good there:

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So, we’ve been busy with the usual holiday stuff: shopping, cooking, eating, singing Christmas carols, going to parties, but we did take a few photos.

Josie had her advanced band concert. They sounded great and you could really hear the difference between beginning and advanced band. The auditorium was packed, as usual, so there was lots of enthusiastic clapping.

We have a possum that climbs down our front juniper tree almost every night so we can see him quite clearly from our front window. We call him Peter the Possum. We stepped outside to the porch to take this shot.

Josie and I made Raspberry Shortbread Window cookies for the Neighborhood Cookie Party. It took us two tries and about 4 hours or so, but our second batch came out beautifully.

Finally, we got our new holiday decoration this year: a Christmas Hippo. She’s very cute and has a santa hat and a wreath of holly. She fits right in with our two reindeer.

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Here are photos from our Halloween. We had a good time this year. We didn’t carve pumpkins until the last minute and weren’t even sure if we were going to, but then our neighbor, Jenny, invited the neighborhood to carve pumpkins on Saturday morning on Mr. Dick’s lawn.

So, we went to Vons and got pretty much the last three pumpkins they had. We carved those three from templates I found on the internet, which worked out really well. Then Josie did a pumpkin for Mr. Dick from her own design.

Josie wore her costume three times, for the Halloween party across the street, her school’s Halloween dance and Halloween night. She went trick or treating with her friend Halloween and she figures they did 30 blocks or so

We do know she got 8 pounds of candy!

Here are the photos:

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I put up some photos of our new (to us furniture) and the noobz that Josie decorated.

Our friends Shawn & Heather recently bought a house and got rid of a lot of furniture during the move. Their lose was our gain. We replaced:

Our ancient tv and tv cabinet (an ikea original)

Josie’s chest of drawers (also an ikea purchase and the only one I’ve made that I’ve been disappointed with). We got a really nice armoire that Josie loves.

The table we were using for Josie’s desk in the front room.

Here are a few photos of the new furniture:

Note that we replaced, we didn’t add. Each addition actually gave us more room in the house, which in our little house (about 1000 sq. feet) is very important.

And here’s the action figure that Josie painted at Blizzcon. She did a great job. Ted said it took her 3 hours:

And, here’s the photo on the Orange County Register’s website of Josie doing that painting.

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I didn’t actually spend the whole day at Blizzcon on Saturday because I went to watch the LA Sol (womens pro soccer team) play in the championship game. They lost, unfortunately, though I think it was an exciting game for everyone but Sol fans to watch.

Josie dressed up more for the second day and got a lot of attention because there weren’t that many people in costume. We stayed through the first bit of the Ozzy concert, didn’t go in the hall, but watched it on the screens. It looked like an entertaining show (though I wouldn’t have wanted my iphone anywhere near the water that he sprayed all over the first rows of the crowd). Not our kind of music though, I prefer being able to understand the lyrics of the song I’m listening to. He actually looked pretty good, but he does have a way of walking that makes it seem like he’s going to fall over at any moment.

Other than that we played the Worgen/Goblins again and Ted and I did our fishing quest and got a couple of packs each of the tcg cards. That was about it.

Oh, and Josie spent about 3 hours decorating her noobz (a starcraft marine action figure), photos will follow once we take them, she did a great job.

Here are the photos from yesterday, mostly of Josie:

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What a day, we had a lot of fun at Blizzcon and this was Josie’s first one. Safe to say she really enjoyed herself. She dressed up as a modern blood elf (pretty modern clothes, but blood elf ears and did her hair in one of the blood elf styles, it was subtle, but quite good). She got a lot of attention and enjoyed it.

The line management to get into the con was terrible. There was a huge line to get in that snaked around the front of the center and back to some kind of parking lot. It must have been several hours worth of wait time, even if it was moving. Then, when it got near to the Opening Ceremony time they must have just opened the doors and suddenly the line collapsed and we wound up in the center before our friends and daughter who were well ‘ahead’ of us in line.

They definitely can’t fit everyone into the main hall for the concerts, so we’ll see what happens with that.

You can read about the announcements elsewhere, but suffice to say, we’re stoked about the Cataclysm changes. Very smart of Blizzard to make the old world new again. I can’t wait to level up an alt and I’m already planning what I’m going to make. May even (gasp) prune out some of my cobwebby alts that I’m not playing right now.

Best booth/swag/people goes to Razer, they make gaming mice, keyboards, headsets. Gave a lot of stuff away, had a shuffleboard game to play for a prize (and the line wasn’t too long). And they were darn cool. Plus, the t-shirts they gave away were actually something I’ll wear. One says “Aggro at your own risk” (good for just about everyone in my family) and the other says “This T-Shirt Binds on Equip.”

Swagdog was also good, they had a wheel of fortune to spin and win a prize. I just wanted the pen and I got that, then Ted won the free hat (which you can customize with your guild symbol and info) and he gave it to me for my birthday, which was cool.

Upper Deck has a free photo that looks like a trading card where you can choose your background (we got Arthas).

We played the Worgen and the Goblins. You could only choose a male and you started at level 6 in the starting area. When you finished quests you got a special red Blizzcon bag and could actually win real world prizes (we didn’t though). The worgen are awesome and creepy, the goblins actually look like a lot of fun (if I can get over how they look).

Here are our photos:

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Had a great weekend up in the Seattle area, visiting Tara. We saw a couple of movies, listened to Nanci Griffith play music at the zoo, and played a little WoW (when the internet connection allowed). We also visited the Gasworks Park (after a stop at a bakery for breakfast) and took a walk along the water. Here are a few photos from that.

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How Americans Spend Their Day

Maybe it’s the scientist in me or maybe it’s the communicator (because isn’t raw data the very building blocks of communication), but I love data. Data on just about anything: animals, web trends, weather, etc. And put that data into a colorful, interactive package and what could be better?

The NY Times did just that with an interactive graph of the results of the American Time Use Survey:

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

Beautiful graph, well implemented on the web. I can rollover it and see that when I go to sleep (between 8:30 and 9 pm) only 8% of Americans are sleeping. And I can look at what just women are doing by clicking one of the buttons on the top or I can break out an activity by clicking on it. Very well done.

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A few photos of our pets, starting with the World’s Most Annoying Cat: Patch. Then Bo and Java just chilling out, trying to keep cool.

'Nuff Said

Bo on Josie's Bed

Java on the Couch

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Josie in her cabin at camp

Ted and I took the Catalina Express over to Two Harbors and then a little boat up to Catalina Island Camps yesterday to visit Josie. She was at crafts when we got there and finished the necklace we were making, then showed us around camp. She’s having a great time. I think she grew again while she was gone and she’s very tan. Her favorite activities this year are archery, sailing, snorkeling, and the high ropes. She made it to the top of the climbing wall and was very proud of that achievement (she’s actually afraid of heights, so she’d never made it to the top of one before).

This year, she gets to sail the tiny sailboats either by herself or with one other camper in it with her. I think it’s the same kind of sailboat I sailed way back when at the day camp I went to as a kid. We saw a bunch of leopard sharks in the shallows by the beach and she said that when they went snorkeling they all walked out into the shallows and stood still so the sharks came close. They were actually larger than I expected, maybe 3 feet or so.

She’s going to go on a night snorkel on Friday, she didn’t go on the first one, but heard they had a great time and saw bioluminescence and an octopus, so she’s signing up. Their overnight hike is today, I think. She’s not really looking forward to it, but we’ll see how she feels afterwards. They did outdoor cooking for a breakfast and she helped make the scrambled eggs with milk and salt and pepper and she said they were delicious.

She misses home and her animals, but is doing great, didn’t get very homesick at all. We miss her and will be happy when she’s home, but are enjoying a little more WoW time these two weeks.

If you click on a photo below, it should open up a slideshow. Hover your mouse on the right or left of the photo and a previous/next button will pop up so you can navigate through. Or you can always visit our flickr photostream.

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