Woohoo! We’ve made it past the shortest day! I always feel better when we’re on the upswing and I know I’ll be getting more light every day. (As opposed to ‘getting lighter’, which I definitely won’t be doing unless I stop devouring Christmas goodies.)
The darkness of winter doesn’t bother Hubby, but then again, he’s basically a vampire – he’s just beginning to hit his stride around 10 PM every night. And he loathes garlic. (I haven’t dared to try holy water on him.)
I’d never make it as a vampire – I love daylight far too much. Though, come to think of it, I burn to a crisp in ten minutes or less when exposed to direct sunshine, so I actually may be part vampire. Hmmm…
Anyway, at least the snow brightens everything up and makes the most of the little daylight we have, and we light up the night as much as we can. This video pretty much describes us for the entire month of December.
Okay, we’re not quite that over-the-top – for one thing, our LED lights just aren’t that bright. But they make up for it with the splendour of quantity, since we can now power all 5000+ bulbs off one 20-amp breaker. And hey, at least the City of Calgary doesn’t have to switch over to nuclear backup when we turn them on.
I realize that solstice, Christmas, and blood-sucking soulless creatures aren’t usually combined in the same post, but this is what happens when I get a massive shortbread overdose. And it’s actually not too much of a stretch when you think about it. I’m sure we’ve all been at an office party where we’ve looked around at our blood-sucking soulless co-workers and shuddered.
And now that I’ve made the mental connection, I just can’t get this thought out of my mind:
I figure one’s social skills would get pretty rusty if one spent all one’s time locked away from the rest of humanity, absorbed in one’s own nefarious schemes…
Wait, why are you looking at me like that? I’m talking about the vampires, not myself. I swear I’ve never fanged an eggnog carton… Okay, once; but there were mitigating circumstances.
Oh, and here’s another digression (what was in that shortbread?!?): Eggnog makes me laugh. Yes, it’s full of creamy spicy goodness and, if you’re lucky, enough Christmas spirits to make anyone laugh; but here in Canada all products have to be labelled in both our official languages. So one side of the carton says ‘Eggnog’ and the other says ‘Lait de poule’, which is the French version. The literal translation is ‘milk of hen’. Chicken milk. *giggles childishly*
As you can undoubtedly tell, I need a vacation (or possibly an intervention, but those are harder to arrange). So next week I’m giving myself the gift of some uninterrupted writing time on Book 11 – woohoo all over again! My next post will be on January 6, so I’ll look forward to ‘talking’ to you then.
Meanwhile, Hubby and I would like to send our very best wishes to everyone:
Joy to those who celebrate; comfort to those who mourn; and peace and abundance to all, now and in the New Year.
If you celebrate Christmas, we wish you a very merry one!
* * *
P.S. Another cause for ‘woohoo-ing’: I’ve finally finished my cover updates! Here’s the last one:
Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year, hope you all had a great Christmas too
Love and hugs
Karen xxx
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Happy New Year, Karen! Wishing you all the best in 2016! 🙂
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I’m enjoying the posts, especially in the vampire vein, LOL. Couldn’t pass that up. I’ve always been a defender of the fanged ones as I do believe they can easily live among us with comfort and safety.
Lots to try and get done today and hate to go out. It’s cold, rainy, dreary and windy but, in an hour or two that could all change.
I’m wishing all here to have a wondrous 2016! Keeping it safe, healthy, happy and progressive.
Hoping this post gets through as I can’t seem to find that I’m actually logged in. Aha, I will do a copy and paste of this so just in case I lose it, I won’t!
Blessed Be to all!
(It worked! I used the log in with the WordPress icon. )
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I’m glad your comment got through! It’s annoying that WordPress gets finicky sometimes.
And I like the idea of peaceful coexistence with vampires. Now all we need is some really good sunscreen… 😉
Happy New Year to you and yours, too!
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I ‘ope you ‘ad a good Christmas, Diane, mwahaha… and I vant you to ‘ave a good New Year as vell.
(Do you know, I used to be good in typing like a vampire, but I don’t know what’s happened there! All the best, anyhow!)
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And HAPPY BOXING DAY!!
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Thanks – same to you! I’m looking forward to a ‘writing day’ uninterrupted by the need to cook – lots of turkey leftovers here! 🙂
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LOL! Thank you, Tom – Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you, too! I thought your vampire-typing was quite good – your inner Fangers must still be hanging around from Halloween. 😉
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We definitely need to celebrate Winter Solstice. I now understand why the Northern Tribes felt they had to please the gods to get the sun to come back! I do a little dance every year and so far haven’t been laughed out of the neighborhood. It’s dark down here in Idaho too, then there’s the inversion in January ~~another insult to us sunlovers (even though I’m a redhead too and paying for it now).
Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas!
Looking forward to your next exciting offering,
Peggi
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Thanks, Peggi! I like the idea of your solstice-dance but considering the amount of ice we’ve got around here right now, it might turn out a little more dramatic than I’d intended. Then again, it’d make a good story for a blog post… once the casts came off my broken bones… 😉
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You are hilarious! Wishing you a fabulous holiday and good luck with the writing. Not that you need any luck my friend. Great new cover and I’m with others tip toeing quietly past you.
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I’m curious. If enough of us are tiptoeing quietly past at the same time, at what point do we become a thundering herd? Or more aptly, a thundering ‘heard?’ 😳
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Thanks, Sue! No need to tiptoe – I can be easily bribed with food or drink, and easily distracted by one of the funny travel tales from your blog! 🙂
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Happy Holidays to you and yours, Diane! Thanks for sharing your wit and good cheer with us all year 🙂
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Thank you – lovely comments like yours make it all worthwhile! 🙂
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“Joy to those who celebrate; comfort to those who mourn; and peace and abundance to all, now and in the New Year”.
What a wonderful wish. Merry Christmas, Diane, to you and yours. Thank you for brightening our world in 2015. We look forward to more of the same in the New Year.
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Thank you for your kind words and good wishes! 🙂
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Merry Christmas to you, Diane, in all your vampirish glory!
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And your latest cover looks great!
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Thanks, Carrie! 😀 *swishes cloak dramatically and strides away to find more chicken milk*
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Great work once again, Diane. And you are not taking the week off to celebrate Vampire Solstice-mas, have therapeutic amounts of chicken-milk and shortbread and play in the snow? Instead you are planning to hide away in your vampire cave all by yourself just to meet the demands of your favorite taskmaster Glbryant. Sorry, I guess I’m not familiar with the holiday traditions of the vampire portion of the season. Or are we all selfish taskmasters, demanding more Aydan, AND weekly infusions of humor and responses to our endless comments without a thought for your needs? Yup, No need to respond to this comment, Diane. Take a week or two off. Get together with your favorite people and enjoy yourselves. Partake in all the nutritional food groups. And that goes to all the other readers too. Thanks for another enjoyable year and wishing everyone splendid holidays too.
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Her favorite taskmaster? Is it *that* obvious??
I don’t know whether to be flattered or, well, VERY flattered! I’ll go with very.
Can I buy you a chicken milk? 🙂
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Sounds like a good time to me, G. My family recipe calls for another major food group, ice cream. Yup, we like our chicken milk frozen, with rum as cold as a vampire cave too.
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Hey, I’m in! I’ve won money eating ice cream! My all time fave food group!
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Mine, too!
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Thank you, el Tea! I’ll be spending some enjoyable time holed up in my cozy vampire-cave, but I’ll venture forth to socialize every now and then. Therapeutic amounts of chicken milk and shortbread will be consumed, along with a balanced diet consisting of the four basic food groups: sugar, salt, fat, and booze. And by January, I’ll need a vacation from my vacation. 😉
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As a college student in my late thirties a hunnerd or two years ago, I noted that only three major food groups existed, at least for the college student of the day. Beer, baloney, and Funions.
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Glad the Funions were in there. At least you were getting your vegetables.
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But your forgettingthe most important food group!!!!!
CHOCOLATE!!!!
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Chocolate is one of those ‘nutrition powerhouses’ everybody always talks about: it contains two of the four food groups, sugar and fat. And if you get the liqueur chocolates, it’s three out of four – nearly a perfect food! 🙂
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Or if you got bourbon salted-caramel chocolates, you’d be all set – complete nutrition; no need to ever eat anything else.
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The perfect diet food!
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I know that diet plan. I call it the “All you can eat for $300 a day diet.” It’s glorious…briefly. 😜
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Especially if you have a friend who soaks Christmas pudding fruit in vodka for a few months then makes you chocolates with said fruit.
I have to be careful not to have to many before work, only problem as handmade you have to eat them in a few days hehe
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YUM!!! (And *hiccup*!)
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I make a creme de menthe cake that uses a LOT of the liqueur in both the cake and the icing. The alcohol bakes out of the cake, but not so the icing.
Wanna piece of my cake? I’ll need to see some ID.
Years ago, I took one to the teachers’ lounge at the school where I worked at the time. It was the last day of school before the Christmas break.
The cake disappeared to the last crumb in minutes, and every teacher was quite vocal with their praise and demands for more.
The principal said he’d fire me if I ever brought another one.
Some rather odd behavior in two of my colleagues during their first period classes was *alleged* to have been caused by an overindulgence in my party offering.
Further, deponent sayeth not. 👹
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And back in high school, I found that the fabled trick of injecting oranges with vodka or everclear actually works. The trick is to go at the orange with a small needle from lots of places. And do it three days in advance of the, er, need. And keep them refrigerated. And don’t expect to get by with it. Just sayin…
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Vodka in watermelons. Go big or go home… 😉
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I DO like your style, but a bag of big navel oranges we could carry onto the school bus for a far-away football game. A fat watermelon or six woulda been ‘way over the top. The aftermath was bad enough with the oranges. I don’t even want to think what would have happened with watermelons.
For a later trip after the storm had mostly blown over, one of the perps wanted to try rehydrating raisins back into grapes with injected vodka.
I’ll just say we let him live and let it go at that. 😉
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Bahahaha!!! Now I have a vivid mental image of the watermelon brigade! Maybe you should have pretended you were Saskatchewan Roughriders fans…
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HO. LEE. COWS. ok, I’ll just say it. Nice melons. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
In 1965, if someone had said to me, “Saskatchewan,” I would have said, “Gesundheit.”
I’ve gotten out a bit more since then.
Your ‘go big or go home’ comment seems to have been taken to heart. And elsewhere. 😜
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Happy Christmas to all, love the blog.
But what am I gunna read next week!!! Just saying. No have a great one, not being on the net well give me time to try and perfect the latest jewellery project, or maybe try and do a little writing myself
Love hugs and best wishes for the festive period
Hope Santa is good to you all and if he’s not I hope the naughty fairy does her bit and spoils you rotten
I’m gunna tuck into some alcoholic choices shhhh don’t tell my work
Hugs Karen xxxx
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Thanks, Karen! Wow, a jewellery project – sounds like you’re going to have fun! What kind of jewellery do you make?
Santa is always very good to me, and that’s all I can say without descending into X-rated territory. Let’s just say he comes more than once a year. 😉
Enjoy your yummy Christmas spirits!
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I started making myself a few pairs of earring’s and it has progressed onto rings, bracelets pendants. Ive just started wire wrapping its fun but hard on the fingers I did two bits of either a bracelet or necklace last night and had to stop as my thumb was going numb and into spasm hehe
But as I have expensive taste in jewellery its a good job I’ve started making my own
I’m curious Santa come more than once a year that’s so not fair!!!!
Mind I can’t really complain after all I am the naughty fairy to all who know me
Love and hugs to all
Karen xxx
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Your jewellery sounds cool – I’ve seen the wire-wrapping technique at some of the artisan’s fairs here. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!
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In the immortal words of the poet laureate of early TV game shows, Groucho Marx, “Once a king, always a king. Once a queen, always a queen. But once a knight…is never enough.”
Many happy returns. 🎄🎄🎄🙂
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Merry Christmas!! Lovely tree, funny cartoon, and beautiful cover. My complements again on your choice of anonymous model. A total babe. You done good, sista!
Not a vampire, eh? Remember the term from “Blade?”
Daywalker.
Just sayin… 😉
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Pea. Eth. Nithe progreth, altho. Go for it, thithter!
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Thankth! And hmmm, ‘daywalker’ would work very well for me. Unless you’re implying I’m a soulless blood-sucking denizen of the darkness… oh, never mind… 😉
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Well, not on the first date. 😉
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You know me too well. 🙂
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Whatever you celebrate I wish you a happy one!
Your latest cover makes me want to gently tiptoe past you and be sure to never piss you off.
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LOL! Just bring eggnog. You’ll be fine… 😉
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