%title Christmasishness and stuff.
%date 2005-12-26 03:29:11
:diary:livejournal:fossils:

So I decided to take a break from the wonders of living alone and cleaning the house and cleaning the house and cleaning the house to come visit the folks for Christmas.  Everyone seemed to enjoy their gifts, though Julie reprimanded me - mostly tongue-twoin-cheek, required-to-as-a-parental - for giving her alcohol.  And I don't think my mom will listen to the CDs I gave her very often (trying to show her that contemporary classical music isn't all that bad.  I spent a grand total of.. uh.. nothing on gifts!  All my gifts were made (baked, cooked, brewed) or re-gifted.  My dad got a Colorado State sweatshirt I never wear, Julie got some towels I got in Korea, my mom got some CDs I had already and a DVD I had (well.. I admit that I kinda bought it for her, but I opened it and watched it, because I'm a terrible fox ^^).

I got some neat things.  I think my dad finally clued in that I'm getting more and more minimalist now that I've moved out and don't need a bunch of random shit to fill my house with; from him, I got two nice - and I mean REALLY nice - baking pans, a REALLY nice set of measuring cups, Sibelius 4 (more on that later), and a compilation book of <a href="http://theonion.com">The Onion</a>, which will come in useful as a coffee-table (read: bathroom) book.  My mom's been getting me useful stuff for the past few years, and only a little bit at that (which is quite alright by me), so I just got OS X Tiger and some cash (enough to pay <lj user="rikoshi"></lj> for FC hotel :o) ).

It was nice to spend time with the parentals.  I got to cook with both of them - I made use of the new baking pans to make some cheddar bread with my dad, and at my mom's, we made something out of my Soup Bible and some foccacia to go with it.  I made some tomato-herb sourdough for both of them, too (supposed to be just rosemary, but I got a little overzealous and added some fresh marjoram, too.  And I didn't have cornmeal to keep the loaves from sticking to the sheet, so I used some cream of wheat (cracked farina wheat), sorry <lj user="breakfastfox"></lj>).  Also, my mom's letting me take some of her cookbooks that she no longer uses (since she became a vegan and moved up into the mountains to live alone with her two dogs and cat, three weeks after I moved out :oP).

So.. yeah, Sibelius 4 is pretty awesome, far as I can tell.  The neatest feature I've found so far is the complete integration of video, making it really easy to do soundtracks.  Since that's what I was thinking of doing during the summer when I'm teaching, I'm all excited.  now all I need are videos to do a soundtrack to :oP  They gave me a few, so I might play around with them some.  If I get anything done, I might post it somewhere.  I think part of the reason I'm so excited about that is that writing for something visual gives me so much more focus; like when I was writing the program music for The Bucketrider, having the story with all its imagery made it really easy to think up music for it.

Ur.. so yeah ^^  Merry what-have-you and a happy everything, everybody.

PS - if you were invited to the dinner party, don't forget to RSVP.  *nudgenudgepromote*