Largely Unrepeatable: It Is December.

Polarlings, you may not have noticed, but it is now the end month of 2011. This means many things!

- I have been a year older for six days

- The 11-Mile Quest is coming to a close

- Christmas is coming and, I assume, the goose is getting fat. Deposit your pennies to the left with all your stuff.

- The goodreads challenge is nearly over and I am on hooks of the tentered variety over whether or not I will complete my challenge there. Although I'm not sure why, since I completed my original challenge in October and then upped the number of books. I wasn't the Juneau Public Library Summer Reading Champion of 1985-89 for nothing, people.

- One year from today, my darling CoffeeBean will marry her adorable Theater Teacher. There will be copious tears on my part and I'm saying now that someone may just crash their beach wedding in Hawaii unless that someone (me) gets family dispensation to be there legitimately.

SO! How many weekends have you spent at home since I last gabbled at you? I have spent... zero.

First I went to Tahoe for my friend Sara's birthday, where it snowed and we stayed in a cabin and generally had a delightful time.

Then the next weekend I got on a plane

And ended up in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico for two weeks where I did nothing more strenuous than debate about whether to lay at the beach or at the pool, and whether it would be a rum-and-chocolate or tequila-and-lime kind of afternoon.

It is SO HARD being me.

THB and I participated in the lesser-known variant of Settlers of Catan called "Stack Your Pieces As High As Possible While Waiting for your Stepfather to Make His Move"

I win!

We went to a beautiful restaurant

Where the dudes lit our dessert on fire!

I came back happy and tan. It was awesome.

And then the next weekend I drove to San Luis Obispo to sit literally at the feet of the amazing Abby Franquemont, who is a Master Chinchero Weaver and also a Bad Ass Spinner AND, like yours truly, brown on the inside.

And then this last weekend I flew to Phoenix, AZ for my friend Randy's wedding, of which I have no pictures because even though I packed very carefully for 4 days to make sure I had everything I needed to look stunning, I managed to leave my phone and my camera battery charger on the counter. My remembering skills are NOT SO GOOD at 6:30am, it would seem. However, rest assured that I did, indeed, look stunning and managed to be charming and witty for an entire weekend and also managed not to laugh in the face of a Certain Ex, whose current girlfriend is twenty-three years old. Poor child.

And in all this time, I have finished exactly ONE knitted project:

Ella Rae Lace Merino, 290 yds.

I have started and nearly finished several more, but then I look at my pitiful yardage for the year and think, "I could just finish this after January 1 and have a good head start to NEXT year's 12-Mile Quest.." So now there's a box in my room with several all-but-cast-off projects in it. I am nothing if not resourceful!

And then there's this waiting for me as a carrot for finishing a bright red something for a certain Sister of the Art: