got my cast off today!!!! what a pleasure to see my bare foot again. i thought i would be leaping around, but it actually feels quite weak. at least its unfettered by fiberglass and reeking bandages. ahhhhhh.

finally, a belated holiday update. fraser got here on 14 dec. and we headed up to buffalo and niagara falls to see some snow. we weren't disappointed, as i got a chance to show off my wicked snow driving skills in near-blizzard conditions. niagara falls was beautiful, and fras was just happy to get a new stamp in his passport. we found one good thing about my cast... priority seating on the plane.

back home, fraser helped me with my holiday baking, mostly by eating everything as soon as it came out of the oven. i spent a week or so sick in bed, but we managed to get most of our holiday duties done between bouts of fever and whining about my sore throat. we got our christmas tree on the nineteenth, across the road. i used a famous lone star steakhouse knife to saw off the bottom and we had it up in no time at all. i untangled all the ornaments while fras got them onto the tree. mike supervised from the couch.

speaking of mike, he developed an odd fixation on the fuzzy pink slippers my brother sent me for christmas. its not that they weren't very nice on him, just that his enthusiasm for wearing them was a bit disconcerting. he is otherwise a very manly man.

i played santa, not only on christmas day but also for most of the week before. we took the chanukah/12 days of christmas approach, ripping one open anytime the anticipation overcame us. moose enjoyed dressing up as a reindeer as usual.

among our gifts were many exciting things, including a fabulous eyeglasses/crazy straw apparatus, which mike demonstrates here. i got fraser lots of gifts that either wouldn't fit into his backpack or wouldn't be compatible with the electrical outlets in the uk, thus i have lots of new stuff. that on top of all the presents that he brought me! new stuff everywhere!

moose was a little frightened by the debauched goings on as we celebrated the new year. we got up early to see the famous philadelphia mummer's parade, but turns out the good stuff wasn't actually on til later. later, we headed down to south street to get a cheesesteak at bill's, and were almost assaulted by a pack of drunk mummers. we slipped into the shop in the nick of time.