car dancing

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Mr. Galore plays a mean air violin.

Are You Fly?

I'm sorry, but this, this, and this are absolutely hilarious. Quite possibly my favorite article ever pulls it all together.

Thanks to the Grist List, I've been randomly laughing about them for weeks.

how we spent our christmas vacation

Father-in-Law and Mother-in-Law Galore came up from Oregon, bringing with them a new Christmas tree to keep Al company.

They were followed shortly by Sister-in-Law Galore, Brother-in-Law Galore, and Niece Galore from Michigan. We spent the first part of the week in Seattle, then headed down to Oregon for a few days.

Niece Galore will be one year old in two weeks. We hadn't seen her since August. She's delightful.

This is what she spent most of her time doing:




Along with quite a bit of this:




It was wonderful to all spend time together.


We also spent time with Mom Galore, Dad Galore, and Brother Galore -- but we do that all the time. It was still lovely though, and Mom and Dad Galore had a very festive (coat) tree.








A merry belated Christmas to our multitudes of blog readers!

wine glass update

We have now broken another of our wine glasses.

Four down (in 16.5 months), two to go!

i may have a drinking problem

One of my coworkers recently departed from my organization. Minutes before he left for good, he sent an email to the entire staff summarizing his impressions of everyone in the office. Awkward -- but hilarious. What he said about me: "[Mrs. Galore] drinks 6 glasses of water from the same green glass. 3 before noon, 3 after noon. She is also a perfect speller, sits up perfectly straight, and could kick the *&^$ out of anybody!”

I mention this because it is awesome, but also because today, the dishwasher hadn’t been run so my favorite green glass was dirty and I was forced to drink out of a jar instead. At 11:45, when I was coming back to my desk with my second refill, I happened to notice that the jar had the number of ounces marked on the side. Thus did I realize that I had drunk 40 ounces of water before noon.

By the end of the day, I had downed six more glasses, for a grand total of 160 ounces. (There are 128 ounces in a gallon, for the curious.) And that doesn’t count what I drank at the gym – I joined a gym! – and with dinner.

I hear that the conventional wisdom that you should drink six 8-ounce glasses of water per day has been recently debunked, but nonetheless: Does anyone happen to know the symptoms of overhydration? Do they include persistent sleepiness, a penchant for naming inanimate objects, and a hopeless inability to ever bring homemade dishes to potlucks?

Also, I have no idea where my coworker got the idea that I can kick the so-called *&^$ out of anybody. Of course it’s true, but I thought I kept it pretty well hidden.

reasons i love ballard, #2180

We just did all of our Christmas shopping in a 3.5-hour time period in a 1-mile radius, on foot. Plus we ran into the Parents Galore and they bought us dinner. Seriously, Ballard is great. You should try it sometime.

meet our neighbor

On Thursday night we arrived home from a white elephant gift exchange (in which Mr. Galore's attempts to rid our household of his Hercules soundtrack were foiled when it was traded back to Mrs. Galore at the end) to find this raccoon hanging out on the fence a few feet from our door.

Sorry about the picture quality. It was dark.

After five minutes or so, the raccoon returned to the yard of our gun-toting 96-year-old neighbor.

In other news, it should be clarified that Al was not named after Mr. Gore, but was so named for being an Alberta Spruce. That differentiates Al from Phil, our philodendron.

mac daddy

Friend Abbe needed help with her computer, allowing Mr. Galore this moment of utopia:

Abbe, it should be noted, also took the holiday-card-worthy picture of the Galores and Al, below. She has a shining future in photography, no doubt.

o christmas tree, o christmas tree

Meet Al. Al is our Christmas tree.



Al is quite wee, but really -- how lovely are his branches?

snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before:

After:



It's still coming down and down and down and down. It's supposed to snow 2 inches today, then be 50 degrees tomorrow.