Poor Fishy

Fishy died. I left him with my parents and they killed him. When I came home he was swimming around in dirty water and wasn't looking too well. I hurried up and changed his water but it was too late. Poor thing was sick. He wouldn't eat, he didn't swim around very much and he wasn't his usual self. I gave him some medicine and then found him floating on his side the next day. I'm sorry for leaving you with those people, Fishy.

I have also decided that when I have kids I am not bringing them over to my parents' house. I'd come to pick them up and my parents' would have forgotten to feed them or bathe them. Probably forgotten their names as well...

Christmas

Christmas was very good this year. As I was gone I didn't have any hand in picking out my presents. I also had no idea what I wanted so my mom was on her own. She did really well, though...she even says I'm easy to shop for!

I got the movie "Se7en". Mmmmm...Kevin Spacey. I also got "Fraggle Rock"! Just buy me some movies and I'm happy (as long as they are not like "In the Bedroom" or "Blackhawk down" we're golden). I also received some money and sweaters.

For my family I brought back lots of presents from the different places I visited. My dad was especially happy for the Norman hard cider that I brought him. Our family is from Normandy and they are especially well known for their hard cider and calvados. I tried to bring back some Jeanne family calva for him but I didn't see my great uncle again before I left. This would have been some pretty potent stuff because it has been sitting in a barrel, fermenting for at least the last 20 years. One of the presents I got my brother was a framed photo of us on the gondola ride. I thought it was very nice. As of right now it is sitting on a pile in his room. I want to punch him sometimes.

Santa brought me a really great present. I have a digital camera but it is really big, drains the battery like no other, and takes a really long time to boot up, so I borrowed my parents' camera when I went to Europe. My mom had asked if I wanted a new camera and I had said I didn't need one because I had one already. However, Santa had a different idea and brought me a really nice Kodak camera. I haven't used it yet but it looks really nice. 6.1MP, docking station, 4X zoom. I even got an accessory kit with a tripod, a case and a extra battery. Very cool!

I'm Alive!

I'm sure most of you thought it but I am not dead! I'm just lazy and didn't feel like writing. I also didn't have Internet access at my uncle's house for the last few weeks I was there. That sucked!

I did enjoy my two week "mini vacation" that I took at the end of November. Venice is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Even though it was cold (just this side of freezing) I loved it. I found the perfect hotel...it had a balcony that looked right out over a canal. Absolutely wonderful! The thing I love about most of the old cities on the continent is that they are all fairly concentrated in one area and it is possible to walk everywhere. Fabulous!

I am so happy to be back in the States though. Although I love visiting Europe, I don't think I could ever live on the Continent. I could live in the UK. As my best friend puts it, the UK is just the right mix of the Continent and the US to make it liveable.

One of the crappy things about the Europe is that because I walked around so much my toenail cut in to my toe and then it got infected. I had to have surgery the other day to fix it. Not fun. The surgery part wasn't so bad because it was done under local anesthesia and I could watch. The worst part was actually getting the shots. My doctor used something other than lidocain and it burned when it went in! And of course since I'm really resistance to drugs, it took about 15-16 shots in order to numb my toes. Now they look all cut up. My mom wouldn't even come into the room when the doctor was doing my first post-op becuase she doesn't like blood. The woman who changed the bandages on my grandfather's amputated thumb (she even went out to the garage and found the finger that he cut off) can't even look at her only daughter's toes to see if they look ok. Some people....

I still can't really wear shoes yet and I kinda shuffle around because my poor little toes hurt. :( Hopefully they'll be better by the time school starts.