What I've been doing

Loyal readers, cease your mourning for the unfortunate jholiday blog hiatus, and rejoice! For I have returned. I'm sure you're dying for me to tell you what has kept me away for so long, and tell I will. This long month of December has been filled with dead week and finals, family visits, a sister graduation, a jholiday vacation or two, and a very special boy. So please, excuse my absence but be assured that I am back with stories, anecdotes and musings to keep you entertained for a while longer.

It's raining men

I'm starting to notice a cyclical pattern in the love life of jholiday. For most of the year, the city of San Luis Obispo is not exactly a mecca of single attractive respectable(keyword) young men. You might think otherwise, being a college town, but it is surprisingly difficult to scratch up a date whom I would feel confident bringing home to mother.

This is all true and consistent until the leaves begin to fall and a chill wind sweeps down Higuera bringing Christmas lights and somehow, eligible bachelors along with it. Jholiday is fighting them off with candy canes and shopping bags every holiday season, and I ask, why? Why this change? I'm certainly not doing anything differently. I actually prefer to celebrate the holidays without the added pressure of impressing (and shopping for$$) some new man friend. Perhaps it is the nostalgia and sentimentality that the shortening days and "A Christmas Story" reruns bring to the homesick and sugarplummed boys of San Luis, and they seem to yearn anew for some cute blogger like me to drape their arm around.

Sigh... Whatever the reason, as this single girl and The Weather Girls say, "It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, Amen!"

Halloween Ideas

Click over to my Favorite Things blog to see some amazing Halloween costume ideas!

Found It

I was quite thankful to get this picture in an email. This is from last Halloween at my workplace, and I'm the second right in the picture. My costume was Indiana Jones. It turned out great and was quite inexpensive to put together.

Last night I bought my Halloween costume(s). I like to stretch the holiday out over several days, and wear a different costume on each separate day. I might dust off the ol' Indiana Jones-ette costume this year, but three more have been added to the line up including:

penguin!



















Leia


















and a lion!















The Calvin and Hobbes costume is still a possibility, but due to the lack of a suitable Calvin, the costume idea has been shelved until a solution presents itself.

Yarrrr

Hope you have a happy International "Talk Like A Pirate Day"! Arrr.

The best card idea

Do you ever forget someone's birthday/graduation/misc. special event and think, "Oh, I can just send an ecard"? Then you actually look at the ecards and realize that they're pretty cheesy and you feel bad for being such a slacker about mailing a card. Well, if you ever find yourself in this predicament, just upload a picture and an .mp3 to go with it and www.postcard.fm will combine them into a spiffy email card.

Haaaalloweeeeen!!!!

I think the days right before Halloween are my favorite part of the holiday because I love imagining a costume and then piecing it together. The holiday itself is always fun, but the parties are never what I build them up to be in my creative, costume crazed mind. Last year I was Indiana Jones but for this Halloween I've been plotting my costume for months. I'm going as Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes. Know any Calvin lookalikes? I'm accepting applications.

In addition to being in the early stages of planning my own costume, I'd like to help you with yours! In the coming weeks you can look forward to a veritable jholiday blog Halloween fashion show, with pictures of some jocose, inventive (and easy!) costumes that surely no one else will have.