Beware the wall of text!

I should probably post here more often. But since I haven't posted for a few months, here's a recap!

In October, I got to go to New Mexico for work. I went there several years back, and fell in love with the food there, particularly stuffed sopapillas. So I insisted that we go out to a Mexican place one of the nights we were there, and I got my stuffed sopapillas. Om nom nom.

Also in October, Jeremy's first novella, "Kensei," came out for e-readers! It's bundled with two other novellas as Cobalt City Rookies from Timid Pirate Publishing. All three of the novellas feature teenaged super hero protagonists. I have, of course, read his novella several times, and I finally got started reading the other two recently. So far, super awesome!

We spend November working on our novels for NaNoWriMo. This was the fourth year I attempted it, and once again, I did not finish. This time, it was because my laptop died a week before the end of November. Though I ended up buying a new laptop on Cyber Monday, and had it two days later, it was really a disheartening blow to my potential progress. I'd still like to finish the novel, but I haven't gotten back to it yet.

I also had the big EtsyRain holiday show in November, which was excellent! This was the first year the show was in McCaw Hall, and the new venue was spectacular! My sales were also great, and the new item I debuted, wrist warmers, proved quite popular.

A few weeks later, I sold my crocheted crafts at GeekFest, which was put on by Seattle Browncoat Charities. It was a ton of fun to finally do a show where I didn't have to try to explain things like Cthulhu. :) Also, Jeremy got to see Kirby Krackle, ended up buying all of their music on his phone while listening to their show, and then playing it for me. Yay, nerdy music! (Granted, we had seen the lead singer from Kirby Krackle about a week previous, which was part of the reason that Jeremy went to see them play at GeekFest.)

We spent Christmas proper in Seattle, but then left a couple of days later for a grand tour of the Midwest. We flew to St. Louis and spent one night there. The next morning, we loaded up the car with my mom and youngest sister, and drove to Kansas City, where we spent two nights at my middle sister's brand new house, which I refer to as the mansion. It has an indoor pool. That's really all that you need by way of explanation. I managed to pull a muscle in my leg from either swimming or going up and down the stairs the first day (possibly both), but I still went ice skating on the second day, which really didn't improve my leg any. But it eventually got better. We also got to watch Inception, Return of the Jedi, and Les Miserables while we were there.

After our two nights in Kansas City, we returned to St. Louis for another night, and did karaoke in my mom's living room. Because she found a karaoke machine at a yard sale for like $6, and it worked. The music selection was a bit slim, but that just meant we got to pick out ridiculous songs and sing them. Someone should have taped me and Megan trying to sing all five parts on a Spice Girls song. :)

We drove down to Carbondale for New Years Eve, where we played a ridiculous amount of Cards Against Humanity and hung out with my good friends there (except for Thor, who was sick). We went to lunch with my former boss's widow the next day, after I took Jeremy on a driving tour of Carbondale. I was a little surprised at how well I remembered how to get most places... but I guess I did live there for nine years!

Finally, we drove back up to St. Louis and stayed at my mom's for one more night, where we broke out the wine and played a wine-themed version of Monopoly. Much to his astonishment, Jeremy won the game after Mom and Megan decided to give up.

So now we're in 2013, and though I don't do resolutions or anything of the sort, I do at least have things in mind that I'm trying to do, like trying to budget and spend more carefully this year. I'm also trying to write more frequently (daily would be ideal) and keep my blogs more active. :) On the crafting front, I should probably figure out something new to start making this year. At the moment, I'm doing a bunch of custom work for friends and family, and then I need to restock all of the stuff that sold out at my shows. So it might take a while before I can start on new things. Or, depending on how some of the custom works goes, I might start making these things for my shop!