for christmas, my mother surprised me with a sister for aviva alexander. i decided (predictably?) to name her beatrice bartholomew, after the “darling, dearest, dead” love of lemony snicket. i decided that this trip would be nice for her first pictures.

perhaps the best thing during the trip happened while we were on tom sawyer island. there were two adorable kids charging around with their dad – maybe three and five? the five-year-old was wearing an awesome punk shirt.

another kid, maybe four, was there with his dad, and i just happened to be there at the right time to overhear, as the other family headed off, “do you know who that is? on his shirt? come on, you know, daddy has that shirt! it’s sid vicious!!”

there was also a group of pirates on the island, singing sea shanties. of all the ways to be an ambiance musician, it might not be the worst. they got to heckle the audience, and make… family friendly references to rum?

anyhow, twentysome more pictures and a bit more narration can be found in the flash gallery i put together here. extra credit if you can find the ghost of puck in one of the pictures! ♥

[[i just came back to add tags to this, because i forgot earlier... i was quite glad to realize that i already had a "pirates" tag.]]

one of the sad surprises, though, is that the tonga room – where i told everybody to meet me – is closed for a private event. le tear. so i’m not sure what to do now – cubbie and i might go out and hope that people who have my number actually use it, or we might stay in and do something nice here (that would be nice for cubbie, who hasn’t really had any time off lately). he’s on his way home, so i guess we shall see.

if we stay in, it’ll be kind of sad, because aviva alexander and i are all dressed up!

so, those are things.

also, i made a marble cake today. except that i don’t know where the baking powder is, and the molasses/baking soda suggestion… worked, but not so much. so it’s a half-risen cake, but that’s *much* better than my not-risen cakes of late. i substitute things much, and it’s a bad plan. i need to either recipe or not, i think. at least when it comes to baking.

do any of you want a blog here? especially those of you without blogs – i keep meaning to ask. there’s plenty of space.

what else? oh! i’m almost done listening to my music in alphabetical order by song. that means that i can return to listening to biased random mixes. i’ve been missing some of my favorite artists, who just don’t have as much music out as other folks.

i really want to go to daiso! my mother trained me to adore asian things by first doling out infrequent trips to uwajimaya, and then moving us into the fringes of an asian neighborhood in san diego (not *the* asian neighborhood, although i spent time there after school sometimes, but definitely a neighborhood that had lots of asian groceries). so, i miss mostly the shiny cookie aspects of these communities, and chamalyn, although amazing, isn’t doing enough – it’s too tiny. besides, where else could i get dinosaur origami paper? or mini bamboo furniture for aviva alexander?

i’m glad that you understand.

yes! dolly!

i got a green dinosaur for christmas, but not a dolly, so i decided to acquire one with my christmas money. this is aviva alexander. she’s a little shy and nervous about these pictures because 1) i couldn’t find a camera, so they’re macbook shots, 2) she’s wearing the clothes that came with her, which the other blythe dolls tend to make fun of, and 3) she’s an adg (ashton drake girl?), which a lot of dolly-parents tend to frown upon. BUT! i am delightfully happy with her, and am currently working on sewing in new hair (hi, welcome home, i chop open your head!). soon it will be all red and pretty. hurrah!

i’m not going to have as much time soon, as school starts on wednesday (i’m still pretending that it doesn’t), and we have visitors coming monday, one of whom might be staying a while (i’m not sure). still! visitors will be delightful, although that means i have to clean the house and maybe i can feed them some of the soup that i made last night. num.

anyhow, back to all of those Things!