Christmas break!

I'm on winter break. Two whole weeks off work. I'm a real teacher!

I love being a teacher. Had a great week of last-day-of-classes, with piano performances and voice class performances. Love my kids. I have two private piano lessons to teach this afternoon and I'll be done!

December has been busy and great. I wrote and recorded a Christmas song, which you should have gotten in your email. If you are a person who reads this blog and I don't have your email, just ask and I'll send it! Mine is my name at gmail. But the song was a big deal and I'm very proud and excited about it.

It's A Girl had our first performances December Fridays at the Viaduct. We played with all kinds of people and got a good response. It is great to be in a band that makes people happy. It is also great to be in a band that throws underwear, wears costumes, has lyrics written by a 9 year old, and does an oboe duet. Our final show was with Congress of Starlings, who I got to sing with. They have a bunch of new songs and I have enjoyed learning them over at Aerin and Andrea's house this month. They also learned my new song and we performed it live!

Did a lot of driving this month. Gigs in the suburbs, and the Women's Cookie Weekend at Emily's house in Rockford, where I wrestled the biggest mass of dough you've ever seen. We made tons of cookies and had fun in Emily's parents' cozy house.

Last night was the OTS holiday party, which I was on the committee to plan. It was at Schuba's, and it was a super great awesome good time. There was a mix CD exchange, and a photobooth, and live music, and a cookie contest. I made and thus got two mixes, took two great photobooth series, played my song and sang Star of Wonder with Andrea and Aerin, and WON the cookie contest which I myself had organized. I didn't expect that at all; when the judges called me over to cast a tiebreaking vote, and said, "It's between these two," and I saw that one of the plates was my eggnog cookies, I said, "I can't!" So I had to wear the silly Cookie Champion chef hat that I made, and I won the bag of baking goodies which I had bought and put together. I gave it to the runner-up actually, but I kept the hat and ALL THE GLORY.

We went to the Kartemquin holiday party on Thursday, and another great party on Friday at Becca's house, in between the Panto Christmas performance at the Hideout which Ben videotaped and some corned beef hash at Geri's with Molly and Jim.

Taavo is in town and it's been fun seeing him and Meredith; we walked through a blizzard to Taco Veloz on Tuesday night and had beers at Gold Star afterwards.

We saw the Snow Queen at the Biograph with Molly and Jenny, which starred a bunch of OTS people in the band who also played characters in the story. It was fun and then we got Pie Eyed pizza late night after the very tense talkback.

Ben played a rockin show at the Lizard Lounge with his protopunkers... He is a real drummer! It's so awesome.

And then we got tickets to the Packers/Bears game tonight. WHAT?? YES!! I have to remember to play guitar today as I fear I will lose all of my digits tonight. It's currently -2 degrees. It's gonna be awesome! And then it's gonna be Christmas!