I've been absent from online for-ever. (I hear that said in an 80's Valley Girl accent.) There's no way I can catch up after nearly three months of absence so I'm just going to jump in:

- Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday almost two months ago. It was my 11th annual 29th and I'm thinking next year I might have to admit to having made it to 30. ;)

- Thank you to paddies, who sent me a lovely Christmas card through the snail-mail. I don't know if you'll see this but it arrived on Christmas Eve so your timing was perfect!

- yams69, give me a call when you're back in town and ready to go do something low-key and baby-friendly. :) Sadly, I can't take a day off since I'm the only experienced employee in Houston this week but I leave the office at 4 p.m. most days.

- I've pre-ordered the first SG-1 movie. I hope it doesn't suck.

- Torchwood should be arriving in my hands sometime today. Now THERE is a show where suck could be of the life-affirming variety. ;)

- At the office, our permanent engineer staff tripled in November. Thus ends 10 months of importing engineers from around North America to cover the shortfall. Alas, this means I'm buried in newbies.

- jalabert, I have recovered your knitting from the warehouse (it rode to our storage facility when the luggage was stowed). I'm thinking of sending it ASAP if you agree to forgive me for disappearing for so long. *makes with the puppy eyes*

- If you upgrade your Windows software and the computer suddenly cannot talk to the internet, you might find, as I did, Zone Alarm is the culprit. You must *de-install* it, not simply stop it or shut down its process. I do not consider this an intuitively obvious fix.

- My laptop, Titania, is currently having a brain transplant because her HD failed. Fortunately, I'm assured her surgeon is a Genius(tm). I love Macs but the 60 GB hard drive is about the same cost as a 1 TB external drive. That's...painful. Between the malfunctioning software on the Windows box and the malfunctioning hardware on the Mac box, I've lost all of my e-mail and bookmarks.

- I hadn't made icons in *months* - hadn't even opened Photoshop. I'm struggling to regain some of that "muscle memory" but the new promo pics for the SG-1 movies are inspiring. Especially Teal'c and his new bling. JL? If you want to see them, they're in their usual locked place for your perusal/critique/etc. As soon as my laptop returns and I spend however much time as necessary to reinstall everything, I'll be available to chat again.

- I made a vegetarian version of pho last night. It was perfect food for a cold, rainy day. With its 2 hours of prep & cooking, though, I'm unlikely to be making it except for special occasions. Luckily tonight's leftovers won't take much time at all.


ETA:
I knew I'd forget something important! Thank you to evil_moopie for the pink panties, to mlspikie, and to ivorygates for the lovely LJ Gifts for, respectively: who knows why, my birthday, and for my birthday AND New Year's. I think that's everyone who gave me nice presents but I can't figure out how to access my prezzies on LJ and the e-mails announcing them have disappeared. (See above computer whining.) If I've left someone off, please accept my apologies.