More Rachel Photos!

We were at the hospital this morning, and baby and Mom and Dad are doing great. Here are three photos, Mom and Rachel, Joe and Rachel and the Fisher family - Natalie and Morris (Jeremy's parents) and the new family. Somewhere there is a photo of me and Rachel which I will post soon, so look for that. She is just a little angel, and it's so amazing to see how much her face has changed in a day. She's just a beauty.

Meet Rachel Mae Fisher!

Today was a big day in our family! My sister Debbie and husband Jeremy had their baby! A beautiful 7 lbs, 9 oz girl named Rachel Mae. She is just beautiful and has the most hair I've seen on a baby. Mother and daughter are doing very well. She was born at (seriously) 12:31pm on 12-31! She must have a great sense of timing! :) Here is one picture of her, more to come later as we go back to the hospital to visit. Yay!! It's so exciting!!

Funny video/cast of "White Christmas"

Check out this "music video" on youtube. The performers are in our production of "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" and they made this video on one of their days off. Taken from the Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Parnell and Andy Samburg, this is hysterical. Click here.

Me a Survivor fan

In addition to my love of Project Runway, I've also been a big fan of "Survivor" for most of its 13 seasons. Last night was the big ol' finale of Survivor: Cook Islands and I was soooo happy that Yul won! Woo! He played the game so well, and was incredibly nice and sincere to boot. Yay, Yul! One million bucks, man!

Photos from Dec. 9 Party

Took awhile for me to get to these, but here are some photos from our Housewarming/Birthday party last Saturday night. We also did an interfaith house blessing, and one of the photos of my and Joe's backsides (ah well..) are us putting a mezzuzah on the front door. My brother in law Jeremy read a Hebrew blessing for us, it was very nice.

Beginning to look like Christmas!

It's been awhile since I've written anything, sorry about that. It's been crazy busy at work, we currently have a six week run of "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" and it's nuts at the Ordway. People are crazy to get good tickets, which are limited at this point. So, been working longer hours, and come home rather tired. Joe and I put up lights outside of the house for the holidays, in the photo what you can't see is some cool lights near the street, outside of the fence. I'll try to get a photo of that, too and post it, it's very pretty. We got these "flood lights" and put red bulbs in them, which looks awesome against our house at night. Now all we need is some snow!

Max is stylin'

Isn't Max just too cute in his winter sweater? He doesn' t wear it indoors, we're not that weird. Just outside.

This is what "I'm Sorry!" looks like

My future Niece or Nephew!

My sister Debbie is expecting a baby in early January, the first one in our immediate family! She sent me this awesome sonogram of the little boy or girl, isn't it incredible? Look at the hair on top of the head, and I think the nose is a Hahn nose! :) Debbie and Jeremy don't want to know the sex of the baby, which is great, so it will be a beautiful surprise!

Way behind!

Boy, so it's been awhile since I've written anything, oy! Not sure where the time has gone. But nothing too new to report, actually. I was sick a few days last week, caught a nasty ol' cold that pretty much had me slammed for two and a half days, so spent the time at home resting, reading, resting, drinking tea and juices, resting, drinking more tea and juices. Today feeling about 90% better than I did Thursday for sure. And it happens to be a very lovely day in Minneapolis/St Paul, temperature close to 60, sunny skies, lovely. During the sick time, I started a new book (it seems I write a lot about books in my blog, don't I?) that I'm also just loving. It's called "The Devil in the White City" and it's an historical book about the building of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, revolving around two main real life persons, Daniel Burnham the architect behind the design of this World's Fair, and H.H. Holmes, probably America's first serial killer, who was doing his bad deeds in southern Chicago at the time leading up to and during the Exposition of 1893. Very fascinating story, and a true one. The book reads like a great novel, but the fact that it's all true is even more compelling. I promise to keep up on my writing better than I have! That's all for now.

What I'm Reading

Or actually, what I've just completed reading. This incredible story called "The Thirteenth Tale." It's a great story for people who love books, who love to read, and who love a "ghost story" of sorts. Not a scary ghost story, but think beyond the idea of a ghost and what that might mean outside of the supernatural, and that's what this story is. I LOVED this book, I pretty much devoured it in a week. It's about a woman who works in her father's antique book store and she gets the opportunity to write the biography of "the most beloved and famous author" in England. This author is an elderly woman who has been known to "tell lies" when asked about herself and her past. Now she feels she is ready to tell the whole truth. She gets the biographer's attention by saying..."Let me tell you a ghost story..." no interest from Margaret, the biographer, then "Let me tell you a story about twins..." and that hooks Margaret. Read this great book and see why....

We have a Raccoon!

Last night I was looking out of our sunroom window into the dark front yard, and noticed an animal sitting by the tree that was too big to be one of the many squirrels that hangs around, eating bird seed from the bird feeder, when suddenly some light came from the street and I was like "Wow, we have a badger or what are they called... in our yard, Joe come look!" And sure enough, there was this large sort of fat raccoon just digging away in the dirt eating bird seed and whatever else he was finding, and just staring at us. Joe took his camera outside and of course, the 'coon went up into the tree, hence this great photo. Joe has named him "Old Deuteronomy" from the T.S. Eliot book of poems of Cats. We think maybe he was the cause of some scratchin' we were hearing one late night that sounded like it was from the roof.

Reality TV addiction?

So, somehow I got completely sucked into "Project Runway" this season. Practically can't get enough of it. And the waiting for a new episode on a weekly basis just makes the time inbetween episodes go ever more slowly. I just have to find out "who will be auf'd" each week! In all honesty, this is a really good show as reality TV goes. I am a fan of "Survivor" "the Amazing Race" and things like "Who Will Be the Next Food Network Star?" or "Who Will be the Next HGTV Design Star?" (and by the way, I'm super happy that David won this one!!) But Project Runway just won't let me go. The designers are all fascinating characters, they create "interesting" to "intriguing" to "bizzare" designs, and it's just too fun. And when they fight amongst themselves, it's awesome. :) If you haven't checked it out, you should sometime and you'll see what I mean. -- "Make it work!"

House Interiors

I've finally taken a few shots of the interior of our new house for those of you whom haven't been able to see it yet. So, here's a shot of the master bedroom (actually just a corner of it, it's a very large airy room), a shot of the living room and our lovely sunroom. We are really enjoying the home, and Max is now more at home, too. I'll write more later.

What I'm Reading Lately

So, I've been in sort of a reading funk lately, probably because I've been concentrating a lot on the move into the new house, and being sort of busy at work. But, here's what I have on my nightstand recently. The new book by the author of "A Simple Plan" entitled "The Ruins." A really good, rather spooky, story set in Mexico about four friends who go off to look for an excavation party, but run into some rather harrowing things along the way. Including creepy vines. It's a good well-written story that keeps me on the edge of my seat. I'm also reading Julia Cameron's book about writing "The Right to Write." It's a great book about getting the creative writing juices flowing, with nice tasks to get back to writing. So I've gotten a new "school notebook" to do these exercises and it's been pretty fun. Just getting some creative juices going again is a good thing.