Easysticks – by Annie Jo Cain

The Christmas sicks have attacked. I’m down for the count.

Hopefully I can eke out some fun before I have to leave.

Before Oliver and co. arrived, Mom and I enjoyed some fun and games.

Yahtzee! Mom blew me out of the water on this one.

Wii Bowling. I’m pretty sure Mom took the wins here too.

After opening presents, Oliver enjoys his loot.

Thomas and some more Thomas.

May your cookies be delicious and your day filled with cheer!

From Cookies

After moving the kitchen table out into the empty dining room for Thanksgiving, we realized that it was awesome to have a dining table in the dining room for dining at.

The hunt for a replacement in the kitchen led to an island.

I threw out my back trying to get the thing inside and assembly was a pain for sure, but I think the end result might be worth it. Maybe.

I may regret this, but these are the kind of things a dedicated aunt does.

Oliver put himself out there and sang a Christmas carol on YouTube.  So if he can do it, so can I.  Prepare to laugh (at me) and cringe as though you were watching a particularly potent episode of the Office.

Before we get to that, though, here is the adorable Oliver singing Jingle Bells. Excellent!

Here is my response.

Thanks to Run-D.M.C. for the lyrics and beat.  Making rap videos is hard, yo.

Is everybody on Google Wave?  Is anybody on Google Wave?

They must be cracking the thing wide open because I now have loads of invites to give out.  If anybody still needs one, let me know.

So far my favorite Google Wave activity is Sudoku.  Playing real-time competitive Sudoku is a whole different animal.  It’s a touch stressful but loads of fun.

I have used it for work projects, but not much.  For now I’ll keep tooling around with it and see how it develops.

I’ll be around the Wave if anybody wants a quick Sudoku match.

After I got back from Hawaii, I was ready to put all my beautiful beach scene photos online.  The problem was my Google Picasa account was almost full to the brim.

I decided to break away from the clutches of Google and install something on my own website.  Take control of my own photo destiny.  After a little research, it was clear that Gallery was the online photo album of choice.  I took the easy road and used the little installer that my hosting company (GoDaddy) provides.  I was up and running in no time.

My online albums at easysticks.

So I kicked things off by putting up my vacation photos.  Long story short, Gallery doesn’t cut it for me.  The uploading process was difficult.  The photos weren’t automatically rotated.  It’s slow to browse pictures. Boo all around.

Just a few weeks ago Google decided to throw me a bone and announced drastically reduced prices for additional storage.  For a mere $5 (per year) I can get an additional 20G (all my photos up to this point only take up 1G).  So if you’re out of Picasa storage too, you can upgrade on the cheap.

Google is feeling the holiday spirit this year.  After I thought I’d been duped when Jackie called from the Chicago airport with no free wifi to be found, I lost my faith in the Google generosity.  But, it turns out that Chicago wasn’t on the list of airports with free wifi.  Whew.  No duping.

Plus, now Google will send an honest to goodness snail mail holiday card on your behalf.  They all have some degree of Gmail advertising in them, but who doesn’t like getting snail mail?

Send a free card from Google.