A Very Mullet Christmas!

It was a very mullet Christmas in our household this year. Or was it? Is my new haircut the much feared and awed "Tur-mullet"? It's up to you to decide!

Modern take on an 80's haircut or not, we had a great Christmas! Chris' school helped fund a wonderful Christmas dinner for the foreign teachers (about 30 of us), which included two Turkey's, much (Turkish, but you forget after awhile) wine, and many potluck dishes. I'm biased, on both counts, but I thought that Chris' cauliflower with curried cheese sauce was the best dish at the party! Not quite as inspired were the rock-hard Snowman Peeps that someone tried to pawn off on us unsuspecting Peeps fans!

After dinner, we had a White Elephant (old crap) gift exchange in which I won a bracelet, which I think was the nicest gift, although I'm sure the person who won my 'barely used' Garnier Fructis conditioner would disagree.

I'll put up more pictures from the evening soon...We just opened our gifts (you can see them under our Plant, below) - I printed and framed a bunch of pictures from our travels for Chris, and I got (best gift ever!) a package of Aromatherapy Massages from a spa nearby from Chris, who knows me too well!

Today, I'm going to make the traditional Christmas hummus to share with our friends, while we watch Elf, A Christmas Story and two more episodes (5 and 6) from this season of Lost!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Here is a picture of our stockings. Chris' (the red silk one) and mine, the Grey Thor-Lo.

From Christmas 2006

From Christmas 2006

Merry Christmas!!

From Christmas 2006

As Promised....

Photos of our N.W. set of 9 candles

and our N.W. Plant with our N.W. set of 9 candles in the background...

Ohhhh, Ahhhh, The Holidays!

Technology strikes again...

I like to think I'm pretty tech-savvy, but recently anything I try to do on the computer fails miserably. Mercury must be in retrograde. Anyway, I took a video of what we've decided to call our Nondenominational Winter Plant and I'm putting it here...BUT it's sideways. And I can't get it to turn right side up without becoming terribly distorted. If anyone knows how to fix it, let me know, otherwise, it's only about 30 seconds, so turn your head sideways. I think I am going to need to move from PC to Mac sometime soon to be able to do any real movie stuff...



Watch this space for pics of our N.W.P. with our N.W.Candles, our improvised menorah using a combination of tealights and large scented candles...

One of the more frustrating things that has happened to me recently was that I spent a good portion of my Sunday afternoon uploading photographs and writing 4 or 5 new posts. I told Chris that I updated some things and when he went to look at it, poof! Nothing was there. Some problem with the software blah blah blah. It made me very sad and I'm not sure when I'll feel ok enough about it to try writing all that stuff again.

But...Since I'm here, I might as well write about our GREAT weekend! Friday night, I was invited to an expat ladies night, where I met some new foreign women and I discovered a new and drinkable Turkish wine, Kav....I had just enough, but not too much so that I was able to go to work the next day and do "fun projects" with my kids...

Saturday night was a mystery to me. One of Chris' coworkers was hosting a party/amateur photography exhibition which we were able to attend for a little while (and have some of her amazing home-made Sangria) before we left to go on a date about which Chris was being very secretive. We went over to Beyoglu, a fun nightlife area in Istanbul, where Chris took me to a fabulous Thai restaurant that has been described as the best in Istanbul, and we were not disappointed! After dinner, and after leading me through the winding streets of Beyoglu to "throw me off track", we ended up at Babylon, a club that tends to be the go-to venue for most of the foreign bands that come through here, to see Buckwheat Zydeco, a band I had heard of but never had the pleasure to hear personally. They were amazing and if you ever have the opportunity to see them live, do it. Here's a video, not of the show we saw, but another one at a Blues Festival elsewhere in Turkey. The guy with the accordian is Buckwheat himself, a mature gentleman who was really energetic and quite funny too. The two best parts of our show were 1) when a guy in the audience wearing and playing his own washboard chest thing that is the "Zydeco instrument" was pulled up onstage and played a song with the band and 2) when a group of about 7 expat-looking older guys walked in in full Blues Brothers style - dark suits and sunglasses, some of them with bow ties and some with long scarves. We had a great vantage point to see all of this from up on the balcony.



Apologies if this post isn't at all entertaining, I think I used up all my funny on the posts that never made it ... Sorry!

Great Turkey Photographs!

A friend sent me this website...This guy is a well known Turkish photographer and his depictions of Turkey and it's people are amazing!

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1