I am finally healing from my crud. It got pretty ugly - I lost my voice completely at one point, and basically didn't want to eat much of anything for 10 days.

I did lose nine pounds during all of this, but I don't recommend it as a weight-loss method. Ugh. Copious amounts of crud coming up, constant coughing (and choking on the crud) and generally not feeling too well. Even now, the coughing spells wipe me out completely, but at least I am feeling fine now.

We stayed home New Year's Eve. I was not up to celebrating with a bunch of folks anyway, and it was raining and yucky out, so we stayed home, opened a mini bottle of champagne (that was not very good champagne anyway) and watched the ball drop in NYC (three hours after the fact). It was a quiet evening, but lovely.

I did manage to see several movies over the last few weeks in spite of the crud: "The Family Stone", "Rumor Has It", "Chronicles of Narnia", and "Memoirs of a Geisha". My net review of all of them is that if you like the genre of movie it is, you will enjoy it.

Now I'm deep in the throes of my final exam for my graduate program. It's going well so far, but it is time consuming. I hadn't planned to wait until the week it is due to start it, but I just wasn't up for it over the holidays.... It will all work out fine, though.

I'll post more after I'm done procrastinating finishing my exam!