Tickled

Tonight Ron seems to be experimenting with the premise that if he tickles me while I type, I won't monopolize his computer so long.

He's right.

Thanksgiving? Huh?

Ok, granted I was nearly delusional during my last post. It was, after all, my first time up and about after nearly a week home sick. But that's no excuse to have had no idea whatsoever that it was Thanksgiving! *sigh*

Having returned home (first surviving choir practice; they had to give me a chair since I nearly keeled over but I managed to avoid both swoons and coughing fits) I felt like something warm and festive and something other than tea (since I'd been drinking tea nonstop for days of course). Therefore I went in the kitchen to see what might be done and ended up making up a new mulling recipe.

Mulled Cranberry Juice
per person add
1 cup cranberry juice
2 tspn honey
1 chai teabag
pinch of "pie spice" (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, etc.)
Heat to just below boiling allowing to stew about 5 min. Remove teabags and serve. Yum.

It came out a lot like the medieval recipe for hot spiced pomegranate juice we tried out (the hard way, crushing all those pomegranate seeds!) at Red House a couple years ago. Like I said, yum. It's occurred to me that that recipe would be much easier to cheat with these days now that pomegranate juice is in vogue.

Anyway, since cranberries are a traditional part of Thanksgiving, that was my one (albeit accidental) nod to the holiday. I had already bought the makings of Pumpkin Pie, though, so I may have to make it for my birthday now. And turkey and the rest of it is all traditional for Christmas dinner hereabouts. So I'll just have all the elements strung out. Of course, I missed the most important part: the friends and family gathered 'round. But, just think, if you'd been around me I would have given you this blasted flu! So, I was thinking of y'all the next day even if I was too addle-brained to be thinking of you the day-of.

Cough, cough. Eck!

Well, my first (hopefully "only") illness of the winter has hit. Remembering last winter and all my relapses, I hid indoors for the past four days and I'm doing much better today. Although, I ventured out today (obviously I'm posting this!) and I seem to be declining a bit. It couldn't be avoided really though. I had to meet with my choir director to go over my solo. Luckily I've gotten my voice back already although it's a bit scratchy.

So, yes, I have a solo. Granted, it's only two words ("O Oriens," in case you wondered). But still, fun stuff. Plain chant, so nifty medieval stuff. Yay!

All this time home in bed gave me lots of time for reading. So I have now finished, at long long last, Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series. Wow! Ooh, ahh! Worth it. Go read it. This is a beautiful fantasy epic in a very alternate Europe. Great character studies. She does have billions of characters, though, so I'd recommend reading them all back to back (unlike me; the five year gap between the first four and the last three didn't help things, especially since there is no character guide!). Be prepared for a prolonged "wrap up" since the character sub plots can't possibly all finish up with the climax. The last page, for no reason I can quite explain, made me cry. Oh my, even thinking about it now, I'm getting teary.

I also read Stardust (Neil Gaiman) which is a fun romp in Faerie. There are things I liked better in the book and things I liked better in the movie, but to tell you which are which would give spoilers so I suppose I shall (mostly) refrain. I suppose it boils down to the book having more of the flavor of Faerie in all its wild dangerous and inexplicable glory whereas the movie had more humor. I liked the book's end with the witches better (though I can see why they changed it for Hollywood of course; but the book had the ending I guessed, the one that poetically felt right) but I liked the movie's epilogue better than the book's.

All at Once

Ever get the feeling that everything happens at once?

Ron's sister, who has been waiting for months for surgery, went in yesterday. It looks like we'll be heading to Dundee later today to visit her in the hospital.

US Immigration has finally sent us something. I'm awaiting further details as to it's exact nature but it seemed to indicate we have moved to the next stage in the process. Woohoo!

Ron finally has had a response from a potential employer. Just dialog about the post, but that's better than the black holes he's been launching most applications into.

I guess all that news trumps the usual daily trivia, so I'll leave you there.

Falling behind

Oh my, so much to post, so little time.

I carved pumpkins with Ron and Molly. They came out quite well and I'll see if I can get pictures up. My drunken grizzled old pirate pumpkin was, quite fittingly, the first to collapse.

I also made a pumpkin pie to bring to the Harry Potter game (all that talk of pumpkin pasties and pumpkin juice). However, I had some...dificulties. I couldn't find a pre-made crust. So I bought pre-made pie crust dough as the next best thing. The instructions told me to flour it and bake it "blind" for 10-12 min before adding the filling. Well, when I checked on it after 8 min it had puffed up in the middle, burnt at the top of the puffiness, and the sides had collapsed! Ah! Well, to make a long story short, I ended up putting away a finished pumpkin pie at 3am and everyone (except Allen who professed not to like pies in general) was very impressed. Yum. It was gone within hours.

A bunch of us went to see Stardust this weekend. Great fun. Quite funny. A bit annoying that while the boy learns swordplay, the girl learns piano despite the fact she knows people are trying to kill her. Sigh. And I hear there was a fighter-chick in the book that was cut (or rather, transformed) in the movie. Grr. People who read the book seem to have not liked the movie (isn't it always the way?) but there was some Neil Gaiman left shining through. I should read more of his books. Neverwhere was amazing but scared the heck out of me (which was my own fault; I was already afraid of the London underground; I was riding the London underground nearly every day and not long after the bombing there; and what do I do but read a fantasy-horror book that takes place in the London underground, while riding the underground!)

The adventures of a Glasgow bedsit continue: the bed collapsed while we were sitting on it. Ouch. I have a large colorful bruise in a location such that none but Ron will see it. We managed to put the bed back together again and have decided not to lean against the wall while sitting on the bed. More tales to tell the grandkids one day along side the one about walking uphill both ways to school every day through the snow all year. (grin)

Bonfire Night was last night. A couple of kids had perplexed me earlier in the week by begging on the streets saying "penny for the guy?" After the second time it dawned on me that they were raising money for fireworks/bonfires to through an effigy of Guy Fawkes on. I forgot to plan ahead so when dark fell and I started hearing booms and bangs going off in all directions, I didn't actually know of a specific display to go to. So I headed out to the front of the university that stands on a bluff. As I walked I could see fireworks in all directions, but I stuck to my plan. I half-expected the bluff to be covered with people, but there were only about a half-dozen of us up there. Aside from some fireworks set off at the Huntarian Museum just across the river (which went off at about eye-level) everything seemed quite small and far off. But it was still amazing looking down at the city with fireworks going off all over the place. There were scores of full-blown shows going on plus random fireworks that would go off when individuals set them off. And there was a huge bonfire off to one side. I could see flames licking up over the top of the two or three story building it was behind and the next building was aglow with orange from the reflected flames. I was quite worried that it had gotten out of hand and caught fire to a building. I can't imagine how a fire that big could be safe. It was quite incredible looking down at the city awash with fire and fireworks.

After that I walked to church to help with International Cafe and there were fireworks going off all around me. One came out of nowhere and went of a dozen yards from me. Finally, once I thought I'd come through it all, I rounded the bend to see a roaring bonfire in the tiny park (more of an empty lot with grass and trees) beside the church. When I say bonfire, I mean it. This was no camp fire. They had taken a desk and loaded fuel above and below it and lit the whole thing on fire. Just as I came into view the kids there had lit a whole bunch of fireworks which went up to explode above park and church. Beautiful. But it's all quite an alarming experience to someone California born and bred. That bonfire was right on the grass and the flames seemed to be tickling at the branches of the trees all around it. I had to remind myself that it's just not the same in rain-drenched Scotland.

Well, then in International Cafe, many of the international students wanted to know what Bonfire Night was celebrating. I seemed to know more about the history of it than most of the Brits, but we still couldn't give a completely satisfactory account of what Guy Fawkes was trying to achieve or why the British population was so determined to remember his failure. I was also the only one able to recite the whole "Remember, remember the 5th of November" rhyme despite three Brits at my table! Of course, while I learned about the Gunpowder Plot through its tangential relationship to Shakespeare, I learned the rhyme from V for Vendetta. It was still strange though that I should know it better than those who grew up here.

As a last funny aside on Bonfire Night, the morning BBC radio had instructed us all to try to be coordinated this year: for the yellow fireworks we were to say "Ooo" and for the red ones "Ahh" and for the blue ones we were supposed to shout "Antidisestablishmentarianism!" which I thought was hysterical.