ps thanx for all the prawns
Catch-up time! With a few pictures.
Home Decorating for the Holidays
Back from synn's new place in semi-nowheresville, Pennsylvania, which is much closer than where she lived until last week and therefore life is just that little bit happier. A tour of the town included the main road with occasional Amish buggies, a drive-in ice cream and burgers place, many farms with livestock and silos and nice views of the mountains in the background, a modest university, and, of course, a WalMart.
We were hoping the moving truck would arrive with her stuff while I was there, but no such luck. Still, we accomplished a decent amount for a long weekend: two (2) rooms painted, two (2) barstools acquired and assembled, one (1) TV stand ditto, and one (1) lovely couch ordered online after we scoured the countryside's offerings.
It may be empty, but it sure is a nice green now!
(Highlights included a furniture store-slash-rundown barn patched up with serial killer chic aluminum panels that we did not dare enter, some family's homestead that the GPS insisted was the fifth store on our list, and a secondhand place whose basement was filled with old wheelchairs and cribs. The last also included a figurine of a grinning elf or cherub or something, holding a doll and… a knife. The owners were quite friendly, though.)
It only required four (4) trips to Lowe's in three (3) days, heh.
TV & Movies
In part for lack of other options, we watched many enjoyable movies and TV episodes.
I should make a Sebastian vid one of these days, modeled after that Mark Sheppard tribute vid. Then I could chat with the people who say "Yay Sebastian!" or "Oh, I knew I knew that guy from something else!"
Throat grabbing on the show continued apace, by the by. Now able to make that picspam post. Will wait until January, when there may be people around to see it.
Cooking
It being the holidays, food is in abundance. Over the weekend, we cooked a few treats for ourselves such as chocolate chip pancakes (synn's successful experiment) with scrambled eggs for Xmas breakfast and a roasted Cornish hen with Brussels sprouts and leftover garlic mashed potatoes for Xmas dinner. Also latkes with applesauce, sour cream and a sliced pear for breakfast the next morning. Yum.
Okay, actually these are the latkes and salad from when alpheratz came over last week. But the principle holds: delicious.
I have been growing increasingly enamored with roasting, but I don't know much about the techniques. (The only other issue is that my gas oven produces disconcerting smells when cranked above 350.) I asked for and received a roasting cookbook for Hanukkah and read through it yesterday. The introductory sections are great, there's a whole section for fruits and vegetables, and it's nice to have some recipes for beef that don't involve a grill. I have hardly made recipes with red meat for years (excepting an occasional pho or stir fry) because I don't have a grill. Alas, last night's first attempt at a small eye round roast was overdone even though I cooked it 25 degrees below temp and checked it after ¾ of the recommended cooking time. The diced mix of carrots, beets and sweet potato that accompanied it roasted beautifully, though. Mm. I think the carrots and beets temper the sweetness of the yam. Tastiness of the veggie broth made on a whim from said vegetables' leftover parts is TBD.
Next up, the other Hanukkah gift cookbook: The Pleasures of Cooking for One.
Oh, and did I mention I tried making chocolate-dipped dried figs rolled in crushed walnuts, based on this Whole Foods recipe? The figs were pretty dry and had to be moistened to be coaxed back into figgy shape, but people at work seemed to like them.
Hanukkah
I don't usually go home for Hanukkah. Ever since I moved from New York, we've done the first night's candle lighting over the phone. This year, now that I have a webcam and she has an iPhone, my sister thought of attempting Skype, and on consecutive nights we connected at my dad's house and my mom's house to watch one another open mutual gifts. Very cool!
The NYT did a timely article about Skyping for the holidays the next day. Strange construction, though. Like, why is there a sentence that basically says, "Even though Skype has been around for eight years, it's common to find it being used in people's homes"? Is the reporter implying that eight-year-old software should have been replaced with something new?
Anyhow. I think this year my sister and I did a good job picking out gifts-which is to say, we put some thought into it-and it was fun to see everyone's reactions. I was surprised and delighted to receive some neat things, too, after the parentals had mentioned their lack of ideas and time to go shopping. A few were on my wish list (like the cookbooks, mp3s from my sister's massive collection, a few other books, and a pulp sci fi wall calendar) but many were not. Like, my dad's side found a roll of the jungle wallpaper that was in my childhood bedroom and framed a piece of it for me. And my mom sent a tiny decorative hedgehog/porcupine made of little sticks and beads. And synn got me, among other things, a tiny Jayne hat keychain and a metal bracelet that says, "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." And one of my supervisors, who shopped for her staff at ThinkGeek.com, gave me a nerdy Magic 8 Ball that gives answers like "LOL" and "meh."
Hedgehog in its natural habitat; tiny Jayne hat
Also about eight thousand cookies from coworkers. Does anyone want cookies?
Should say something about fic now that I've got a bit of time to read some again. But I am not a big fan of Yuletide-I'm up to the "T" fandoms that I know and so far I've only got Texts from Cephalopods to recommend, along with about 10,000 other people, based on a possibly bogus YouTube video we watched when we saw the name of the "fandom"-and a couple of enjoyable Inception stories of late, Late Night Phone Call by sparkledark and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by eleveninches. Need to check out SGA_Santa and see if there's anything good over there. It's nice that the rare pairings (by which we mean everything that isn't McKay/Sheppard and Rodney/Jennifer, and maybe Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla) are growing ever more numerous as the years pass since the show ended.
…Whoops, my friend just called to remind me that she and her husband and their puppy are coming over tomorrow evening for dinner. Guess I'd better figure out what they'll be fed.
Home Decorating for the Holidays
Back from synn's new place in semi-nowheresville, Pennsylvania, which is much closer than where she lived until last week and therefore life is just that little bit happier. A tour of the town included the main road with occasional Amish buggies, a drive-in ice cream and burgers place, many farms with livestock and silos and nice views of the mountains in the background, a modest university, and, of course, a WalMart.
We were hoping the moving truck would arrive with her stuff while I was there, but no such luck. Still, we accomplished a decent amount for a long weekend: two (2) rooms painted, two (2) barstools acquired and assembled, one (1) TV stand ditto, and one (1) lovely couch ordered online after we scoured the countryside's offerings.
It may be empty, but it sure is a nice green now!
(Highlights included a furniture store-slash-rundown barn patched up with serial killer chic aluminum panels that we did not dare enter, some family's homestead that the GPS insisted was the fifth store on our list, and a secondhand place whose basement was filled with old wheelchairs and cribs. The last also included a figurine of a grinning elf or cherub or something, holding a doll and… a knife. The owners were quite friendly, though.)
It only required four (4) trips to Lowe's in three (3) days, heh.
TV & Movies
In part for lack of other options, we watched many enjoyable movies and TV episodes.
- Red Cliff (Chi bi). Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, as if each shot were composed for hanging in a gallery. Unexpected motivation for reading more about military strategy. Plus incendiary slashiness between the strategist of one allied people and the leader of the other. Definitely interested in renting the four-hour international cut rather than the two-and-a-half-hour theatrical cut we saw.
Then we watched feochadn's The Humbling River again. Lovely. - Sherlock (2010 TV). More enjoyable than the vids had implied. Took a while to warm up to Watson, especially after David Burke's version, but then I liked him just fine. Sherlock… I don't know, he was fun to watch, but I don't believe that he could exist as a person. It was like Benedict Cumberbatch was playing a character while everyone around him was playing real people. Well, then again the same could be said for House vs. everyone around him. And what is up with the show's smartphone fetish? The only thing more bizarre was Moriarty's speech patterns. WTF.
- Tron: Legacy. Ugh. As the reviews threatened, a gorgeous movie with atrocious writing. Atrocious. On every level. Still, it gets an overall positive rating for the effects, for Olivia Wilde's otherworldly gorgeousness in that black wig, for James "Franklin the deranged Tara-battering vampire on True Blood" Frain as Jarvis-hilarious-and for Michael Sheen (not Tom Hiddleston, as first suspected) being weird.
- Stargate movie (1994; rewatch). "Sik sikai soi" remains one of my favorite lines, not least because within the context of the movie you can parse it. Which reminds me that I wanted to share with you this NYT article about invented languages. It doesn't mention the "independently evolved variant of ancient Egyptian" the citizens of Abydos speak in the movie, but if you like constructed languages, well-realized fictional worlds, hearing about people who have the coolest jobs ever, the Game of Thrones miniseries, getting angry at descriptions of tensions over which groups of fans are legitimate and which go overboard, or more than one of the above, you may enjoy reading it. Too bad it takes until the second page to mention Mark Okrand/Klingon and ends with a put-down.
- Thoughtcrimes and an episode of Brimstone, both also rewatches, both still fun.
I should make a Sebastian vid one of these days, modeled after that Mark Sheppard tribute vid. Then I could chat with the people who say "Yay Sebastian!" or "Oh, I knew I knew that guy from something else!"
Throat grabbing on the show continued apace, by the by. Now able to make that picspam post. Will wait until January, when there may be people around to see it.
Cooking
It being the holidays, food is in abundance. Over the weekend, we cooked a few treats for ourselves such as chocolate chip pancakes (synn's successful experiment) with scrambled eggs for Xmas breakfast and a roasted Cornish hen with Brussels sprouts and leftover garlic mashed potatoes for Xmas dinner. Also latkes with applesauce, sour cream and a sliced pear for breakfast the next morning. Yum.
Okay, actually these are the latkes and salad from when alpheratz came over last week. But the principle holds: delicious.
I have been growing increasingly enamored with roasting, but I don't know much about the techniques. (The only other issue is that my gas oven produces disconcerting smells when cranked above 350.) I asked for and received a roasting cookbook for Hanukkah and read through it yesterday. The introductory sections are great, there's a whole section for fruits and vegetables, and it's nice to have some recipes for beef that don't involve a grill. I have hardly made recipes with red meat for years (excepting an occasional pho or stir fry) because I don't have a grill. Alas, last night's first attempt at a small eye round roast was overdone even though I cooked it 25 degrees below temp and checked it after ¾ of the recommended cooking time. The diced mix of carrots, beets and sweet potato that accompanied it roasted beautifully, though. Mm. I think the carrots and beets temper the sweetness of the yam. Tastiness of the veggie broth made on a whim from said vegetables' leftover parts is TBD.
Next up, the other Hanukkah gift cookbook: The Pleasures of Cooking for One.
Oh, and did I mention I tried making chocolate-dipped dried figs rolled in crushed walnuts, based on this Whole Foods recipe? The figs were pretty dry and had to be moistened to be coaxed back into figgy shape, but people at work seemed to like them.
Hanukkah
I don't usually go home for Hanukkah. Ever since I moved from New York, we've done the first night's candle lighting over the phone. This year, now that I have a webcam and she has an iPhone, my sister thought of attempting Skype, and on consecutive nights we connected at my dad's house and my mom's house to watch one another open mutual gifts. Very cool!
The NYT did a timely article about Skyping for the holidays the next day. Strange construction, though. Like, why is there a sentence that basically says, "Even though Skype has been around for eight years, it's common to find it being used in people's homes"? Is the reporter implying that eight-year-old software should have been replaced with something new?
Anyhow. I think this year my sister and I did a good job picking out gifts-which is to say, we put some thought into it-and it was fun to see everyone's reactions. I was surprised and delighted to receive some neat things, too, after the parentals had mentioned their lack of ideas and time to go shopping. A few were on my wish list (like the cookbooks, mp3s from my sister's massive collection, a few other books, and a pulp sci fi wall calendar) but many were not. Like, my dad's side found a roll of the jungle wallpaper that was in my childhood bedroom and framed a piece of it for me. And my mom sent a tiny decorative hedgehog/porcupine made of little sticks and beads. And synn got me, among other things, a tiny Jayne hat keychain and a metal bracelet that says, "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." And one of my supervisors, who shopped for her staff at ThinkGeek.com, gave me a nerdy Magic 8 Ball that gives answers like "LOL" and "meh."
Hedgehog in its natural habitat; tiny Jayne hat
Also about eight thousand cookies from coworkers. Does anyone want cookies?
Should say something about fic now that I've got a bit of time to read some again. But I am not a big fan of Yuletide-I'm up to the "T" fandoms that I know and so far I've only got Texts from Cephalopods to recommend, along with about 10,000 other people, based on a possibly bogus YouTube video we watched when we saw the name of the "fandom"-and a couple of enjoyable Inception stories of late, Late Night Phone Call by sparkledark and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by eleveninches. Need to check out SGA_Santa and see if there's anything good over there. It's nice that the rare pairings (by which we mean everything that isn't McKay/Sheppard and Rodney/Jennifer, and maybe Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla) are growing ever more numerous as the years pass since the show ended.
…Whoops, my friend just called to remind me that she and her husband and their puppy are coming over tomorrow evening for dinner. Guess I'd better figure out what they'll be fed.