(no subject)
It's Christmas Day! Happy Christmas!
This time last year it was snowing--ridiculous, insane, epic (for Texas) amounts of snow. This year we get cold rain (and three days ago it was 80 degrees). Texas, you have weather issues.
On Wednesday I went to see Tangled again. Yes, that makes three times. And if possible I will see it for a fourth.
I was off of work on Thursday, and spent the entirety of my first day of Christmas vacation lounging about in bed. It was awesome. Mel and I decorated a gingerbread house, rather badly--the icing in the kit was hard to pipe neatly! and the sugar Santa, um, fell through the roof and was entombed. We also watched Hogfather, the BBC film adaptation of the Terry Pratchett book (which I had just finished reading)--it was good and I really enjoyed it (and Susan is awesome), but I think it really tried to cover too much of the book's rather complex plot. If I hadn't just read the book the movie would have been really confusing.
Oh, and we figured out The Code.
Every year our parents come up with a code to put on our presents (so that we won't look at our gifts and figure out exactly what they are and count them and hoard them and so on), and if we figure out what the code is then we get to open a present early. This year we cracked it! ...well, Papa may have let a few clues slip. Or a lot. Mom was deeply aggrieved--she went around complaining to everyone (including the entirety of Facebook) that her husband, the ex-Air Force officer, who had been trained to withstand torture and given top secret security clearance by the US Government, couldn't keep a secret from his children.
Really it was just driving him crazy that we weren't figuring it out, but it was just dates with the numbers rearranged in numerical order! We were trying to make it a math thing! And we cracked it all the same, so we each opened something on the Eve of Christmas Eve. I opened my gift from Melody, which was an envelope.
"Hm," I said. "It's something flat. ...Is it roadkill? Is it a chipmunk?"
It wasn't. It was a card with 'do you know the muffin man?' written on it. So I went to the cabinet where we keep the cupcake tins and found another card with 'Jack be nimble' on it, so I went to the arrangement of candles and found another card with 'old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard' on it, so I went to look in the dog biscuits, where I found a final card reading 'Hickory Dickory Dock'--my presents were inside the grandfather clock! So clever. Mel is the cutest. Also she gave me Young Victoria, and I must now go and draw hearts around it forever.
Today, despite the icy water falling from the sky, I went out in search of cheese--tomorrow, er, later today, I'm making a Potato Gratin with Rosemary Crust and it calls for Gruyere. I also made a chocolate cheesecake last Sunday, which has been in the freezer and is even now in the refrigerator to defrost slowly overnight. My first cheesecake! It has various flaws, but I'm pretty sure it will be edible, and once I pour chocolate ganache all over it no one will be able to see the big crack in the middle :P I got my cheese, plus a few other odds and ends, including some white carnations. Mom was baking banana pound call all afternoon, and the kitchen smelled divine. We went to the Christmas Eve service at church, which was very small (maybe twenty people) but nice, and then went in search of food that we didn't have to cook ourselves, which is how we ended up at IHOP (WAFFLES omg yay).
Then we came home, and each of us opened another gift--we always open one gift on Christmas Eve--and I got a beautiful enameled broach from my parents. It's a dark purple hibiscus.
I arranged my carnations, to be tomorrow's centerpiece. I think it needs more peppermints, though.
Then we started a fire and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol, which is a very important Christmas Eve tradition. I had hot chocolate with three soft peppermints dissolved in it, and knitted, and meditated on how irresistibly adorable muppets in top hats are.
Later I decided that the trash needed to go out, but I didn't want to do it. I wanted Travis to do it. Telling Travis to do things is one of the great joys of my life, guys. Mind you, I said 'Travis, could I get you to take the trash out?' He said 'Probably.'. 'What would I need to do to make that happen?' I asked. 'Maybe a little more effort', he said.
So I went to the couch, flung myself against his shoulder, and bewailed the fate of the kitchen trash can for a while. I told him that the king of the pantry had promised his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who took the trash out. Don't you want to be King of the Pantry some day, Travis? This went on for about five minutes before Mom--who did not find me as amusing as I found myself--told us to cut it out. THIS WAS COMEDY GOLD, MOM! WHY DO YOU HATE IMPROV?ch
This time last year it was snowing--ridiculous, insane, epic (for Texas) amounts of snow. This year we get cold rain (and three days ago it was 80 degrees). Texas, you have weather issues.
On Wednesday I went to see Tangled again. Yes, that makes three times. And if possible I will see it for a fourth.
I was off of work on Thursday, and spent the entirety of my first day of Christmas vacation lounging about in bed. It was awesome. Mel and I decorated a gingerbread house, rather badly--the icing in the kit was hard to pipe neatly! and the sugar Santa, um, fell through the roof and was entombed. We also watched Hogfather, the BBC film adaptation of the Terry Pratchett book (which I had just finished reading)--it was good and I really enjoyed it (and Susan is awesome), but I think it really tried to cover too much of the book's rather complex plot. If I hadn't just read the book the movie would have been really confusing.
Oh, and we figured out The Code.
Every year our parents come up with a code to put on our presents (so that we won't look at our gifts and figure out exactly what they are and count them and hoard them and so on), and if we figure out what the code is then we get to open a present early. This year we cracked it! ...well, Papa may have let a few clues slip. Or a lot. Mom was deeply aggrieved--she went around complaining to everyone (including the entirety of Facebook) that her husband, the ex-Air Force officer, who had been trained to withstand torture and given top secret security clearance by the US Government, couldn't keep a secret from his children.
Really it was just driving him crazy that we weren't figuring it out, but it was just dates with the numbers rearranged in numerical order! We were trying to make it a math thing! And we cracked it all the same, so we each opened something on the Eve of Christmas Eve. I opened my gift from Melody, which was an envelope.
"Hm," I said. "It's something flat. ...Is it roadkill? Is it a chipmunk?"
It wasn't. It was a card with 'do you know the muffin man?' written on it. So I went to the cabinet where we keep the cupcake tins and found another card with 'Jack be nimble' on it, so I went to the arrangement of candles and found another card with 'old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard' on it, so I went to look in the dog biscuits, where I found a final card reading 'Hickory Dickory Dock'--my presents were inside the grandfather clock! So clever. Mel is the cutest. Also she gave me Young Victoria, and I must now go and draw hearts around it forever.
Today, despite the icy water falling from the sky, I went out in search of cheese--tomorrow, er, later today, I'm making a Potato Gratin with Rosemary Crust and it calls for Gruyere. I also made a chocolate cheesecake last Sunday, which has been in the freezer and is even now in the refrigerator to defrost slowly overnight. My first cheesecake! It has various flaws, but I'm pretty sure it will be edible, and once I pour chocolate ganache all over it no one will be able to see the big crack in the middle :P I got my cheese, plus a few other odds and ends, including some white carnations. Mom was baking banana pound call all afternoon, and the kitchen smelled divine. We went to the Christmas Eve service at church, which was very small (maybe twenty people) but nice, and then went in search of food that we didn't have to cook ourselves, which is how we ended up at IHOP (WAFFLES omg yay).
Then we came home, and each of us opened another gift--we always open one gift on Christmas Eve--and I got a beautiful enameled broach from my parents. It's a dark purple hibiscus.
I arranged my carnations, to be tomorrow's centerpiece. I think it needs more peppermints, though.
Then we started a fire and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol, which is a very important Christmas Eve tradition. I had hot chocolate with three soft peppermints dissolved in it, and knitted, and meditated on how irresistibly adorable muppets in top hats are.
Later I decided that the trash needed to go out, but I didn't want to do it. I wanted Travis to do it. Telling Travis to do things is one of the great joys of my life, guys. Mind you, I said 'Travis, could I get you to take the trash out?' He said 'Probably.'. 'What would I need to do to make that happen?' I asked. 'Maybe a little more effort', he said.
So I went to the couch, flung myself against his shoulder, and bewailed the fate of the kitchen trash can for a while. I told him that the king of the pantry had promised his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who took the trash out. Don't you want to be King of the Pantry some day, Travis? This went on for about five minutes before Mom--who did not find me as amusing as I found myself--told us to cut it out. THIS WAS COMEDY GOLD, MOM! WHY DO YOU HATE IMPROV?ch