the answer is obvious. ron obvious.
Well, I'm back -- you know, back, although in the ordinary way I didn't actually go anywhere (except into town, and to several shops, and an ice cream place). Had a really splendid visit with my aunt & cousin, in which much hilarity was shared, and I feel a bit refreshed and a bit terrified because School is looming in front of me like a great dark thing (I like school usually, except for certain bits which I hate vehemently, and I love to learn, but it's all very intimidating, isn't it?), and, you know.
Prominent events of the past several days:
i. Aunt Amy and Andrea and I watched a great lot of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Which is about three times as funny when one is watching it with someone else. (My poor cousin: she's grown up with Monty Python about as much as I have, and yet she'd never seen the Silly Walks sketch. Honestly, my aunt needs to be taken to task.) Ron Obvious is my cousin's and my new hero, which, er, probably says a lot. We silly-walked all over the place for two days, and it was most entertaining.
ii. I have eaten an absurd and unethical amount of sweet things. On Tuesday alone, we dropped into the candy shop in town and bought bags of things (I had three peppermint creams and two chocolate-covered Oreos), baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies which were really chocolate chip squashy stuff because something went slightly wrong in the baking process and they all went flat and had to be scraped off the pans, but they still tasted wonderful even if they all turned into one great mass of chocolate and cookie after I put them in a container, and then that evening Dad treated us all to ice cream. There is some heavy duty bicycling due, let me tell you. This is not to mention the cinnamon rolls I made Saturday night and Sunday morning. I mixed the dough before bed and left it to rise all night and put on the butter and cinnamon and brown sugar and rolled them up and baked them and made cream cheese icing in the morning, so we had hot pastry for Sunday breakfast and it was fantastic, if I do say so myself. (The nice thing about baking is that I can't second-guess myself as I do in every other art form: it either tastes good or it doesn't. And I can happily enjoy my own creations without a single qualm -- insofar as weight gain isn't concerned, oh dear.)
Right, and then Mum made stir fry for dinner one night. Talk about adding insult to injury.
iii. Heard lots and lots of grisly hospital stories, thanks mostly to my aunt, who is an x-ray technician. Well, and then there was my mother's bit about having this sharp pointy thing go all the way through her arm. Yes, wonderful.
iv. Poor Bartholomew got neutered on Monday, so his days of philandering are over -- and hopefully his urge to Mark His Territory (by urinating on things such as our furniture and Dad's lap, as cats do) and Fend Off The Enemy, which may only be the one cat that keeps showing up, or it could be lots of other cats we don't know about. In any case, cat fights are v. noisy, and Bart keeps coming home with scabs and fur missing. Of course now he is sore and humiliated and probably furious, but he seems to be recovering quite well and has been jumping in laps and lying in completely inappropriate places (my aunt's luggage, on top of the layers of miscellanea on the coffee table, baskets of clean laundry).
v. We all (except for Heidi, who went to sleep rather quickly) saw the film City of Joy several evenings ago, which was heartbreaking and beautiful (also FANTASTICALLY FILMED alkhgdlkhg I want to study the opening scene for its incredible deftness in relaying background information and emotion in a drawing-in, haunting, concise manner, and there were some other shots that were just spectacular) and made me weep, which is not a thing that happens very often where films are concerned, although I seem to be a lot more emotional about things than I was two or three years ago.
vi. At the Goodwill on Monday, Mum found an album which my parents bought for me when I was a wee bairn and which I used to listen to all the time -- it's got lots of people who were popular in the late eighties (it was put out in 1990 or a bit earlier) singing children's songs (or folk songs or other songs that would appeal to children): there's Bob Dylan singing "This Old Man" (which is a huge childhood memory for me), and Paul McCartney with a really fantastic version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and -- oh, all sorts. Have a look. (Ours is the original CD release, though, not the tenth anniversary one.) Apparently, the album is going for over a hundred dollars used on Amazon Marketplace and suchlike, but Mum paid seventy-five cents, hurrah!
So, that was my week, and a very nice one it's been, too. And now I've got loads and loads of internet to catch up on and I have so many Firefox tabs up that my computer is beginning to smoke at the corners and apparently everyone decided that While I Was Busy was an excellent time to post lots of awesome fic, so. Will attempt to comment on everything important inasmuch as it is my power to do so. Seriously, guys, the fic. It's a conspiracy, it is. (Though even I have been unusually productive lately.)
Prominent events of the past several days:
i. Aunt Amy and Andrea and I watched a great lot of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Which is about three times as funny when one is watching it with someone else. (My poor cousin: she's grown up with Monty Python about as much as I have, and yet she'd never seen the Silly Walks sketch. Honestly, my aunt needs to be taken to task.) Ron Obvious is my cousin's and my new hero, which, er, probably says a lot. We silly-walked all over the place for two days, and it was most entertaining.
ii. I have eaten an absurd and unethical amount of sweet things. On Tuesday alone, we dropped into the candy shop in town and bought bags of things (I had three peppermint creams and two chocolate-covered Oreos), baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies which were really chocolate chip squashy stuff because something went slightly wrong in the baking process and they all went flat and had to be scraped off the pans, but they still tasted wonderful even if they all turned into one great mass of chocolate and cookie after I put them in a container, and then that evening Dad treated us all to ice cream. There is some heavy duty bicycling due, let me tell you. This is not to mention the cinnamon rolls I made Saturday night and Sunday morning. I mixed the dough before bed and left it to rise all night and put on the butter and cinnamon and brown sugar and rolled them up and baked them and made cream cheese icing in the morning, so we had hot pastry for Sunday breakfast and it was fantastic, if I do say so myself. (The nice thing about baking is that I can't second-guess myself as I do in every other art form: it either tastes good or it doesn't. And I can happily enjoy my own creations without a single qualm -- insofar as weight gain isn't concerned, oh dear.)
Right, and then Mum made stir fry for dinner one night. Talk about adding insult to injury.
iii. Heard lots and lots of grisly hospital stories, thanks mostly to my aunt, who is an x-ray technician. Well, and then there was my mother's bit about having this sharp pointy thing go all the way through her arm. Yes, wonderful.
iv. Poor Bartholomew got neutered on Monday, so his days of philandering are over -- and hopefully his urge to Mark His Territory (by urinating on things such as our furniture and Dad's lap, as cats do) and Fend Off The Enemy, which may only be the one cat that keeps showing up, or it could be lots of other cats we don't know about. In any case, cat fights are v. noisy, and Bart keeps coming home with scabs and fur missing. Of course now he is sore and humiliated and probably furious, but he seems to be recovering quite well and has been jumping in laps and lying in completely inappropriate places (my aunt's luggage, on top of the layers of miscellanea on the coffee table, baskets of clean laundry).
v. We all (except for Heidi, who went to sleep rather quickly) saw the film City of Joy several evenings ago, which was heartbreaking and beautiful (also FANTASTICALLY FILMED alkhgdlkhg I want to study the opening scene for its incredible deftness in relaying background information and emotion in a drawing-in, haunting, concise manner, and there were some other shots that were just spectacular) and made me weep, which is not a thing that happens very often where films are concerned, although I seem to be a lot more emotional about things than I was two or three years ago.
vi. At the Goodwill on Monday, Mum found an album which my parents bought for me when I was a wee bairn and which I used to listen to all the time -- it's got lots of people who were popular in the late eighties (it was put out in 1990 or a bit earlier) singing children's songs (or folk songs or other songs that would appeal to children): there's Bob Dylan singing "This Old Man" (which is a huge childhood memory for me), and Paul McCartney with a really fantastic version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and -- oh, all sorts. Have a look. (Ours is the original CD release, though, not the tenth anniversary one.) Apparently, the album is going for over a hundred dollars used on Amazon Marketplace and suchlike, but Mum paid seventy-five cents, hurrah!
So, that was my week, and a very nice one it's been, too. And now I've got loads and loads of internet to catch up on and I have so many Firefox tabs up that my computer is beginning to smoke at the corners and apparently everyone decided that While I Was Busy was an excellent time to post lots of awesome fic, so. Will attempt to comment on everything important inasmuch as it is my power to do so. Seriously, guys, the fic. It's a conspiracy, it is. (Though even I have been unusually productive lately.)