December 30
[ Taken December 21, 2009 | leaves in the ice | Dayton, OH ]
Almost 2010 now, only 30 hours until this year is over and the next one starts.
Last year John and I had a quiet new year... we made dinner (a very fine salt-crusted pork loin), played some games, watched some movies, and had our own little toast.
This year some of our friends are having a party and we are going over to their house. We will bring some appetizers, I will play bartender (and bring along a list of cocktail recipies and some mixers), and we will play some games, watch the ball drop on TV, and have a toast.
Maybe I will dress up a little bit, maybe I won't. I really haven't decied yet.
I do know that I am looking forward to it. It should be a good time.
December 28
[ Taken December 21, 2009 | fluffy seedpods, fluffy snowflakes | Dayton, OH ]
Sometimes I just can't decide which image I like better... the black and white version or the technicolor one. So why not go for both?
It finally started to snow here yesterday afternoon, a little late for a white Christmas, but better late then never. It is still snowing now, lightly, kind of like the snow version of a drizzle.
Christmas was very nice here, very relaxing, very fun.
Christmas Eve, in a nod to John's step-Jewish roots, we had somevery delicious Chinese take-out from what is in our opinion the bext Chinese restaurant in Dayton. (Nanking Inn. No website, alas.) We ate while we watched "The Thin Man".
Christmas breakfast was Kona coffee (a present from my folks) with bagles, cream cheese, and lox. We opened presents over coffee and then had more coffee and the bagles while watching "Iron Man". (Another holiday gift, this one from John's folks.)
Most of the morning and into the afternoon was just relaxing, puttering, playing games, and reading.
About mid-afternoon we started in on making dinner... the centerpiece of which was the duck which by that time had been butterflied and had spent several days being salt-cured on the bottom rack of the fridge. The rest of the meal (namely the veggies and the stufing/dressing) was the standard, yet tasty, fare that we usually make to accompany a turkey, only this time, because of the duck, it was all cooked separately instead of all in one big roaster with the bird. The sides all turned out pretty good. (Though the dressing was a bit overdone as I am not used to cookinf it outside of the bird.) The duck was amazing. Rich without being greasy, and the skin was brown, crispy, and delicious. The only disappointing thing about the duck was the lack of leftovers... it wasn't a big bird, so between the two of us John and I pretty much polished off the whole thing.
Mmmmm.
December 24
[ Taken December 21, 2009 | winter berries | Dayton, OH ]
Christmas Eve Day.
I cleaned a little, mostly to make myself feel like I accomplished something. Other then that I have been twiddling around on the computer most of the day.
Mostly I have been working on editing the 10 or so G or photos that I took at the holiday party at the dance studio a couple of weeks ago.
Merlin keeps coming over and climbing into my lap so that she can drape herself over my left arm. I let her sit like that, even though it makes working at the computer difficult when I can't use that hand, until I start to lose circulation in that arm. Then I nudge her down and she wanders off for a little while. Eventually she wanders back and the cycle starts over.
I am glad that John and I took a walk in the arboretum a couple of days ago, when there was still snow on the ground and it was actually snowing. It has all melted now. Odds of getting a green Christmas are not looking very good, though I suppose that it could still snow later tonight or tomorrow.
In a little while I will give the cats their Christmas present early - a bathtub full of catnip.
I will also hang out on the couch and read for a little while. Maybe John and I will play a game. Who knows... it is all about just relaxing today.
Later this evening we will order Chinese (a Jewish tradition) for dinner and watch two of my favorite Christmas movies, A Christmas Story and The Thin Man. (Sorry, Die Hard just didn't make the cut.)
It will be nice.
December 21
[ Taken December 20, 2009 | bird's nest in winter | Dayton, OH ]
It is the longest night of the year, and the shortest day. Tomorrow the days will start to get longer again, but we won't notice it for quite a while. Happy Solstice.
I am on vacation. I have actually been on vacation since 4:30 on Friday when I set the out-of-office message on my work email, shot down my laptop, and walked out of the office. I am sure that I continue to get email and messages and requests for work and questions and comments on the UI specs that I posted just before I took off... but I don't need to worry about any of those until December 28.
I managed to finally get all of my holiday cards out and in the mail the day before my vacation started. Every year I swear that I will get them out "in time" and every year I send them out at the last minute, for various reasons. Lack of stamps, for example. I may work in high tech, but I am a complete luddite about some things... for instance, I had no idea that you could buy stamps out of an ATM. Which is what John suggested that I do after listening to me kvetch about how I hadn't gotten enough stamps for my cards and how I really didn't want to have to go back to the post office to get more stamps. Stamps from the ATM leave something to be desired. They feel very thin and cheap, like they were printed on low-quality paper, but I suppose that they will still be sufficient to get my cards from here to there.
John and I went up to Cleveland Friday evening to spend the weekend visiting my folks.
We got to see both of my grandmothers. Grandma (Dad's mom) gave me a covered glass candy dish for Christmas that had belonged to her mother (my great-grandmother) and that Grandma could remember from her childhood. I like getting these little pieces of family history and hearing the stories surrounding them.
One of my cousins from Spain was in town visiting and we had lunch with her.
John and I also made sure to stop by the West Side Market to do some shopping. We wanted to get a goose for Christmas... up until we saw just how much a Christmas goose would cost us. (About $80 for an 11 pound bird. That may not seems like a lot to some, but we were a bit taken by surprise.) We opted for a nice, large, fresh duck at a fraction of the cost. We picked up some homemade sausage (andouille and Hungarian garlic sausage) a lamp shoulder (carved off of the lamb right in front of us by a very friendly butcher) and several packs of Ohio City Pasta's fancy ravioli. (The fact that they now take credit cards made me happy, as previously they were cash and check only, which somewhat limited how much of their delicious pasta I could get at a time.)
I really wish that there were markets like the West Side Market in Dayton.
My brother joined us and my parents for dinner on Saturday night. (He is in the middle of renovating the kitchen in his house and is perfecting the art of visiting people for dinner.)
Today... today I ran a bunch of errands, tried to get as much of the Christmas grocery shopping done as I could, and then did a bunch of baking.
Hooray, relative sloth.
December 12
[ Taken October 25, 2009 | dying flowers | Dayton, OH ]
We got the Christmas tree and set it up this afternoon. I always think that putting up and decorating the tree is a much bigger production and takes a lot longer then it actually does. This is probably because when I was a kid, getting out the Christmas decorations, trimming the tree, and putting up the rest of the lights and decorations around the house was an evening-long process. Also, my parents have a lot of ornaments that all need to fit on the tree somewhere. (As John put it, my parents have a tree-shaped pile of ornaments.) But then, they have been acquiring ornaments for a long time. John and I have only done a Christmas tree since moving into the house, about 4 years now, so we don't have a lot of ornaments, and most of the ornaments we do have are frosted glass balls (in several colors and patterns) that are all courtesy of Target.
Percival seems to like the tree, but not as much as we were afraid that he would. He sniffed it and chewed on it a little when we brought it in, watched us hang lights and decorate, batted at a couple of low-hanging ornaments, and then pretty much left it alone. Which is a relief, as I had been worrying about a curious kitty trying to climb the tree, knocking it down, breaking ornaments, and in general causing a royal mess.
In addition to trimming the (real, of course) tree in the library, we also hang tiny little ornaments on the Clementine tree in the kitchen.
I will admit, I like decorating for Christmas. I like the lights, I like the ornaments, I like the way that I can smell the tree when I am walking down the stairs or coming in to the house. I like a lot of the music, as long as it is either deeply traditional (Latin, medieval French, medieval German, etc...) or classic (think Bing Crosby).
I like poinsettas, even though I can't have one because the cats will eat it.
I like chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Or, in a fireplace.
I like the movie "A Christmas Story".
I even like fruitcake. Home-made, though. Not store-bought.
I like a white Christmas. Growing up in the snowbelt of Cleveland, and then living in Ithaca, NY, and Ann Arbor, MI, I got very spoiled by the snowy winters. Down in SE Ohio, a white Christmas is not a gaurentee.
Damn. I admit it, I love the holidays.
The fact that this week is the first week where it has really seemed like winter gives me some hope that Christmas might be white. It has been bitterly cold, and the air has had that sharp, cold, smell that always seems to mean snow. We had the first real snow of the season this past Monday, morning snowshowers, and then more snow on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Maybe, hopefully....
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Last weekend I was invited to a "cookie party" at the house of one of the ladies from the dance studio, and with a lot of the other dance studio people also in attendance.
This was the first time that I had even been invited to something like that.
I went, helped bake a lot of cookies (my contribution was pizelles), hung out, ate hors d'Oeuvres, drank wine, and in general had a lot of fun.
I hope that this sort of thing becomes a regular occurance.
I also took home waaaay more cookies then I needed to.
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Percival likes to climb on things, and likes to sit on the top of the refrigerator, the back of the couch, and on a stool to watch the fist tank. So, after giving it a lot of thought, we ordered a cat tree from Amazon.com.
It required a lot of thought since the general pattern has been that if we spend money on something for the cats (such as on jingly balls, stuffed mice, cat beds, etc.) they proceed to ignore it.
Favorite toys include hair ties, an old jelly bracelet, a sock stuffed with catnip, a piece of sting with a bead on it, and random bits of crumpled up paper.
A cat tree was potentially a rather expensive and large piece of cat furniture for the cats to ignore.
However, Percival loves it. (We fully expected that Merlin would be indifferent to it at best.) He started to try to climb it while we were still trying to figure out how to put it together.
Finally... a successful cat toy...