Christmas Unwrap-Up

Sheesh, so much has been going on that I haven't had time to write about!  Somehow it seems appropriate for the last day of the year, to wrap up the last few weeks, covering holiday events that have gone unblogged.

First of all, Christmas itself.  Despite a few small hiccups, I'm declaring brunch at my house a success - more because it was fun than for any other particular reason.  A highlight was E's surprise holiday visit!  T agreed to pick her up from the airport and bring her to brunch, but a delayed flight threw a bit of a wrench in the works.  Everyone was understanding when I said T was running late and we'd have to delay the food a bit, and it all became clear when T and E showed up at the door!  Mimosas flowed and a good time was had by all.

That night I had a low-key Christmas dinner with T's family, coffee, more presents, general merriment.

A couple days later, I went to see my first Trans-Siberian Orchestra show.  I've had a number of their CDs for years and love listening to their stuff every Christmas season.  They played two shows at Scottrade Center, and T and I went to the afternoon show.  I made this choice because the seats available were significantly better, although it might have been a mistake.  The crowd at our show was pretty dull (save a few unendingly and endearingly entertaining superfans), but a friend went to the evening show and said people were wild.

Audience aside, the show itself was an odd combination of narrative work, rock show, orchestra performance, and pyrotechnics display.  And by rock show, I mean 80s hair band rock show.  As it sounds, and as T and I discussed, it's hard to pin down exactly what the concert was, but I know most of their music, so I found it enjoyable.  However, next year I think I'll opt for the evening show instead, even if the seats aren't as good.  I feel like the whole odd experience would be enhanced by  the presence of a more energetic crowd.

I've been so busy that I haven't even had time to do my annual watching of Little Women and Love Actually yet, but I'm still planning on getting to them.  Also this year, for the first time, I watched It's a Wonderful Life on DVD, rather than seeing snippets here and there on TV.  It's the first time in a long time (maybe ever?) that I've actually seen the entire movie all the way through, start to finish.  I was reminded that the movie is, as John Hawkes points out, actually quite dark despite its happy ending.

So I guess that's it for another Christmas - more next year!

Goal #52

Goal #52: finish my kitchen cart.

I have been working for some time on repainting an old bureau at T's house.  My plan for it is to be the final storage I need in my kitchen - for baking supplies and my extensive collection of teas.  For now, they're in boxes on the floor, anxiously awaiting their new home.

Big news!
This brings me to the end of my year of weekly goals.  What do you think? Should I continue?  Monthly goals?  I've had some success with the weeklies, definitely more than I ever had with a big New Year's resolution.  Monthly would give me opportunities for bigger projects, but bigger often equals less likely to be completed, because they're a little harder to get a handle on.  Maybe I'll break down monthly goals into smaller, weekly chunks.  Thoughts?

Recap of Goal #51: definitely a party week, and was it ever good!  Christmas brunch at my house was a success, and T threw me an awesome, totally unexpected, and very thoughtful surprise party for my birthday.

Happy Birthday to Me!

What I'm Reading Now -- Farm City

I'm so many posts behind, and because these ones are easy (though perhaps not particularly seasonal), I'm going to use this post as a cop out for the day.

So guess what?  (Is that sentence supposed to have a question mark at the end of it?  It's not technically a question, but I feel like it always comes out sounding like one, so I give it a question mark.  Thoughts?)

Anyway, guess what?  I'm reading Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer.  I stumbled across it at the library and know nothing about it going in except what you can obviously learn from the title.  Stay tuned for my final thoughts.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 48

Otherwise titled: dancing with myself

As has been clear from previous posts, I've been a bit behind on my Christmas celebrating this year.  One of the things I haven't done much of: attending live performances of various types.  In an effort to remedy this situation, I took myself out on a date to see the annual SLSO holiday show.

As always, it was light, fun, lovely.  Our famous soloist was Debby Boone (of You Light Up My Life fame), but she had lost her voice earlier in the week; while her performance was spirited, it was not musically impressive.  Props to her for at least showing up and giving it the old college try though.

The bummer for you, my lovely readers, is that there was no friend there to take a picture of me in my dress, so I took a pic of it when I got home.

But trust me, I looked great!

Merry Christmas to All!

Goal #52

Goal #52: party!!

This is a big week - hosting Christmas brunch at my house for the first time ever, and my birthday!  I'm going to try to relax and enjoy it.

Recap of Goal #51: I'd have to say that this week is improved over last.  I've made progress on my apartment, made my first Christmas cookies of the year (about three weeks later than usual), and ran some errands that needed to be done.  But I did realize that I've lost something that's important to me - I hope it turns up.

Are We Still Here?

I think yesterday was the fourth time in two years that the world had been predicted to end: according to the religious fanatics, May 21 and (failing that) October 21, 2011; according to various accounts of the Mayan calendar, either December 12 or December 21, 2012.  My hopes weren't high for apocalypse.

Are we still here?

What I Watched -- The Iron Lady

I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, but I didn't actually know much about Margaret Thatcher before seeing The Iron Lady.  To be fair, I was eight years old when she left office.  However, I was a history major.  And I studied in London.  But my focus was American history and the British history I focused on while I was there was older - World War I and the British Civil War.

[Aside: I've noticed a general lack of historical knowledge in lots of people of my generation stretching from the end of World War II through to whenever we were old enough to start remembering for ourselves, with the exception of the Civil Rights Movement.  In fact, probably 10 years ago or more, Hasbro released a 20th Anniversary Edition of their popular Trivial Pursuit game, which covered events that had occurred in the two decades since its original release.  It was ridiculously hard; even Dad thought so!  But that goes to show that my knowledge is lacking.  Apparently they now also have a 25th Anniversary Edition; maybe I'd have better luck with that one.  We played the Master Edition over Thanksgiving, and us young kids crushed it!]

But back to the Baroness Thatcher.  She's played in the movie by Meryl Streep, who deservedly won an Oscar for best actress for her performance.  Thatcher is an old woman, remembering some of the important events of her life with a focus on her rise to the post of prime minister.  She starts out as a much maligned "grocer's daughter," but drives hard against the political machine and makes a name for herself, meeting her husband Denis along the way.  I found these historical snippets fascinating even if somewhat out of context, and wish there had been more of them.

The other branch of the story was the personal side: a lonely old woman whose husband had died and whose son lives half a world away.  It's a poignant reminder that even the most famous and powerful people in the world still face the same troubles in the end as the unwashed masses, even if they have cheery hired help to make it easier.

Bottom line: I would've like more background in history and politics (I can't believe I just said that - I hate politics!), but I enjoyed the story of the woman.

Random Links

I overshare; therefore, I am.

The new city library.  And a little history, too.

Have you ever been stuck in traffic and just wanted to drive over the other cars?  This puppy should do the trick.

Amazing house, how sweet the lights - for your Christmas enjoyment.  Though there are more recent imitations, I think this one is pretty cool.

Ocean flowers.

A solution to the unemployment problem: Santa, Inc.

One of Life's Little Pleasures

Pulling up to a parking meter with no change, and realizing that the person who just pulled out left you an hour and a half on the meter.  How nice of them.

Now, this didn't actually happen to me today, but it is nice when it does.

Goal #51

Goal #51: Have a good week.

This week was a rough one.  It wasn't all bad - we had a fun lunch for my paralegal's birthday, I saw an alt-rock show that took me back to the grungy 90s, happy hour with G&G.  But there was a lot of bad: emotional meltdown, illness, lack of productivity (blaming the illness), lack of working out (for sure blaming the illness), other people's emotional meltdowns, and a lot of people just being mean for no reason.

Example 1: one dumb chick walking past me and my dog (either thinking I couldn't hear her because I had headphones in, or just not caring whether I could or not) yells at the dog that he "better not lift his leg and piss while [she's] walking by."

Example 2: another dumb chick walks past me on the sidewalk and says, "I hate your vest."

People are the worst, really.  I want to be a hermit.

Recap of Goal #50:
- Send out the rest of the cards? Check.
- Christmas menu? A work in progress, but mostly there.
- Cookies? Haven't even thought about it.  (For the record, I think this will be the first Christmas since I learned how to bake that I haven't made and delivered cookies to everyone I know.  That's how you know I'm busy!)
- Shopping list? Nope.
- Shopping? Not 'til I have a list. Duh.
- Little tree? Check.

Nothin' a Little Duct Tape Can't Fix

Duct tape is magical.  Here is just the latest:

I have gotten in the unfortunate habit of forgetting my belt when I go places.  Often, because of the way my schedule works out, I leave the house with multiple changes of clothes which are suitable for my activities over the course of the entire day.  For some reason, the belt often is left home.  (There was that one day I forgot pants, but that's for another day.)

Anyway, yesterday I forgot the belt, yet again.  I needed my change of clothes at T's house, where I was going to be doing some painting.  I suppose I could have gone without it, but that would have been an unfortunate, plumber-like situation.

Luckily, T was trimming up a giant piece of rubber floor matting for his new home gym.  He happened to have a narrow strip that he took off the end to square up the corners, and it was plenty long to be a belt.  Now, for a buckle....

What I'm Reading Now -- Gone Girl

Gone Girl started getting great press even before it came out, and I've been dying to read it.  I've finally made enough progress through my backlog of audiobooks that I feel like I can get to the more current stuff.

In this one, a woman disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, and the story is told alternately through her voice and that of her husband.  That's all I know.

I hope it lives up to the hype (or buzz).

Quote of the Day

"It's easy to say how we love new friends and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old."
  -- George Eliot

What I Watched -- Life of Pi

Way back when I was in NC, I went to see Life of Pi with mom and E.  Generally I prefer to read books before I see the movie counterparts, but I'm super behind on my reading and this seemed like a visually appealing movie worth seeing in the theater.  Off I went, knowing nothing about the story other than that there was something about a boy, a tiger, and a boat.

And really, that was most of the story: a boy, a tiger, and a boat.  The boy is Pi Patel, the tiger is Richard Parker, and the boat is too small for the two of them, but it's all they have after their ship goes down in the middle of nowhere.

The story of the shipwreck is told as a flashback; you know from the very beginning that Pi survives.  Once that's out of the way, there are really two things about the movie worth your time: first, it's an Ang Lee film - hence visually appealing, though spare (they are lost at sea, remember).  Second, there's a tiger on a boat.  Don't see that very often.  Actually rumor has it that a live tiger was only used for some of the scenes in which Richard Parker is swimming; everything else was CGI.  Regardless, Pi and Richard Parker's relationship and exploits are engaging.

There are stories floating around out there in the ether about the origin of these names, and the two that I've found are quite interesting.  See for yourself:

1. Yann Martel, the author of the book, supposedly named the tiger after Richard Parker of Mignonette infamy.  Parker was a cabin boy on a yacht which went down in 1884.  The four on the yacht all managed to reach the lifeboat, but the other three survivors consented (or at least didn't object) to sacrificing Parker in an act of cannibalism.

Apparently (though I didn't notice it), there is a ship passing by in the background in a scene with adult Pi called The Mignonette. 

What's more, this gives new meaning to the mystical island in the movie, doesn't it?  (If you've seen it, you know what I mean.)

2. Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1838, came out decades before the loss of The Mignonette.  The boy Pym stows away on a whaling boat with his dog, named Tiger.  There is a mutiny and a counter-mutiny, and the only original mutineer to survive the second go-around is named - you guessed it - Richard Parker.  Pym, Richard Parker, and two other sailors survive a terrible storm but find themselves without food and fresh water.  Parker suggests that they draw straws, because one of them needs to be sacrificed so the others can survive.  Parker loses, and is killed and eaten.

Can I point out again that The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published 46 years BEFORE The Mignonette wrecked.  Weird.

Anyway, pick whichever story you like. They're both good.

Bottom line: well done, and worth the big screen if you can suspend your disbelief and just go with it for a couple of hours.

What I Read -- The Long Walk

I was going to blog about this book when I started it, but I'm so backed up with posts that I already finished it and this is the first that you, my loyal readers, are hearing of it!  I guess that's not really a bad problem to have though.

Anyway, The Long Walk is a Hurt Locker-esque portrayal of modern war and the price it exacts on those (specifically EOD units) who take part in it - except that The Long Walk is a memoir where The Hurt Locker was not.

I think this book would be better appreciated as a book than on audio.  It's the type of thing that, in order to fully appreciate the gravity of the situations the author found himself in, you really need to be giving it your full attention.  Unfortunately I was not.

The author does narrate the audio though, which I love.  There are great readers who make their living narrating audio versions of other people's books, but there's something a little more personal about having the author read his own book, especially when it's one as personal as this.  So that was good.

Goal #50

Goal #50: must do Christmas things.

Why must I do these things?  Because I'm seriously behind schedule.  On the list: send the rest of the cards, put together a Christmas menu, figure out what kind of cookies  I want to make, put together the big shopping list, go shopping, maybe even get a tree if I can find a little one.  (Anyone know where they sell mini trees, maybe three feet tall?)

Recap of Goal #49: I have a table! I had to drive all the way for St. Peters for it, but it matches my chairs pretty well and is the perfect size. Score!

Dinner!

I've lived in my new apartment for about a month, but it's been a very busy month.  For the first time earlier this week, I actually cooked something!  Roasted veg, and lots of them: butternut squash, carrots, Brussels sprouts, onion, apple (okay, some fruit too), all with a little EVOO, salt, pepper, curry powder, and ancho chili powder.

Yum!

Not Gentlemanly At All

I don't make a habit of commenting on restaurants where I haven't actually eaten, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

Dad was in town for a brief stint earlier this week and went out to eat with G&G at a new spot called Little Country Gentleman, which has gotten good reviews in the local press.  They do tasting menus - three, six, or twelve courses.  Sounds perfect for me, a semi-locavore with a flair for indecision.

Apparently tasting menus are all they do.  Unfortunately I was working the night of the dinner outing, so I only had a little break to stop by and sit with the fam.  I told Dad when I would be there and asked him to just order me an app which I could nosh on, then jet back to work.  I was happy with our plan.

But they wouldn't do it!  They were super snooty and refused to even bring me a bowl of soup!

Party foul; I won't be back.

To Kill a Mockingbird -- Take 2

Love To Kill a Mockingbird!

I started listening to it, and for much of the book I couldn't figure out why everyone who heard I was in law school (back when that was true) asked "have you read TKAM?" It was a story about Scout and Jem.  Sure, Atticus happened to be an attorney, but still.

Then I got to the last third of the book and it all became clear.

Random Links

More irony.  Also: don't text and drive.

The art of immersive travel.

Sometimes you just want a drink.

And here's dad, with the zinger.

Free classes.

Happy snowball fighting this winter!

What I Watched -- Love Sick Love

This is a long overdue post about one of the last SLIFF movie shown in this year's lineup, and the only one I managed to go see!  It's called Love Sick Love, and holy cow, there is a lot of crazy in this movie!  So, so, so much crazy in one person (and her family).  It was riveting, because you never knew when it was going to stop.

It's an interesting commentary on the lack of commitment in the hookup culture, although frankly doesn't speak too highly of either side of that coin.

Bottom line: dark, funny, twisted.  Interesting, if you like those "I can't look away, I'm watching a train wreck" types of movies.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 47

Otherwise titled: more congratulations to E! And a little of NC, too.

Saturday started for me with a long run, which was desperately needed. Thanks to a fortuitous interaction with a woman in E's yoga class, we learned that the Duke Chapel Choir was performing Handel's Messiah this weekend, so we all trooped over to campus to see that, which was lovely!

 

Amazing architecture in the chapel

The family graduation dinner was at a small place in Chapel Hill called Lantern.  Local-Asian, that was their thing.  Interesting combo, but the food was tasty, and apparently better for the environment.  There was a ton of food at dinner.  They did family style appetizer service, with pasture-raised pork dumplings (mushroom dumplings for the vegs), crab and pork spring rolls, salt and pepper shrimp (curried beets for the vegs), a charcuterie plate, and chickpea and potato chaat (loved this!).  We had a choice of entrees and dessert; I had the tea- and spice-smoked poulet rouge as a main, which was tender and delicious.  Dessert was - you guessed it - molten chocolate cake with coconut ice cream.  I have a problem.

Sorry you can't  see my dress too well, but it's strapless and pretty short;

I wore it with gray tights and black heels.

Our dinner reservation was late, so afterwards pretty much everyone crashed.

Dad was leaving Sunday afternoon, so we spent his and D's last few hours at the oh-so-quaint Fearrington Village, belted farm life and all.

They're ready for the cold weather!  Too bad it's still 65 degrees.

A belted goat having breakfast

Fearrington has adorable everything - coffee shop (The Belted Goat - how appropriate), gift shops, bookstore, cows.  We shopped for a while (I especially enjoyed browsing the bookstore) then headed off to Raleigh for the Boylan Heights ArtWalk, which was lovely, but I was especially taken with the old southern houses.

We stopped in for some quick but tasty noodles and rice at David's Dumpling & Noodle Bar before heading off to see Life of Pi (more on that later).

Goal #49

Goal #49: must. get. table.

I don't have a table, not one you can eat at anyway.  This week, I'm going to fix that - even if it's only to beg/borrow/steal my temporary version of a table back from T.  But really, a girl's gotta eat, right?  In truth, it's okay if I don't actually have a table by the end of the week, as long as I have a plan for getting a table.

Recap of Goal #48: Well, I think I got together the list of people I need to go shopping for, and the list of people I will send cards to, but I haven't started doing either the shopping or the writing yet.  Neither have I gotten together my own wish list (sorry guys, it's coming!).  Work on this front must continue.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 46

Otherwise titled: congrats to E!

She's officially a "comma MPH!"  Yesterday was the big day:

Afterwards, we went out for the world's biggest dinner party with seven of the graduates and their families.  The dinner was at Piazza Italia in Brightleaf Square, which I adore!  I made up for it all by running five miles this morning.  E did a lovely job organizing it and I think everyone had a good time!

The graduates!

Toasted cheese ravs - the trend is moving east!

Spinach tortellini

Chocolate cake!

That has been the big focus of my time in NC thus far, so not much else to report except that the weather has been lovely!