The Christmas Recap

Another Christmas season has come to a close. I didn't travel this year - for the first time in several years - and that had some interesting consequences.

First, I didn't feel like I needed to have a deadline. Since I didn't have to have all my gifts purchased in time to get on a plane or to ship them somewhere, I was running behind in that department.  Same with the Christmas cards -- I'm sure many of mine did not arrive at their intended destinations until a day or two after Christmas.  So if you were one of those recipients, I apologize.

Second, it was much more hectic to be in town for Christmas than to be elsewhere.  Since the very nature of traveling requires commitment to one location, it makes it easy to decline other invitations with a simple, "I would love to, but I'll be out of town."   Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy all the adventures and company, but it did add a level of management and administration which is simply absent when you are away.

Third, it was nice to have a place to go home to.  In a funny way, I think it made it feel a little less festive; there was less of a "to-do," since I just went home again afterwards, but it is always nice to sleep in my own bed.

I did still manage to squeeze in some of the annual holiday festivities I enjoy.  S and I went to see the 442's Holiday Spectacular hosted at Wash U.  I also watched some of my favorite Christmas movies: Little Women, Love Actually, and It's a Wonderful Life.

And there were cookies!  Sugar cookies (special thanks to K for help with the icing), molasses cookies, Santa snacks (special thanks to E for help with the baking), cinnamon stars....  I think I'm forgetting some, but no matter.  Lots of cookies!

I also got to have dinner with my long-lost friend M and her husband T, who were visiting from the DC area, so that was a special treat.

Everyone has now gone back home and the season is winding down, but it was great to see you all!  Thanks to everyone for coming!

Happy Birthday to Me!

The Woman in Black -- Take 2

I love short books. Much like I love short films.  Perhaps this says something about my attention span, and not the quality of the short books or movies versus the long ones.

Moving right along...

I finished up The Woman in Black one day just as I was getting to work.  I had about ten pages to go, so rather than reading emails while I drank my first cup of coffee and ate my bowl of oatmeal, I finished my book.  And it ends - I don't think it's a spoiler to say - abruptly.  But it accomplished its purpose in being a page-turning spooky fall read, and I was glad to have read it.

Me being the Anglophile I am, I especially liked the tone and pacing of the writing, which was so very British.  Plus, the description of the choking smog in London and the damp, coastal fog that sweeps in off the ocean and envelops the seaside towns.

Merry Christmas!

What I Watched -- The Gnomist

As you know, I love short films.  I managed to get to one SLIFF screening this year before leaving town for vacation, and it was the doc shorts.  They were terrible!  Not a good one in the bunch (although I had the start time wrong and missed the first two).

This little doc short, The Gnomist, is a breath of fresh air.  I heard about it a while back on an episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge, and finally got around to watching it.  It's a sweet, heartwarming tale that just might wash away a bit of the cynicism that has been coating me so thickly lately.

The Emerald Mile -- Take 2

It took me forever to read this book.  However, one should not infer anything about the quality of the book from the length of time it took me to read it. In fact, when I first posted about it, I was struggling between reading the book and fulfilling the obligations in my life.  Unfortunately for the book, life won out.

Finally, I got time to get through it compliments of my recent bouts with insomnia.  Silver lining.

I was surprised by how little of the book is actually about the dory trip itself.  The title, the subtitle, and the cover photo all indicate that the speed run through the Canyon is the story.  It's certainly the heart of the story, but there's more to it than that.

The book starts with a long history of the Canyon's geology, which includes several wonderful passages describing the majesty of the place.  It then moves into a description of Canyon hydrology, specifically as it relates to the relatively recent damming of the Colorado River, the changes that has caused, and the many problems it has created.  Only then, several hundred pages in, do we meet our heroes and hear the tale of their wild ride.

I'll say again that the quality of this book is completely independent of the time it took me to read it.  Don't hold my delays against it; it's certainly worth a read.  I've even read a few other (shorter) things written by the same author since I finished it -- including a piece he wrote for Outside Magazine, "They Call Me Groover Boy."

What I really liked about The Emerald Mile is that, each time I got to a new section -- Canyon history, faults of the dam, the dory trip -- I was excited to get back to that part of the story.  Together they are braided together to tell a compelling tale.

Goals -- (Nearly) End-of-Year Report

Garden: a qualified success!  It was small, but turned out some good tomatoes, loads of cucumbers, and herbs galore (which made for some delicious muddled cocktails).  The Japanese beetles that so plagued the canna plants and my one basil plant during the summer disappeared into the fall.

The only thing that didn't work out were the peppers.  The plants were stunted all season and produced no fruit.  They finally started to grow and even produce a few small peppers -- in October!  Then they froze.  Apparently they're confused about the calendar.

Those two little spruce trees that managed to survive much of the summer were the victims of a lack of watering when I was out of town, and they didn't make it either.  No worries about them though, they were just a fun project.

Gym: yesterday S and I put our bikes back on the trainers for the first time, so we may get around to making some progress where the gym is concerned.  His current project is redoing one of the bathrooms.  However, a basement bathroom is going to go in next to the gym, and I think a few of the parts and pieces that come out of the master bathroom are going to be repurposed in the basement bathroom, so hopefully the bathroom work will spill over to gym work as well.

We did pick up a small section of one of those rubber-puzzle-piece floors when a friend of S's left town, and finally laying that down is an easy fix that I can make.

Craft table: I put this project on hold, since my desk (which is huge) is actually working pretty well as a sewing machine table for now.  I don't think this situation will last forever, and eventually I will want a real craft table, but for now, the bathroom is the construction priority.

Recipes: typewriter is in good working order, and I've taken one pass through my recipes and typed several of the ones I make most often.  It's a fun way to spend an hour or so, until my fingers start to get tired.  I also got a binder and put several of S's recipes in it, so he has a little collection as well.

Pictures: still nothing to report.  Maybe in 2017?

What I'm Reading Now -- The Woman in Black

Since the termination of my favorite book podcast, Books on the Nightstand, I have picked up on one of the ones they recommended at the end of their show. It's called Overdue.

The format is quite different: most episodes are about an hour, and each one is about a single book. The two guys who host it WILL spoil the ending, but they're pretty good about warning you when they're getting into major spoilers. I usually end up skipping about the last 1/3 of each podcast.

The podcasts are put out weekly, and back in October they did a bunch of scary books. One of the selections was The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill.

As a rule, I am not much of a thriller/horror fan. Just not my cup of tea. But since I've been up reading in the middle of the night lately, I am looking for reads that are less intellectual and more page-turner-y. I just don't have the brain capacity to read serious history or complex political analysis at 2:00 in the morning.

That's why The Woman in Black caught my attention. I'll let you know how my new genre goes.

What I Watched -- Happythankyoumoreplease

S and I stumbled upon Happythankyoumoreplease (trailer) while we were looking for Christmas movies to watch. It is certainly not a Christmas movie (although there is a passing mention to the holiday which you can hear in the trailer), it's pretty much standard rom-com fare.

It was written and directed by Josh Radnor, who also plays the lead character, Sam.  All the other characters are defined by their relationship to Sam or their relationship to knows Sam.  The two who matter most are Rasheen, a kid Sam picks up on the Subway after he gets separated from his adult (yes, it's as illegal as it sounds), and Mississippi (Kate Mara), Sam's love interest.

This is certainly Gen-whatever-we're-on stuff.  It's a lot of navel-gazing and self-affirmation.  It's a bit like watching an episode of Girls where the main character is a guy, who is funnier, more charming, and less off-putting than Lena Dunham.  It's like Josh was jealous of Lena's cute friends, so he wanted to put himself in the middle of the show.

Bottom line: despite that knock, it's a darn cute movie.  And it's nice to see Tony Hale play someone other than Buster Bluth.

Our Menu Options Have Changed

Here's a question: have you ever called an 800 number or help line of any kind and not heard the phrase, "Please listen carefully, our menu options have changed"?

Whose job is it to constantly change menus?  Is there someone who just regularly rearranges the options so as to make it impossible for a caller to short-circuit the monotony of the recorded voice?  Why is that necessary?

What I Read -- Sharp Objects

I have, of late, been rather unable to sleep. I blame my work.

Though I would much prefer it if I could just sleep through the night, if I had to identify the silver lining of this newfound insomnia, it would be the opportunity to read.

I used to read incessantly. Non-stop. I always had a book with me.  Until law school.  Since then, I have been too tired of reading - or just too tired - to read.

When one is awake at 2:00 a.m., however, with an essentially non-functional computer and a need to keep the noise level down, there are few options. When one also happens to have a large backlog of unread books, the primary option among them makes itself abundantly clear.

So it was that I started, and finished, Sharp Objects.  This is the second of Gillian Flynn's books that I've read.  As you may recall about Gone Girl, I was enthralled by the story, but hated the ending.  By comparison, I was a little bit less enthralled with this book, but was less disappointed by the ending.  In total, I'd say I preferred this one to Gone Girl.  But this one doesn't star Ben Affleck, so I think it's gotten significantly less attention.

If you have any interest in a quick read over the cold winter, this is a decent one, but consider yourself warned: it is extremely dark.