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Usually, I really like the week between Christmas and New Year’s – I’m off, I can do stuff like set up a new blog, or go to museum shows, or at least sort out bills and papers.
This year, I had a cold and the UW semester went ridiculously late – the last day of exams was Dec. 23rd, and I had all my students hand in their final work on the 21st. I didn’t finish grading until ten to 5:00 PM on Christmas Eve. All of which meant I worked the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s, trying to get syllabi written and online course spaces set up. Although it was a short week – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And on Monday there was a snowstorm, so I worked from home Tuesday, and called it a vacation day. I spent almost more time shoveling snow than at the computer.
I also had the house pretty much to myself all week – Mark was working in Chicago, and stayed over on Wednesday night to have dinner at Publican with Ethan. Megan spent the week in Chicago and Milwaukee with John. So just me and the cats here.
On New Year’s Eve morning, a paid holiday, I had a delightful morning, just puttering around in my pajamas, cleaning out the vegetable drawers, making coffee, feeding the cats. Then I went out to take the old microwave to the dump (the city drop off recycling place) and buy groceries – because, as below, we were having a few people over for brunch on New Year’s Day. The recycling drop off site, then Willy St. West, then Sentry and Target. It was all a good shopping experience, satisfying – except I made a slight miscalculation between what to get at Sentry and what to get at Target, so I both paid more for my Jergens, and had to lug the 35# bucket of cat litter across the parking lots.
We had a quiet New Year’s, dinner at Nostrano. We went for the special appetizer of the night, arancini with lobster (deep fried lobster rice balls) and a little salad on the side. We had a little more salad, and then Mark has the pasta and I had the quail, that was all boned out except for the legs, and came with big white beans and broccoli rabe and a little puddle of salsa verde. The pasta was big tubes with beef, I think short ribs, and parsnips (that I thought were artichokes at first) and blobs of ricotta. Because it was New Year’s, we got dessert, too – affogato, espresso poured over ice cream with little donuts.
Then we came home and watched not just the ball drop in Times Square, but the Star Rise in Chicago, in our pajamas.
I like this new theme (Omega) but I still can’t seem to get portfolio slideshow to show captions. So what we’re seeing above is:
- Stuck bus during the Monday snowstorm
- My empty cup of hot chocolate that was my reward for walking home in the icy snow, and the cats enjoying the heat turned up at 4:00 instead of 5:00 PM
- New Mexico green chiles that Jenny sent me, that arrived on New Year’s Eve Day – I put them into the sweet potates for New year’s Day brunch – more on that in a minute
- Kir Royale at Nostrano on NYE – my fall back on, since when I asked if they had any special champagne cocktails for NYE, they said they didn’t
- Cranberry cinnamon buns for New year’s Day brunch
We had a nice little brunch on New Year’s morning. About nine of us counting me and Mark. We ate Hoppin’ John, brûléed sweet potatoes with the green chiles instead of the chipotle I usually put in, kale Caesar, cranberry cinnamon buns, and leftover cookies. Pat brought over all the ingredients for corpse revivers, including the glasses and absinthe, and Susan and Carl brought peach juice and Proseco for Bellinis. So a very good start to the new year.