I think I have the Christmas blues this year. Or at least I felt blue on Christmas day – not feeling Christmas-y, regretting the presents I’d given, the foods I made. Like I didn’t make a stollen or a Danish for breakfast, and nothing flaming for dinner. We had planked salmon, and roasted vegetables: squash […]
Ethan’s boots in the back hallway this morning: Reminded me instantly of Van Gogh’s shoes: And, the articles that every art history major has to read: Martin Heidegger’s The origin of the work of art, Meyer Schapiro’s Still life as personal object, and Jacques Derrida’s Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing. Here’s a pretty nifty […]
Today is my dad’s 94th birthday, except he’s not here to celebrate it with us, having passed away in November 1998, a little more than a month before he would’ve turned 78. I noted his birthday by adding a picture to his Wikipedia page – I wonder how long it’ll stay. Thanks to linked data, […]
We’re having a pretty nice Christmas, despite the completely un-Christmasy weather – it’s 45 and sunny outside now, not a speck of snow to be seen. On Christmas eve, we did our traditional watch a silly Christmas movie and eat pizza. We replaced Love Actually with Scrooged this year. I wanted to do Nightmare Before […]
[note – lights set to flash 12X, so hang in, it won’t be forever] On Friday morning, before I got started grading in earnest, I re-made the springerle. Twice. The first time, I thought I had everything absolutely perfect, and then Mark came down to talk to me (car stuff, and we actually bought […]
For me the point of the cookies is giving them to people. Last year, I thought it was a good party, but a not so good cookie season, due to various fuck ups and mishaps – and cookies that just didn’t come out right. This year the fuck ups were even more profound, in terms […]
Like I said last year at this time, cookie season is not over, but it’s winding down. But boy, reading last year’s summary compared to this year makes me feel like I had it great last year. Not only was the party on a Friday, so I had all day Saturday to recover, before starting […]
On Monday, I made the two kinds that are basically ground nuts and butter, rolled in sugar. The Mexican wedding cookies – or Russian teacakes, or pecan balls, or crescents. One year I even made a family cookie recipe that had been contributed to Gourmet that was called puckle warts. They were really delicious but […]
I feel like a great weight has lifted. Yesterday I turned these: into these: In sort of two installments. I had 11 dough balls, of which I got 5 rolled out and baked by 3:00. We walked over to a friend’s Christmas party – a pleasant gathering of mostly librarians and teachers. It took about […]