What We Ate, What We Wore

Marmot Dad's Famous Pajamas
I think they speak for themselves.

Tuey Looking Like a Monkey Boy
He's playing with his sisters' paint cups. They fill him with joy.
Madame 3-yr-old Sports Some Lovely Santa Long Underwear
She and her sister both got backpacks from my parents. They are quite large. They can use the backpacks until they entire a retirement home.
A Christmas Feast
The Madames were very impressed with this meal, because they got to use fondue forks.
More Feast
Feast Items: Spinach dip and vegetables, cheese fondue with rosemary herb bread, shrimp, dolmas, salad, Grandma's Cranberry Goodness.
Christmas Morning Aebleskivers
This is a tradition in the Marmot House. Marmot Dad is always the cook. I think I told him that I didn't get that teapot in the shot. But I did.
Aebleskiver Action Shot
That's powdered sugar gently falling onto hot, appley, balls of goodness (the alternative name for aebleskivers).

You don't get the full breakfast effect until you eat these while a baby stands behind you pressing the buzzer from the game Taboo, making it sound like you're enjoying your breakfast delights in a heavy fog.

It's Not A Christmas Post

My camera chose this moment to run out of battery power (not surprising--my phone is also having issues and I can't find my MP3 power cord--my gadgets are not cooperating), so I can't post the Christmas pictures today and there's no point discussing the festivities without a prominent photo of Marmot Dad in some MOST startling pajamas. Tomorrow I will do the recap.

Today I will tell you what I would have told you tomorrow, which is that I'm going to London in 2 days (whee!). When I first told me I sister I was planning to go to London with the Festival she said, "Um, don't you think it's going to be a group of elderly people?" Absolutely, I do. Quite possibly elderly people who really, really like to point out that they're well-versed in theater (which they spell theatre even though we live in the UNITED STATES). It's okay, though, because elderly men tend to like me and tell me again and again that if they just had a grandson my age . . .

AND I'd rather be in London seeing plays with the elderly than be in the library with the elderly, saying, "No, the library card wasn't supposed to go in that slot. That's the disk drive. No, it's okay, we'll get someone to get it out."

See how much better that is?

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick break from being forced by knee-high dictators to cut out jack-o-lanterns (Madame 3-yr-old's hair has been snipped off right to her scalp in the front, so the marmots are once again banned from scissors) to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and share this little gem from my sister.

We were looking up sea wees on eBay, because the girls LOVE mermaids.  As I was checking out the little plastic toys that the folks on eBay are asking crazy prices for, my sister sat down next to me with a bowl of shrimp and popped one in her mouth.  I bet this is what mermaids eat, she said.  She chomped on it for a minute and then said, Mmmm.  Maybe not.  It might be too much like eating your cousin. 

Tomorrow I'll post the pictures of the fantastic foods we've been eating, the fantastic clothes we've been wearing (Marmot Dad wore the striped pajamas o'joy--or shame, depending on how you look at it), and the fantastic times we've been having.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

Merry Christmas to Restauranteurs

Yesterday my friend Kirsten came to visit. We went to eat at a tiny, hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant that I like because the people are so nice and because I believe in supporting local, independent businesses. Even local businesses housed in tacky strip malls next to a dollar store where they serve you with plastic utensils.

After we ate, Kirsten told me, “Those are nice little Indian people trying to make it in America. I’m leaving them a big tip. They're getting a ten dollar tip.” Considering that the combined cost of our meals (with extra naan) was $13.05, ten dollars was very generous.

Me: Wow. That’s a big tip.

Kirsten: Yeah, well, that’s the American. Dream.

That's right. And we support the American Dream.

Whining

I don’t feel well.

I don’t actually feel bad enough to go to the doctor or stay home from work. It’s more like the distinct feeling that I will be sick SOON. Probably around the time I’m boarding a plane to leave the country, making me completely incapable of hitting on British men and Shakespearean actors. Woe to me. woe. woe.

Being almost sick slows me down at work. Everything takes a long time. I’ve spent serious time the last few days sitting at my desk, thinking, Now what was I planning to do? OR looking at my list of things to do and thinking, All these projects sound hard. I want to watch a movie. Periodicals were designed by the devil. I wonder if I have any candy in my desk. Is my throat sore? I think my throat might be sore.

We had a patron in the library the other day with garlic cloves taped to his forehead to ward off illness. I might give that a try, if I don’t feel better soon.

Christmas Toys

A few weeks ago I got a package from my brother and his family. (Thanks guys!) Knowing my great love for sheepdogs, they sent me a toy one. The sheepdog reminded me of a stuffed animal I got for Christmas one year. My Grandma Frances gave me a toy cat. I named it Frances the Stiff in honor of the gift giver. (The Stiff was added to differentiate between the two Franceses. Frances the Stiff. Frances the Grandma.) In retrospect I find the name Frances the Stiff really amusing and not at all flattering. Sorry, Grandma.

Christmas Treat

It’s possible that the food I most closely associate with Christmas is the pecan tassie. Pecan tassies are basically tiny pecan pies. I always thought they must be very difficult to make, because my mom only made them at Christmas and they require a special pan. Not so. They’re actually quick and relatively easy to make. We probably only ate them at Christmas because they’re little hip-expanding heart attacks in a flaky cream cheese crust. I’ve made a couple of batches this month, intending to give them away. I was eating the first batch at an alarming rate, so I stuffed most of them into the freezer to keep myself from finishing them off. I still haven't given any away.

Frozen pecan tassies are delicious.

My Life is Awkward

Our Christmas dinner/talent show at church was this weekend.  The Boy Who Does Amuse was the MC.  I was sitting at the table farthest from the stage (closest to the food).  The Boy was telling stories and jokes between each act.  At one point, he started to tell a knock-knock joke. 

The Boy: Wait, this is a better joke with just one person.  MBC, knock-knock.

Me: Who's there?

The Boy: Will you go on a date with me?

Me (frantically thinking up a witty comeback appropriate to say out loud in front of 50 people): Silent staring

Guy Sitting Near Me (prompting in a loud whisper): Will you go on a date with me who?

Me: Will you go on a date with me who?

The Boy:  No, really.  Will you?

Chick lit is wildly popular because all of the awkward parts are true.  The parts where the man pursuing me turns out to be a closet millionaire never come to pass.  The awkward parts I've got down, though.

In Which I Am a Christmas Elf

Christmas Favorites

These are some of my favorite Christmas books and movies.

An obvious choice. A classic.

Except for the fact that this is set at Christmas, it's not really Christmasy. I love it, though. Dennis Morgan is a special Christmas treat.

I made my sister and Marmot Dad watch this the year it came out on DVD. They were not nearly as impressed as they should have been. It's a true thing that the ending gets all schwarmy and gaggingly heartfelt, but Will Ferrell makes an amazingly good elf. Sometimes when we're closing the library at night, I like to sing on my walkie-talkie, "I'm in the library and I'm siiiinging!"

This book was first published about 25 years ago. Amy Dacyczyn recommends it in The Tightwad Gazette, a book I love. I think it's a really practical approach to celebrating Christmas and not at all reminiscent of some of the simplify-your-life, pay-me-lots-of-money-to-tell-you-how-to-live-your-life books that make me crave a sharp instrument to slam in the author's ear. Not at all.

Other favorites?

Christmas Traditions

These are two of my family’s Christmas traditions.

Bielefelder Kinderchor – Everyone in my family has a Christmas CD of this German children’s choir. Our parents have the vinyl record. When I was a child, my family listened to the record while putting up our Christmas tree and on Christmas morning.

Spritz Cookies – We only make these at Christmas, although I suppose you could make them at other times. A nice camel-shaped cookie is a treat any time of the year. My mom makes the Christmas tree and poinsettia cookie shapes. The ones she makes always come out prettier than mine do. I made these last week. Our family uses almond extract instead of vanilla in spritz cookies.

16 Days and Counting

Last night I received my big package of London information and treats from the tour company handling the details of my trip. It included the requisite travel bag with the company's name emblazoned across the front, which I assume tour members use in the United States if they want other people to know they're taking a trip abroad or that they use in London when they want to announce to the natives, I'm a tourist. Please sell me cheap stuff plastered with photos of the royal family and be annoyed at me for not knowing how to use the tube. Also, please consider mugging me.

The package included my itinerary AND a DK London book. I love DK. They are my favorite publishers. Their travel books are FULL of photographs and illustrations. DK can be one of my imaginary boyfriends. The whole company. I take this as a very good sign.

I have a couple of free days while I'm in London, so I'm deciding where to go. I've been to London before, but only for a week, so if you have suggestions, let me know. I didn't make it to the Victoria and Albert Museum last time, so I'm hoping to go this time. I want to see this:

Why, yes. Yes, that is a life-size pipe organ shaped like a tiger "in the act of devouring a prostrate European." Oh, yeah.

Hibernation: Pros and Cons

So, hibernation. I'm a fan. I'm not saying people should actually sleep through the winter. I just think more things should be optional in the winter. Like my job. My preferred library winter hours would be M-TH 10-3. Other establishments should also be open during those hours. Establishments where I can purchase winter squashes to eat while I'm hunkered down in my house reading. Businesses that will take me to the airport so I can escape to tropical locations. Airports. Hospitals. Post offices. This form of hibernation would benefit the entire community, because fewer people would be wandering around outside getting into car accidents.

Hibernation Pros
1. Fewer car accidents.
2. Fewer illnesses. (Yesterday a woman came to the reference desk, coughed all over herself, me, the desk, and some small children wandering by, and then asked me to come help with her computer, also now covered in her germs. If you're sick, stay home! You're just giving other people your cooties.)
3. More happiness.
4. People I love would actually receive Christmas presents, because I'd have time to stay home and finish making the gifts I started working on in March and have suddenly realized should be done by now but aren't because all my time is spent scraping off my car and looking for my scarf.

Hibernation Cons
There are no cons. This is a brilliant plan. If you're some kind of weird, masochistic, winter-lover, you're still welcome to go outside and work and slide around in the snow and get colds. I'll be inside baking bread and learning to play the harmonica.

Winter=Bleagh

This weekend it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed and snowedandsnowedandsnowed. It snowed so much that I abandoned my car at work, walked home, and managed the weekend without my own vehicle.

I do not care for winter. It is cold and it is dark. It’s so cold and so dark that, sometimes, a person’s alarm is accidentally set for 7:02 pm instead of 7:02 am and she only wakes up because she hears the neighbors scraping ice off their cars because why would a person wake up on her own if it’s still dark outside? Hypothetically, said person would then be in a rush to get out the door on time and would have no time to make a bowl of warming, life-sustaining oatmeal and would be forced to settle for toast that turns cold as soon as she hits her front porch. Then, possibly, her hands would almost freeze beyond use because she’s trying to eat her toast while walking to work. She can’t put on her gloves, because the gloves in her coat pocket are her velvet, torrid-love-affair gloves, and it’s very hard to eat toast in velvet gloves! Eventually the gloves DO come out because it’s cold enough to de-perkify a Smurf, and then, as anticipated, her toast falls in the snow, because, I wasn’t kidding, you can’t feel a thing in velvet gloves. Fortunately, snowy toast tastes just fine.

I’m getting to the part where I advocate partial hibernation, but it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. Prepare yourselves to agree with me on this and lobby the appropriate authorities.

Being Educated Against Your Will

Trying. To. Restrain. Myself.

I can't, though. I must tell you more British history facts. They are too fascinating (to me) and I'm short on time to post anything that takes more thought today.

I've been reading Bill Bryson's new book, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, part of the Eminent Lives series. (I tried again to read A Short History of Nearly Everything--thanks for the suggestion, Chris--but even well-written science makes my eyes roll back in my head--sorry, Chris. I'll have to stick with Bryson's other works.) Bill is very up front about the fact that we have very few facts about Shakespeare or his family. Books like Loving Will Shakespeare (a good middle-reader book) are almost entirely speculation. Having said that, Bryson goes on to share really interesting information about the few existing documents (other than the plays) that mention Shakespeare and fleshes out the late 16th century world to help readers understand Shakespeare and his work.

Fascinating facts include:
1. Sugar was a good thing in Elizabethan England, and black, rotted teeth indicated that a lot of sugar had been consumed. People whose teeth weren't naturally rotted would blacken their teeth to look like they had eaten a lot of sugar, too.

2. Those huge, starched ruffs worn in the 16th and 17th century were called piccadills, which is how Piccadilly got its name.

3. It was thought that tobacco prevented plague. Students at Eaton were punished for "neglecting their tobacco."

4. Money for plays was put in a box that was kept in special, safe room called, ta da, the box office.

There. That's your learning fun for the day. Sorry.

I recommend PANDORA and goat giving and toast

Have you heard of Pandora? It is the BEST Internet radio station. Most of the music I enjoy doesn't get airtime on mainstream radio stations, and I hate listening to commercials and station identifications, so I listen to public radio and rely on my CD collection (and the Library's) for music.

Now there's Pandora, though. Pandora is powered by the Music Genome Project, which creates genomes (listing of song characteristics, like vamping, use of acoustic instruments, female lead singer, etc.) for every song in the database. Listeners enter songs or artists they enjoy in Pandora, and Pandora creates a station that plays music with similar genomes. Every song can be accepted or rejected. And the best part is that there are no vocal commercials. All the advertising is done in print/graphics on one side of the website. I listen to Pandora at work, so I rarely look at the site (just listen), and I'm not inconvenienced by the advertising at all.

I'm listening to it right now and rocking out to "Gillian" by the Waifs, which, curses!, is not available on YouTube for listening to over and over and over again.

p.s. Check out this site, heifer.org. It's an organization that gives animals and training to developing nations. You can give the gift of, for example, a goat (or a share of a goat!), a water buffalo, a llama.

p.p.s. I am currently having a love affair with toast. I eat it every night when I get home from work and it makes me HAPPY. Almost as happy as the idea of goat giving.

Christmas is Coming

Yesterday Madame 3-yr-old was overcome with Christmas joy. My sister, Madame, Tuey, and I were in a bookstore decorated with Christmas trees and nutcrackers and gifts. Madame pulled me from tree to tree, telling me in an excited voice, "Aunt, I think those are REAL presents under the tree. I touched one and it FELT like a REAL present." She was especially impressed by the huge nutcrackers and she asked me why nutcrackers were Christmasy. I explained that sometimes people receive nuts in their stockings at Christmas, so they need a nutcracker to open them. Madame patiently explained to ME that actually, almonds come without shells and peanuts DO come in shells but she and her sister can smash the easy ones open (So true. They are wild beasts, smashing peanuts open and then chucking the shells on the floor. Looking at it one day, Marmot Dad, who LOVES a clean kitchen floor and used to fold his trash, told me his cleaning system. Step One: Weep. Step Two: Clean.), and Daddy can open the peanuts with hard shells. Subtext: Aunt, your explanation is hooey.

Happy Work Anniversary

I started my current job four years ago today. Commemorate the moment in your heart.

I will commemorate it by telling you about an interaction with a little boy (about 9 years old) that a friend reminded me of recently.

Little Boy: I want a book about dragons.

MBC: What kind of book? Fiction or nonfiction?

Little Boy: What do fiction and nonfiction mean?

MBC: Fiction books are stories and nonfiction books are true--they're factual.

Little Boy (patiently and slowly, with pity for the librarian; in the manner of someone breaking the news to a small child about Santa Claus): Well, you KNOW, dragons aren't real. So, I think I need fiction.

I sent him to nonfiction.

It's Always About Me

Last week Miss Nemesis, a brilliant blogger, posted something that fills a listmaker with joy. I am now stealing it (I also accidentally stole her box lunch last week--so sorry!) and shortening it a tiny bit because I'm going to have to go serve the hordes very, very soon.

3 things I was doing 10 years ago

1. Living in a dive where my roommates and I regularly broke things (not on purpose)--Amy kicked a hole in the wall, I broke the kitchen table in half, Amy and I broke our roommate's bed.

2. I had just accepted a job in BYU's Germanic and Slavic Department. It was a lovely job that I kept until I graduated. The professors were so kind to me, and one of the German TAs called me the Patron Saint of Teaching Assistants. A great job.

3. I was preparing to spend the coming summer in Russia on study abroad. A few days ago I found a survey that Amy and I made for the members of our study abroad prep class. It includes the following questions:

When mugged by Russian gypsies, you will
a) scream
b) give them money
c) ask them out
d) proselytize them

You are most like
a) a wild banshee
b) a hairy Ishmaelite
c) docile, demure, and domestic
d) heir(ess) to a throne
e) other, write a brief essy of explanation

How do you feel about flings? (We were pro-fling.)

3 things on my to-do list

1. Go to London over New Year's

2. Visit Rebekah the Abandoner in her new digs in D.C. (and my other friends in the D.C. area, but I haven't told them about that yet)

3. Get around to giving the Ceramic Genius her wedding gift. It's been sitting in my house for months.

3 things I'd do if I were a millionaire

1. T R A V E L

2. Buy my sister a new house with a mother-in-law apartment to use as a home base for my new life as a dilettante, criss-crossing the globe.

3. Be a giver.

3 favorite possessions

1. My winter coat. So pretty. So soft.

2. My cookie gun. Mostly just because I like to say, "Come on over. We'll have some kitchen fun with a cookie gun" (the slogan on the box).

3. Photographs.

5 things I've read recently

1. Iceberg - I read this for an adventure genre study at work. I chose a Clive Cussler because I can usually convince the boys in DT to read them, and the boys tell me afterwards that Dirk Pitt and the Clive Cussler books are "tight." I thought it was okay.

2. Talking with My Mouth Full by Bonny Wolf - VERY reminiscent of Laurie Colwin's food essays. That's a huge compliment. I ADORE Laurie Colwin.

3. Mollie Katzen's The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without

4. Big Fat Little Lit - for a graphic novel genre study

5. Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Lives from the StoryCorps Project - I love this book. It makes me want to cry for the sheer goodness of other people.