A few facts.

fact: although I have worked like a dog, both alone and in concert with my excellent colleagues, and though I have materials and ideas and notes and links galore, I feel I am no closer to having an actual syllabus ready for class next week than I was mid-December.

well, a little closer.

(okay, like a lazy dog.)

fact: there are still movies to be seen that I haven't yet seen, but somehow, at 3 or so in the afternoon when I could theoretically shoehorn a movie-viewing experience in, it doesn't quite seem like a good time to leave the house. when there's a storm a'brewin'! and it's cold!

fact: the moment when an afternoon movie seems like a good idea/possible is quickly, quickly passing.

fact: I am still not reading a book, because none of the books sound awesome.

fact: television = renewable pleasure.

fact: sometimes a new recipe is only okay (I'm looking at you, corn and poblano soup, although to be fair I used pasilla peppers and not poblanos, so you be the judge). but sometimes a new recipe is awesome (all hail, butter kuchen!).

(dramatization of the actual facts)

fact: my Christmas tree is still up. and although I had every intention of taking it down by now, I am finding the lights cheering and magical, and thus am disinclined to be in a hurry to dismantle the whole festive affair.

fact: there should be a "whoa now, hold on a minute, now!" function that activates whenever I send in a proposal. I don't see, in fact, why that couldn't be, like, a setting on my e-mail.

Status updates: Boxing Day edition.

Weather: snowy and snowier, especially as we drove south and then turned around. Because: too snowy.

Music: Fred Hersch, Alive at the Vanguard (played at home on the stereo).

Plans: to drive south and see the historian's son's family in Lehi. Denied (see: Weather.)

Viewing: Les Miz (with my daughters. Full of singing?). Rerun of Modern Family (with the historian. Still funny). The Jazz game (WOE.).

Comestibles: leftovers: spinach and fontina strata, Chinese food, fruit salad, green salad. Cookies of all stripes. Frosted Mini-Wheats.


After the fact: baked the rest of the cookie dough still chilling out in my fridge--date-nut pinwheels and sugar cookies, cut into stars and holly leaves and Christmas trees. Even though Christmas is over and we opened all the presents.

Contemplating: the family dinner we have planned for New Years Day. What will I make? I kind of feel like it should just be sandwiches. And maybe potato chips. Would that be wrong?

Thought about, but did not: stop in at Target on my way home from the movie.

Shocking: how tired I am and how I could not fall asleep last night.

Mood: a little sleep deprived, frankly.

Footwear: slippers. socks. work boots for the late-night dog walk.

note: it is almost the end of 2012, so I owe the readers of this blog

1. a list of the movies I saw this year, along with my big important opinions on them.
2. possible other lists.
3. a short reflective essay on the "Blogging Every Day in the Year 2012" project.

Just want you to know I haven't forgotten.

Key facts.

• My favorite kind of reading glasses

routinely break like brittle china.

• Ergo, I order a pile of them. So I have more when they break. Perhaps I should consider a new style/brand/Lasik? I don't know. They are my favorite.
• It is the historian's birthday today. He has a cold. Is that fair? I ask you.
• We are watching the Australian Open. Rod Laver and Roger Federer are talking. It's kind of great.
• My classes were awesome today. Sometimes it feels like, if you set things up right, your courses turn into little centers of industry, with all kinds of good things happening, humming along. Or, y'know, things could fall apart tomorrow. But I don't think so.
• Today this book arrived at my house: 

Vatnasafn/Library of Water
Roni Horn

it is awesome.

• Even though it was a birthday, it was a work day. Where is the birthday cake? I ask you. I guess that's why birthdays last a week. They do, don't they?
• Okay. Time to get you a little more DayQuil, honey.

(happy birthday to the historian, the best of the best of the best, sir! he is above the system, and he makes it--everything--look good.)

Useful facts.

aka, by-products of my revision process:

Did you all know about this "parasitic -n-" phenomenon? Me neither.

Carry on.

Some things you don't know about me.

And frankly, probably don't need to know:

1. My favorite flavor of gum drops is white, black, green and purple.

2. When I plan a menu, I always make at least one thing too many, and usually more than that.

3. I don't care about "fancy," but I tend toward "lots."

4. I have the most gray clothes of anyone in America. (Data source: private survey of my closet)

5. We have just reset our humane mousetraps because apparently, it's Party-time for Mice at our house.

6. I am behind in my work, and I will be behind in my work until December, when the semester is over.

7. I owe some library fines. Sadly.

8. I fight with myself not to go to Target everyday.

9. Reading The Divine Comedy when I was 22 was, in the realm of reading experiences, a big one.

10. We have two new dogs that live next door and while the jury is still out, they might be annoying. A little bit. At six in the morning when they are let out and start barking.

11. Two words: eat soup.

And now let us pause for a brief television review.

While we were driving in Los Angeles, we saw a billboard advertising a new television show, NCIS Los Angeles. According to the billboard the show would be featuring the dramatic talents of Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J.

Fact: NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The show is about an agency that investigates crimes involving the Navy or the Marines. I, like the rest of the free world, have been mixing this show up with CSI, which, isn't it a lot of work for the free world, keeping these acronyms straight? When they're using the exact same letters? Television producers, get on that!

Fact: Even though the Ls in "LL Cool J" stand for "Ladies Love," as anyone in the civilized world can tell you, you don't punctuate them as you would L.L. Bean. Why? I don't know. You just don't.

Anyway, a show that's a police procedural AND it's set in Los Angeles AND has Ladies Love Cool James? I'm all about that. As I mentioned to the historian whilst driving in Los Angeles. While we were driving west on Santa Monica Blvd., I said, "I'm going to watch that show." ["Santa Monica Blvd." may or may not be the actual boulevard upon which we were driving.]

And did I look up this show to find out when it was on? And did I watch it tonight? Yes, I did.

And was the show as good as its particulars might imply? I am sorry to report that no, in fact, the show is terrible. Stagy, poorly paced, not well written, and, sorrowfully, drawing dramatic interest neither from its military nor its police contexts.

"Who thought of this?" I said to the historian, after one particularly stagy moment, "and why are they wasting the charisma of Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J?"

Also, the charisma of Los Angeles. Criminal.

Meta-blogging: I have apparently crossed a terrible and consequential blogging threshold, as I now have 2000 tags, and Blogger informs me that no blog can have more than 2000 tags. Sadly, some of the tags I need, like "Los Angeles," "acronyms," "charisma," not to mention "LL" or "the people cry out for justice," I may not add. Blogger! Why do you have to be so harsh? Can you not accept that sometimes we may need to articulate categories that exceed your limited view of what a category is? Blogger! Let my people go!

You say it's your birthday.

Fact:  every birthday of every one of my children occurs in December or January.  

Fact:  my mother's birthday is in January.

Fact:  the historian's birthday is . . . in January.

Fact:  my son-in-law's birthday is also in January.

Fact:  my son the soccer coach, who joined our family kind of midstream--his birthday is in February.

There was a time in my life when I didn't go for more than a few days without baking a cake. Today I bought a bunch of birthday candles, just in case.  One time, I asked my doctor about what might explain so many births clustered so tightly.  "I guess you all liked to have sex in April," she said.  Oh: that.

[via PinkCakeBox]

Anyway:  happy birthdays to running son (20), college daughter (22), my daughter the makeup artist (26), and singing son (28), whose birthdays have already taken place.  Happy birthday to my mom (ageless!), whose birthday is right around the corner.  Happy birthday to my daughter in Scotland, who will be 30 very soon.  Each of them is so splendid a person, there should be fireworks, parades, confetti, and all sorts of delights to round out the celebration. (Also, the fact that I will soon have a thirty-year old daughter--I'm not quite sure what this signifies, but I fear it may mean I am old.)  

I have baked nary a birthday cake this year.  Everyone's grown up, plans are more malleable, people live out of town, etc.  And I'm sure I don't technically need birthday cake, but it does seem kind of a shame.  The historian's birthday, upcoming, may call for an extravagant cake.  I do have the candles.