ps thanx for all the prawns

[bironic]

Catch-up time! With a few pictures.


Home Decorating for the Holidays

Back from synn's new place in semi-nowheresville, Pennsylvania, which is much closer than where she lived until last week and therefore life is just that little bit happier. A tour of the town included the main road with occasional Amish buggies, a drive-in ice cream and burgers place, many farms with livestock and silos and nice views of the mountains in the background, a modest university, and, of course, a WalMart.

We were hoping the moving truck would arrive with her stuff while I was there, but no such luck. Still, we accomplished a decent amount for a long weekend: two (2) rooms painted, two (2) barstools acquired and assembled, one (1) TV stand ditto, and one (1) lovely couch ordered online after we scoured the countryside's offerings.




It may be empty, but it sure is a nice green now!


(Highlights included a furniture store-slash-rundown barn patched up with serial killer chic aluminum panels that we did not dare enter, some family's homestead that the GPS insisted was the fifth store on our list, and a secondhand place whose basement was filled with old wheelchairs and cribs. The last also included a figurine of a grinning elf or cherub or something, holding a doll and… a knife. The owners were quite friendly, though.)

It only required four (4) trips to Lowe's in three (3) days, heh.


TV & Movies

In part for lack of other options, we watched many enjoyable movies and TV episodes.

• Red Cliff (Chi bi). Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, as if each shot were composed for hanging in a gallery. Unexpected motivation for reading more about military strategy. Plus incendiary slashiness between the strategist of one allied people and the leader of the other. Definitely interested in renting the four-hour international cut rather than the two-and-a-half-hour theatrical cut we saw.
  
  Then we watched feochadn's The Humbling River again. Lovely.


• Sherlock (2010 TV). More enjoyable than the vids had implied. Took a while to warm up to Watson, especially after David Burke's version, but then I liked him just fine. Sherlock… I don't know, he was fun to watch, but I don't believe that he could exist as a person. It was like Benedict Cumberbatch was playing a character while everyone around him was playing real people. Well, then again the same could be said for House vs. everyone around him. And what is up with the show's smartphone fetish? The only thing more bizarre was Moriarty's speech patterns. WTF.


• Tron: Legacy. Ugh. As the reviews threatened, a gorgeous movie with atrocious writing. Atrocious. On every level. Still, it gets an overall positive rating for the effects, for Olivia Wilde's otherworldly gorgeousness in that black wig, for James "Franklin the deranged Tara-battering vampire on True Blood" Frain as Jarvis—hilarious—and for Michael Sheen (not Tom Hiddleston, as first suspected) being weird.


• Stargate movie (1994; rewatch). "Sik sikai soi" remains one of my favorite lines, not least because within the context of the movie you can parse it. Which reminds me that I wanted to share with you this NYT article about invented languages. It doesn't mention the "independently evolved variant of ancient Egyptian" the citizens of Abydos speak in the movie, but if you like constructed languages, well-realized fictional worlds, hearing about people who have the coolest jobs ever, the Game of Thrones miniseries, getting angry at descriptions of tensions over which groups of fans are legitimate and which go overboard, or more than one of the above, you may enjoy reading it. Too bad it takes until the second page to mention Mark Okrand/Klingon and ends with a put-down.


• Thoughtcrimes and an episode of Brimstone, both also rewatches, both still fun.

I also finished season two of The Vampire Diaries last night and was quite pleased. Biggest disappointment was that Klaus—who did show up as I had hoped before the series began, so the rest doesn't really matter—was British instead of German and looked more like a smirky, low-budget Tom Hardy (scruff + big lips) than a proper Stefan-torturing villain. More than making up for it is the fact that season three apparently features Sebastian Roché in a recurring role! Woo!

I should make a Sebastian vid one of these days, modeled after that Mark Sheppard tribute vid. Then I could chat with the people who say "Yay Sebastian!" or "Oh, I knew I knew that guy from something else!"

Throat grabbing on the show continued apace, by the by. Now able to make that picspam post. Will wait until January, when there may be people around to see it.


Cooking

It being the holidays, food is in abundance. Over the weekend, we cooked a few treats for ourselves such as chocolate chip pancakes (synn's successful experiment) with scrambled eggs for Xmas breakfast and a roasted Cornish hen with Brussels sprouts and leftover garlic mashed potatoes for Xmas dinner. Also latkes with applesauce, sour cream and a sliced pear for breakfast the next morning. Yum.




Okay, actually these are the latkes and salad from when alpheratz came over last week. But the principle holds: delicious.


I have been growing increasingly enamored with roasting, but I don't know much about the techniques. (The only other issue is that my gas oven produces disconcerting smells when cranked above 350.) I asked for and received a roasting cookbook for Hanukkah and read through it yesterday. The introductory sections are great, there's a whole section for fruits and vegetables, and it's nice to have some recipes for beef that don't involve a grill. I have hardly made recipes with red meat for years (excepting an occasional pho or stir fry) because I don't have a grill. Alas, last night's first attempt at a small eye round roast was overdone even though I cooked it 25 degrees below temp and checked it after ¾ of the recommended cooking time. The diced mix of carrots, beets and sweet potato that accompanied it roasted beautifully, though. Mm. I think the carrots and beets temper the sweetness of the yam. Tastiness of the veggie broth made on a whim from said vegetables' leftover parts is TBD.

Next up, the other Hanukkah gift cookbook: The Pleasures of Cooking for One.

Oh, and did I mention I tried making chocolate-dipped dried figs rolled in crushed walnuts, based on this Whole Foods recipe? The figs were pretty dry and had to be moistened to be coaxed back into figgy shape, but people at work seemed to like them.






Hanukkah

I don't usually go home for Hanukkah. Ever since I moved from New York, we've done the first night's candle lighting over the phone. This year, now that I have a webcam and she has an iPhone, my sister thought of attempting Skype, and on consecutive nights we connected at my dad's house and my mom's house to watch one another open mutual gifts. Very cool!

The NYT did a timely article about Skyping for the holidays the next day. Strange construction, though. Like, why is there a sentence that basically says, "Even though Skype has been around for eight years, it's common to find it being used in people's homes"? Is the reporter implying that eight-year-old software should have been replaced with something new?

Anyhow. I think this year my sister and I did a good job picking out gifts—which is to say, we put some thought into it—and it was fun to see everyone's reactions. I was surprised and delighted to receive some neat things, too, after the parentals had mentioned their lack of ideas and time to go shopping. A few were on my wish list (like the cookbooks, mp3s from my sister's massive collection, a few other books, and a pulp sci fi wall calendar) but many were not. Like, my dad's side found a roll of the jungle wallpaper that was in my childhood bedroom and framed a piece of it for me. And my mom sent a tiny decorative hedgehog/porcupine made of little sticks and beads. And synn got me, among other things, a tiny Jayne hat keychain and a metal bracelet that says, "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." And one of my supervisors, who shopped for her staff at ThinkGeek.com, gave me a nerdy Magic 8 Ball that gives answers like "LOL" and "meh."






Hedgehog in its natural habitat; tiny Jayne hat



Also about eight thousand cookies from coworkers. Does anyone want cookies?



Should say something about fic now that I've got a bit of time to read some again. But I am not a big fan of Yuletide—I'm up to the "T" fandoms that I know and so far I've only got Texts from Cephalopods to recommend, along with about 10,000 other people, based on a possibly bogus YouTube video we watched when we saw the name of the "fandom"—and a couple of enjoyable Inception stories of late, Late Night Phone Call by sparkledark and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by eleveninches. Need to check out sga_santa and see if there's anything good over there. It's nice that the rare pairings (by which we mean everything that isn't McKay/Sheppard and Rodney/Jennifer, and maybe Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla) are growing ever more numerous as the years pass since the show ended.

…Whoops, my friend just called to remind me that she and her husband and their puppy are coming over tomorrow evening for dinner. Guess I'd better figure out what they'll be fed.

Comments

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I love your photoessay and the tales of your adventures in living. :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Just be glad you didn't get a photoessay update of my supermarket trip just now. :)

Hi!

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

drive by love <3
I'm glad you had a good Hanukkah!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

<3 back! I have been reading your entries, but haven't been commenting... anywhere, really... Do plan to get better about that in the coming weeks as spare time opens back up.

[alpheratz.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that IS a really nice green!

Puppy! Have fun at dinner.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We did. I tried to feed them cookies too but they were terrible people and brought me more. Plus Nutella and more chocolate coins. UGH MY BLOOD SUGAR. Come back and help me eat all this stuff.

It is a really nice spring green, and the blue she chose is great, too, even if it was fussier and tackier because it could "only be mixed with the signature paint" base. I am told the ashy lavender now in the main room is also pretty. See, that is a difference between her and me - she is an artist and knows how to choose paint colors that don't turn out to be horrible pastels that require you to cover them up immediately with primer.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

Awww - awesome that Skyping for Hanukkah worked out so well. I'm Skype-attending Margaret's Christmas party with her family in London tonight, also so we can watch each other open mutual presents! (It will also give me an excuse to open up the rum I've been steeping with spices all week and see how it turned out. And I won't even be drinking alone. Technically. :))

Latkes and figs both look delicious. I'm such a sucker for food porn.

Hedgehog!

And I saw the vid "The Humbling River" a while back, and really enjoyed it, but I didn't know offhand what the movie was. After reading your description, I'm definitely interested in hunting it down...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Oh, do! The flirting between those two characters is beautiful. I wonder what else those two extra hours of footage hold.

I hope the Christmas Skype is/was wonderful (and your spiced rum as well). ♥

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Skype was awesome; the rum was good, although I think the lesson to be learned was, "Just because cloves are small and you have a GIANT bag of them does not mean you should stick thirty in a small bottle of rum."

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. The same realization occurred in our household a few years back regarding apple cider.

[bell]

Cute hedgehog face is cute! *ponders if he'd fit in Jayne's hat*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ah, good question! If not, it could go on the crocheted octopus.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Hee, you fiiiiinally watched Sherlock! And Moriarty is bizarre, srsly.

...I don't know, I have a fascination for supermarkets. They're so telling, somehow. I still remember running around one in the outer boroughs of London marvelling at all the fabulous European cured meats and cheese they had (I know, duh). I imagine ones in the US to be huuuge and chock-ful of all those exotic products one only reads about in novels XD

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I have a Finnish friend here who likes to take guests to a couple of supermarkets (Whole Foods for organic/specialty items and a "regular" one) for just that reason. So much selection, and apparently there are indeed items that one only knows about from entertainment sources.

You should come Stateside again sometime and I will take you to one. :) Surely that is enough motivation to cross the ocean and most of the continent. Forget House cons.

What... were they trying to do with Moriarty there? Make him look unhinged through varying vocalizations? Give him a mercurial personality/accent so Sherlock couldn't pin him down? Just try to do something different? Make people crack up?

*smiling at your icon because I get it now*

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

I did go to Zabar's, if only because my aunt insisted. It was nice, but I feel that overwrought specialty stores are actually much the same everywhere (you know, organic, fair trade, all-natural, artisan, save the planet, etc *g*).

...you mean you've never read the books? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? XD

PS New Sherlock today, yay!

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by the phrase "more enjoyable than the vids had implied." What had you thought it would be like?

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

I too am curious.