Christmas vacation

I hope everyone has as lovely a Christmas as I have had here at my parents' place in Allentown, Pennsylvania. To Mom and Dad's delight, I was lucky enough to get to work from home all this week, so as long as I attend to my computer I am permitted to spend more time with the family. It's very special that we get to spend so much time together, as we rarely have that long a period available. We have had a wonderful holiday so far, cooking wonderful meals and spending quality time together. I'm also planning to use this vacation, the largest chunk of unstructured time I've had or will have for ages, to work on projects and just do the things I want to do. I hope to practice some sewing under my mom's tutelage, exercise every day, play the copy of Skyward Sword Bernie so sweetly gave me, and do as much work as possible on the script for Tailor of Riddling Way. So far I've not done much other than the workouts, but that's because our Christmas celebration has taken up all the time. For the rest of my break I should be able to get to my list of things to do.

My broad and undying love for A Christmas Carol

Much as I love Christmas, there aren't many cheesy pop culture traditions that I like. I'm not into big tacky decorations, I despise popular Christmas music, I hate how consumerist and stuff-oriented it is. But I fucking love A Christmas Carol. I love the original story, and I cannot deny that I have enjoyed nearly every major film version I have ever seen.

The story has become so popular and famous that fact actually overshadows how great it really is. Beautiful and witty writing, with a playfulness that eases the possibly saccharine tone without undercutting the sentiment of the story. If you've never read it, I recommend that you do, if only for the opening paragraph, that is a really funny little stream-of-consciousness reflection on how incredibly dead Marley is, dead as a doornail, though why that's the deadest piece of ironmongery, Mr. Dickens really has no idea. :-)

It's almost silly how many of these that are special to me. I love Mickey's Christmas Carol, with Scrooge MacDuck, one of my all-time favorite Disney characters, playing the central role for which he was named. I love The Muppet Christmas Carol, starring Michael Caine with the lovely touch of Gonzo serving as the Charles Dickens-stand-in narrator. I love the solemn, serious, straight-up version made to showcase Patrick Stewart. I particularly love the TV movie version that came out in 2005 starring one of my most favorite actors Kelsey Grammer, with songs by Alan Menken, that is a well-made and truly moving piece of musical theater.

The way they cast their own characters in the story's roles really make it for me. Of course Kermit and Mickey play the softy role of Bob Crachit. Bean Bunny in the cameo as the boy in the street. I love Donald in the charmingly parallel role of Scrooge's nephew Fred. Moley and Ratty from Wind in the Willows as the two gentlemen from the charity. Scrooge's first boss "Fozziwig." Pete as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

It's such a charming story, very universal even though its setting is Christmas, about how sympathy and understanding for one's fellow man can redeem an old sinner, about keeping the spirit of goodwill toward men. Yeah, it's kind of cheesy, and certainly has been done to death. But I love the idea that there is pity and compassion buried in even the hardest heart, and that "a life can be made right."

Happy table

Hope you all have had as happy a Thanksgiving as I have. <3

This is Halloween, this is Halloween...

Had my Halloween celebration this past Saturday. Here are our Avengers assembled, with me as Black Widow, Jane as Loki, Bernie as Captain America, Mac as Bruce Banner, Jared as Iron Man, Mike as Nick Fury, and Matt as Hawkeye. This is the first year I participated in the group costume, so I was drafted into being Black Widow to fill out the group. Black Widow was easier and I didn't feel like doing a Wasp costume, though it would have been fun to have an Antman action figure in my pocket that I could periodically pull out and go "Say hello, Hank." I confessed I kind of half-assed it, using my black leotard, leggings, tall boots, and the cell phone holster Rachel gave me. As usual, by the time Halloween rolls around I'm too burnt out from everything else to make the costume a priority. Still, I managed to spray my hair with red temporary color, thanks to some help from Steph. It flaked off on everything and stained the skin on my back, but it sort of made me look more like Natasha Romanov.

The evening was lovely, so I'll just include some more fun costume pics.

SHIELD directors Stark and Fury.

The no-face off between Prentice's Slender Man and john_in_boston*'s the Question. Jenn had a suggestion they should switch costumes, then remove their masks and freak the fuck out of everyone.

morethings5* as a German serial murderer of children from one of the earliest movies about serial killers. Of course.

nennivian* and bronzite* as Peter Pan and Tootles.

twilighttremolo* as a candle, one of my favorites I saw all Halloween. Look at that fabulous hair and lovely dress!

niobien* as a creepy yet still adorable ghost. I think it must be very hard to make her not adorable.

thefarowl* and Plesser as characters from Slings and Arrows, katiescarlett29* as Carmen San Diego, Carolyn again as a ghost, polaris_xx* as not-Xena, Prentice Slender Man, and April in a cosplay outfit for some anime character I've never heard of.

Cutest Zatanna EVER.

Christmas and Jared

Had a very lovely Christmas with my family. We celebrated in much the usual way, by spending time together and cooking mountains of food. We did our traditional seven-fish Italian Christmas Eve dinner, though since this year we had shrimp, crab claws, raw oysters, smoked salmon, fried haddock, seared scallops, calamari in linguine, and my mother's peerless lobster bisque, we technically had eight! Christmas was particularly special, because Jared came to my parents house all the way from Chicago to spend it with me! Then we got in his car and drove back to Boston. What brought this about? So he can move back into town. :-)

Yes, Jared is finally back for good! He found a really nice house in Watertown with one roommate that I think he will be very happy in. He's still looking for a job, but he thinks it will be easier once he's local, and in the meantime he can at least do temporary work if need be. This week we will be getting him all the furniture and things he needs to move in. He's excited to get back to spending time with friends, so take note if you'd like to see him.

Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas now. Got up at 5AM to catch a 7:30 plane, and have settled in with the family to prepare for the holiday. This year Jared should be joining me at my parents' house, which will be lovely experience that we've never had before. I spent the day shopping with my family, buying supplies for Christmas and Christmas Eve dinner. We went to the lovely, enormous indoor farmer's market in town, which has locally-grown vegetables, farm-raised meat, and all manner of artisan breads, cheeses, and desserts. The guy at the counter where we bought veal and brisket told me I was pretty, asked where I went to school, and told me he'd give me two free homemade hamburger patties if I could tell him what a certain word meant. He was Jewish, and since I told him Brandeis I thought he'd ask me something in Yiddish. Instead, he asked the meaning of "ennui," which was so much easier I laughed aloud. Needless to say, I won myself a couple of burgers! It was a very fun conversation.

The house looks even prettier than usual today, all clean for company and decorated for Christmas. I plan to spend the next five days eating, working out, and writing. Won't be as restful as perhaps it could be, given how much work I have to do, but it should at least be a nice holiday with the family.

So much to do...

God, I feel overwhelmed. Not as completely depressed about life, the universe, and everything as I was yesterday, but I still am still weighed down how much I have to do. An essay, a one act play, two larps, more articles... God, that's a lot. It wouldn't be so bad if I could actually buckle down and focus, but my general melodrama of the moment is making that tough. This weekend (my first truly unbooked one since early OCTOBER) will have to be devoted to getting work done. Maybe I should work in hour increments on a given project, then switch to keep my brain engaged.

Of course, I haven't finished holiday shopping yet. I hate doing it, since I never know what to get and a large portion of my intended recipients don't like stuff anyway, so I have massively put it off. Maybe I'll just do a mass online buying jag tonight and call it there. :-P Better than what I did last year, which was venture out into the mall mobs that close to Christmas. I could barely get a parking space.

More Festival bids are coming in, thanks in part to the lovely ultimatepsi*, wired_lizard*, and captainecchi*, to whom I very grateful. We are much closer to my goal of a full schedule with between sixty and seventy player slots per time period. At this point we don't need everyone who I talked to about bidding soon to submit something, but we do still need some. I am debating whether or not it might be a good idea to encourage people to start signing up for the con, just to get an idea of how many player slots we're likely to need. Signups for Festival at large are open, so feel free to put your name in there now if you'd like, but I know I won't wait any longer than a week before the schedule is supposed to be published (first week of January) to start getting after people to let me know they're coming. That way I can be sure the schedule is the right size to accomodate them without any games having to drop.

A restful, if unproductive, Thanksgiving

I have been a bad blogger, not writing a single entry over my Thanksgiving break. But the break was so pleasantly low-key and relaxing I just didn't have the drive to do it. After the insanely busy three previous weeks I've had, doing nothing but hanging with my parents, cooking, eating, sleeping, and playing with the dog was all I wanted to do. It was very restful, though, so I hope I can proceed more energetically and productively from here. Merlin is a lovely dog, very gentle and sweet. He was a bit nervous when we first arrived, clutching his little armadillo baby and pacing around, but he calmed down quickly and became our friend. It was very good to have a dog around the house again.

Home, and the ritual of Thanksgiving, is much the same as it ever was-- there was something very comforting about the holiday being the exact same kind of nice as I remember it --except that my dad's beer brewing hobby has taken over large chunks of the space. The basement, which is finished and like another room of the house, was filled with huge cookpots and bags of grain and complicated rig used for boiling the water and transferring it from pot to pot. Werts in glass carboys sat in various locations around the house in plastic tubs with labels on them, covered by cardboard boxes to keep out the light. Dad has something like thirty gallons of beer going, and is really excited to talk about and show people what he's done.

As much as I enjoyed hanging around with the family, there were a number of things I meant to get done, and I didn't work on any of them. The first priority is getting the characters I owe for tonight's Resonance meeting written up. I've got two of my required three finished, but I'm not sure what to do about the last one. I also need to get cracking on The Stand. I got a few casting questionnaires back already, which pleases me immensely, and I hope that now that the holiday is over people will have time for them. But the upshot is I have a lot of writing to do, and I'm slightly annoyed with myself that I didn't use my time off more efficiently. Ah, well, nothing to do from here but go forward, and buckle down.

Travel plans, I hate them

So I am now kind of grouchy with my brother. We are supposed to be going home to Allentown for Thanksgiving tomorrow, which means we will be driving back together. The trouble is that tomorrow is the busiest travel day all year, and I want to leave as early as possible so as to not hit traffic and get stuck in it for hours and hours. The sensible thing to do, and the easiest on me, would be for him to come over and spend the night at Elsinore tonight, so we can just jump in the car in the early morning. But he's got to film a thing tonight and he hasn't gotten packed yet, so he says he doesn't want to. Which means in order for us to get on the road at an efficient time, I have to get up even earlier, drive into Somerville hopefully before rush hour, and pick his ass up before we can even start heading home. Makes things a heck of a lot harder on me. As if I didn't dislike traveling enough already, what with the severe propensity toward motion sickness. Grumble. Ah, well. In return for my allowing this, he has agreed to drive the whole way and not play his music loud so I can catch up on sleep. I guess that won't be so bad, and it will be worth it if we actually do manage to get home without getting trapped in traffic.

Halloween: success!

Halloween was a smashing success, filled with good friends and delicious food. I was cooking literally all day with the gracious help of katiescarlett29*, and produced five tasty fall-themed dishes-- pear and parsnip puree, squash soup, cornbread, gingerbread, and pumpkin pie --in addition to a spiral-sliced ham that was even more delicious than I hoped it would be. The costumes were also fantastic, highlights including in_water_writ* and 1takejohnny's Harley Quinn and the Joker, morethings5* as Dexter Morgan, electric_d_monk* in the full regalia of a Victorian countess, marigumi* and Matt as Hit-Girl and Kickass, and a Princess Bride-themed group that culiminated in lightgamer*-as-Inigo and nennivian*-as-Rugen's climactic duel to the death. Honorable mention goes to Plesser, in Scooby-Doo-themed scrubs, as Nurse Not-a-Slut (Even on Halloween), RN. And special thanks to nennivian* for decorating the living room. :-)

But now I am well-contented, but ridiculously tired. I was up late straightening up afterward, and had to get up for work this morning. Now I am seriously dragging. I would love to get a nap in this afternoon, but today I have errands to run, family obligations, and rehearsal in the evening, so I may just have to soldier on.

Halloween menu planning

 Did you know that grocery stores don't carry spiral-cut hams as a matter of course? I mean, I knew they were special occasion foods, but I figured people bought them for parties any old time. I'm disappointed, I wanted to have one for Halloween this year, but I was told that they are usually only available on pre-order for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Bah, I love ham, and it would have saved me a lot of work. I could get one at a specialty store like Honey-Baked Ham, but I'm not sure the convenience would outweigh the expense. The alternative is to roast a pork loin, which wouldn't be as expensive, but probably a lot more work. I do have a good one with apples and mirepoix, so that's an option.

Everything else will be vegetarian and kosher-dairy. Other items on my list at the moment are cornbread, gingerbread, and pear and parsnip puree. Wow, this is going to be one starchy spread. But I guess fall foods tend that way. I also want to do something with squash. I'm considering my favorite butternut squash soup, to give a substantial alternative to the pork, though soup may a bit awkward to serve. Ah, well, I may just do it anyway. The puree is a show-offy dish and always a favorite, though it is a wee bit labor intensive to make. I'd also like to do something with cranberries, besides the juice I'd like to serve out of Skully's head. (We're actually calling him Yorick now, on Charlotte's suggestion, which you may scoff at as uncreative, but we live at Elsinore, so there.) And besides cranberry juice, there will be apple cider and probably some Coke as well. Must remember to make sure I have enough paper flatware. This is going to require a lot of work, but fortunately there are several lovely people I plan on drafting into service as kitchen slaves. There will probably be lots of other random edibles, like Halloween candy and perhaps some snacky things like chips and pretzels, but those will be the real foods I'm planning on making.

Must look into that ham...

Halloween is coming

I am now back from my lovely excursion, and smack back in the middle of work and responsibilities. Ah, well. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and all that. It was nice to have such a lovely break.

I have a number of things going on right now, but since Halloween is less than a week away, my preparations must buckle down in earnest. My costume is very nearly in order. I am pretty much just wearing the bellydancer outfit I assembled for Stars of Al-Ashtara-- I was not feeling particularly inspired this year and it saves me having to construct an extra costume. I could use a few more little details like a veil and maybe some bangles, but I can figure that out. I just need to finish sewing the waistband into the skirt I am making from the fabulous patterned blue muumuu I thrifted. It's a bigger job than I thought it would be, because there is so damn much fabric. I will put an elastic inside this case I'm sewing so that it will gather around my waist just fine, but that case has to be very long before the elastic can get in there to scrunch it up. Such is the nature of a muumuu, I suppose. I guess I could cut a chunk out of it to make it smaller, but I kind of like how full it is, and it wouldn't exactly eliminate a lot of sewing if I had to sew the side back up as well. So, I'm just going to keep on with the casing. I'm about a third of the way finished, so I should be able to get it done before the day.

I also need to plan the goodies menu. I want to have lots of tasty seasonal delicacies available, but I have yet to decide what they are. Pie is certainly desireable, and I will probably go with pumpkin but apple is a possibility as well. Cider is another fall favorite of mine. Besides apples and pumpkins, other foods I associate with fall are cranberries, squash, pears, ginger, and corn, so I will have to figure out what sort of things I can make involving those. Suggestions as well as the volunteering to bring dishes are welcome.

Whatever my spread, the centerpiece of it will be my newest acquisition, my beautiful skull bottle. In the liquor store on Main Street I saw that there is now a kind of vodka out called Crystal Head, which is sold in this fantastic bottle in the shape of a skull. I don't drink, and the stuff inside it was fifty bucks a pop, but I had to have one for this Halloween. So I stalked an empty one on eBay, nabbed it in triumph, and returned last night to find it already delivered and waiting!

Creepy little bugger, isn't he? I'm not sure what I'll fill him with-- kind of makes me wish I drank just so I could put some creative and brightly-colored cocktail in him --but I want him to serve a drink. Maybe cranberry juice, for the fall feel and the bright blood red. Ah, so much planning to do, and so much lovely cooking to get ready for! God, I love Halloween.

Wooo cheap costuming!

Had an extremely good rehearsal for Winter's Tale last night. I really like the character of Antigonus. It's fun playing a brave, righteous person, and getting to do courageous things and agonize over the terrible things that other characters do. Not since Cordelia have I gotten to play someone so straight-up heroic. I particularly like the physicality of the scene we did last night, with Leontes shoving Antigonus around and Antigonus takes it because he's his king. I like balancing the defiance of the mad orders with the still-unquestioned allegiance to his liege lord. This is a really good role and I am having a lot of fun with it. I hope Steph is pleased with me. I enjoyed working out the scene with her.

Got my character hint for Stars of Al-Ashtara. At this point we are not allowed to say anything about who we are, so I will say only that apparently my highly flexible casting questionnaire for some reason made me a tougher rather than easier cast, but still from what little information my hint contained I think I like the sound of it. It inspired me to go on eBay and find myself an amazingly well priced couple of costume pieces of the sort I've always wanted to wear. I agonized over what color to buy, settled on one in a panic, and then immediately regretted after purchasing it. Hopefully my frantic e-mail request to change colors will be received before shipping. If not, oh, well, most colors look good on me anyway. It may be too sexy for the role, but it's an Arabian game-- when else am I going to have an excuse to dress like that? ;-) I may end up using it as my Halloween costume as well, since at the moment I have no plan for one.

*Sigh* I'm turning into that girl who has to use any dress-up occasion as an excuse to look slutty. I hate that girl. She's so uninspired. But I really really like this costume.

שנה טובה ומתוקה

So Winter's Tale is now cast, and has even begun rehearsals. They had only the read through and then one night of blocking so far, since there are never any rehearsals on high holidays, and it is now Rosh Hashana. I am happy to hear that Steph is extremely pleased with her cast. I am as well; I attended the read through and was really happy to see how many good actors we've got. Hold Thy Peace seems to be starting off the year in very good shape, and I have secured permission from Madame Director to visit rehearsals every now and again so I can see a little of the process. Onward goes our little Shakespearean family.

Tomorrow night I will be attending a Rosh Hashana dinner. I am going to be making a mixed berry pie, one of my showiest dishes, which just happens to be pareve and therefore can accompany any other dish whether milk or flesch. I have all the crust ingredients, and I'm pretty sure I have corn starch and chambord for the filling, so all I need to buy is the various kinds of berries. I'll leave that till tomorrow.

L'shana tova to all my lovelies.

Awesome Independence Day

Had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. Went to a fantastic party with Bernie, lightgamer*, and morethings5*, who are some of my favorite people to do anything with, let alone going to fun parties. I had a blast at this same party last year, and so was really really looking forward to going to this year's. My excitement grew when shortly before the day, captainecchi* sent out an e-mail saying we could swim in the lake if we brought our swimsuits! I was so happy we did; that was the first time I'd been swimming in over a year, and it was a lot of fun. My poor bikini doesn't get to come out and play often enough! We swam and canoed and explored islands and I didn't get the whole story but I'm pretty sure Kindness beat a bear into submission with his bare fists. ;-) It was cool. Then we came back to the house where electric_d_monk* grilled up some fantastic burgers, hot dogs, and corn on the cob. I had made my "inaccessible rice," as some are wont to call it, with the golden raisins, pecans, mint, and scallions and brought it along. And because the beef in the burgers was locally grown, lightgamer* actually got to eat one! I was happy for him, since they were damn good burgers, and I am sorry when anyone can't enjoy deliciousness. Then there were board games, fantastic strawberry shortcake, and morethings5* sweetly offering to learn how to brush out my hair. The party was a blast, the food was excellent, the company was great, and it was also lovely getting to spend time with captainecchi* and electric_d_monk*. Thanks to our gracious hosts for having such a fun gathering!

Marissa moved into Elsinore on the Fourth as well. Unfortunately I was at the party when she got in, and due to feeling sick and gross with the heat the next day I did not so much welcome her as spend the day hiding from all human contact like a small wild animal. I shall have to rectify that soon. I may also have to take steps to rectify the intense heat situation in my bedroom. For some reason, no matter what the weather, my room is always the mostly extremely affected in the house, making it an icebox in winter and a blast furnace in summer. Climate control is expensive, but it's getting to the point of unbearableness.

Happy Easter

Had a very nice Easter yesterday, if a little more work-intensive and annoyance-riddled than I would have expected. My family and I went out to a lovely Easter dinner at this beautiful inn in town called the Glasbern. It is a converted farm with lovely old farm buildings like barns and stables converted into dining rooms and lodgings, with gorgeous landscaping and actually raises a lot of its own livestock on sight. Homegrown chicken is very tasty, it turns out. I also ran into an old friend, a girl, Debbie, working there who went to my old high school, and in fact played Selene in the very first production of To Think of Nothing four years ago. I told her that I got a chance to direct it for myself just recently, and she said she loved the role and had very good memories of putting on the play.

The only problem was that I got quickly and inexplicably carsick on both the drive there and the drive home. Fortunately it wore off by the time dinner arrived, but I was really angry. There was no reason for me to get sick; the trip was short and over easy roads. I'm kind of afraid to get into a car again.

Fighting a very mild remnant of nausea for the rest of the night, I finally checked over and sent out all forty character sheets for my two games. It took hours, and feeling slightly sick did not help. And we had a drop in Oz RIGHT AFTER I sent out all the sheets. We had someone on the waitlist, but if that drop had occurred just a little earlier we could have redone the casting. The character that had to be filled is extremely well-suited to a particular kind of player, and I can think of others who probably would have enjoyed it. Ah, well. It will be fine, and I'm just grateful that the games are still full.

Easter is here!

I just ate a fantastic piece of white chocolate almond bark to celebrate the end of Lent. It's not the chocolate-covered roast suckling pig I've been longing for, but it'll do.

How is it that the month I give up sugar and butter in everything is the month I get fat?

Oh, also, Christ is risen. He is truly risen. :-)

Kept Jared and Bernie up way too late last night finishing the casting for Alice and Oz. It took several hours, but I think we did a good job. At this point I've only sent out costuming hints. The only copies of the sheet I have access to at home are the ones on Google docs, and I'm not a hundred percent sure they're the most recent ones, so I didn't want to send out whole sheets without checking them first. Hopefully I will get them out by the end of today.

The parents and I will be going out to a late Easter brunch today. In the time I'm home from that in which I am not sleeping off the massive quantity of fantastically trayf pork products I intend to consume, I will finish checking over those sheets. God, I missed pig.

Happy Easter, my lovelies.

Home for Easter

Yesterday I got back to Allentown for Easter, but it turned out to be more complicated than I thought. My train got cancelled due to flooding in Rhode Island, so at the last minute my dad got me on a flight that was technically full. I begged a ride early the same morning to the airport from the wonderful bronzite*, to which I am very grateful for going out of his way. I managed to get home, had a lovely and enormous meal with my parents, and went to bed at around 10PM. Travel always takes it out of me.

Tomorrow we will be going out to an Easter brunch, but today will just be low-key. I have to arrange a time to sit down with Jared (though it will have to be over the phone) to cast Alice and Oz. I want to get the sheets out as soon as possible-- it seemed like the whole process of Festival this year started a lot closer to the date of the con, so I don't want to lose any more time.

Close of Caesar



Caesar closed to glorious work this weekend, and I am incredibly proud of everyone involved. Lenny and Jenna, you did it, guys. And Bernie, you are a fantastic tech director for getting that going so smoothly and so well.

I ran the camcorder during the Friday show and then photo call after it. There are basically two approaches one can take to videotaping a theatrical performance-- either pick a spot that sees the whole stage the whole time and leave it there, or try to follow the action from a general vantage point. I significantly prefer the latter, as it can afford you much better views for all the differing parts of the stage-- I feel like I can see the important stuff much better when I go back to watch that way. That way, however, requires a lot more attention and care in the process. I am roughly familiar with video cameras but have no real training or skill, so I am serviceable but not excellent at operating them. While I'm certain I could improve with practice, I unfortunately do not have the steadiest hand, and the tripod I was working with had some weird resistance that I had to, sometimes shakily, push through. All in all, though, with a little help from Jared in the second act, I think we produced a decent tape.



Photo call was done in less than an hour, and probably would have gone faster if there hadn't been a touch of "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome going on. People were also keyed up from having done a great show, and though I really didn't want to be a killjoy it can be tough to yell instructions at people who are being loud and silly AND getting contradictory instructions as well. Ah, well. Again, I got that shit done in under an HOUR, which, if you've ever run a photo call for a show that long, is freaking RECORD time.

Strike was done in record time as well. Basically the cast and crew just swarmed the set, tore it apart, cleaned up, AND helped Melcher carry in the wood for his upcoming show's build. Well done, guys. I love the dedication and work ethic of the real HTPers. Goodbye, gorgeous set. Thus goes the ephemerality of theater. A trip to IHOP was organized after strike, but by that point I was feeling for some reason, as I occasionally do, unattractive and unpresentable, and therefore had no further desire to be out in public. I kind of regret not sharing in the fun, but I hate inflicting myself on other people when I'm feeling down. So I went home and took a shower to scald off the feeling of ugly.

Yesterday I took Jared to the airport so he could go home for the Pesach break. This afternoon I will be making the same trip so Bernie can as well. That means I will have a few days to myself before I make my own journey home for Easter. I confess I don't particularly want to go, but I do want to be with my parents, who miss me. It just leaves only a small amount of time to take care of some of my own projects and chores without any obligation to others. I think right now I need that.
 



Mardi Gras already?

Whoa. Looking at my calendar, it appears that Mardi Gras has crept up on me and falls this year on... today. I haven't really given any thought as to what I should give up for Lent yet, which means I don't know what I should indulge now before I am without it for the next forty days.

My typical Lenten sacrifice is processed sugar. It's good for my health and for my weight. I think I did that for something like eight years in a row. Last year, however, I elected to keep kosher to see what it was like. I must confess, kashrut is one of the Jewish concepts that means the least to me. It was an interesting experiment, but frankly one that did little to recommend the practice to me. It wasn't so bad, I guess, but I didn't really feel there was anything positive about it that outweighed what it demanded giving up. Pork is a food, not a sin, and a delicious one at that. But still, it's something that means an awful lot to certain very important people in my life. So I guess it's a gesture of respect to them if I decide to do it again, which does matter to me. Processed sugar, but contrast, is a personal sacrifice, but there's no expression of love involved, only the self-denial for Lent.