Day in the Life of an Idiot

Today, I am feeling a lot of ennui... or possibly just general malaise.

Whatever I'm feeling, it's definitely French.

It's "What Are You Reading Wednesday" so I'll start with that, I suppose. I have been very slowly reading a book called THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN by C L Polk. It's a funny book because the premise really shouldn't interest me--it's a Jane Austin-esque marry or die, comedy of manners 'oh noz, the social engagement that I am ever so unsuited for, but will totally excel at!'--but then, I'll decide to pick it up and suddenly I've read fifty pages without meaning to, you know?  I think I am enjoying it because it continues to subvert the genre in subtle ways, while also giving fans of it all the things. Courting handsome men! Ball gowns!  Demon summoning!

I haven't finished it yet, however, because I kept setting it down and forgetting about it.  

Is this a recommendation?  Weirdly, I do intend it to be. I need to work on my delivery, I think. I suspect that a lot of my friends out there in SF/Fdom would enjoy it.

Otherwise, like I said, today has been kind of 'meh.' I've been dodging a headache all day. I blame the sunshine. My sinuses react to rapid changes in barometric pressure and the temperature is spiking outside. It's gone from 5 to 18 F (-15 C to -8 C).  I guess that doesn't seem like a huge amount, but I'm pretty sure something has shifted. One side of my face feels filled with cement.

And, I don't know. Do any of the rest of you ever have days when you feel like you're just doing everything wrong and no one likes you?  That's the kind of day I'm having today.

This too shall pass, I know. I at least got a package mailed today along with some postcards. I should probably turn my mind towards some Christmas baking. Chocolate mint cookies are restorative.  They can heal any wound, I believe.

 This is not probably going to be a very long journal entry today. The sun is out and Mason would like to go off for a walk after he finishes his Stats quiz. 

I just wanted to catch y'all up on a couple of things. Do you remember when Shawn had suddenly very dark and scary urine? This was not the bloodclot or any of the other small (and large) dramas around that, but had happened right about when all the COVID-19 stuff had only just started to make it impossible to get in to see your general doctor? ( cut for medical stuff you might not care about and some covid talk )So, that was my morning.

I was grateful for last night's rain. I have been waiting for rain because my garden is looking pretty parched. I also spread a bunch of cover seeds and I am anxious for them to begin to spout. We are supposed to get rain on and off this week and I very much hope we do (even if it means I can't go for my daily walks.)

This weekend I seem to have inspired a bunch of my Facebook friends into remembering the pie crust cookies their grandmothers/mothers/parental unit types used to make for them that involved taking scraps of leftover (or screwed) up pie crust and dusting them with cinnamon and sugar and baking them for a few minutes.  I normally just do like gramma did: leave them as misshapen scraps, brush them with a bit of water, and throw cinnamon and sugar on them, but I got fancy this weekend and pulled out the cookie cutters and the colored Christmas sugars:

Because: DINOSAURS

Image: dinosaur and star cookies with an egg wash and Christmas sugar.

I feel like both my grandmothers would be rocking this apocalypse. For certain my grandma Mouse had already lived through the Spanish flu pandemic, having been born in 1909. I remember her birth year because it was, apparently, also the first year they issued the Lincoln head penny.  Of course now that I am so certain of it, 1909 could very well have been my grandpa's birth year.  Memory is like that.  

The point is, however, they were already doing like a lot of people who had lived through the Great Depression were doing: saving all the things and never wasting ANY food.  Hence the recipe where you even use the sort of dull pie crust leftovers. 

Did your grandparents/parents do anything like this you've been thinking about later? I'd love to hear some wisdom from the elders, as it were.

My subconscious isn't the least bit subtle.

I had a dream last night about my new novel. Let me preface this with the fact that my editor/publisher Cheryl Morgan told me on Friday, I think, that Locus Magazine had picked up the press release regarding my new novel. This is definitely a 'yay' because I do worry that I've been so out of the publishing game that no one knows or cares about my work any more. Apparently, my subconscious has a different worry. See if you can guess what it is...

My dream last night went like this. I am at a science fiction convention where I'm doing some kind of volunteer thing (which may have involved taking a class on James Joyce, but that's not actually important.) When the con is over, I decide to be silly and make a chalk "thank you" poem that I write on the sidewalk outside of the convention center. The next day, above the fold, the Star Tribune (our local paper) writes a huge article critiquing how BAD my poetry is and what I stupid idea writing a thank you in chalk was to begin with, complete with quotes from everyone involved, including people I thought of as friends, basically saying that it's such a shame that a former science fiction writer has become such a weirdo.

Seriously, brain? ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO BE SUBTLE.

Clearly, I am terrified that the critics will hate the thing I am writing. I think it's a reasonable fear, so you don't need to comfort me and tell me I am awesome (I actually _do_ know this, but my subconscious is where the fears live, after all. My conscious brain is still mostly in charge, so no worries). I only share this with you all because it is truly hilarious to me the extent to which my dreams are so easily interpreted. Dr. Freud does not need to be paged. We got this one.

Otherwise, Sunday was lovely. We all slept in and then went out en masse to breakfast, my favorite meal. Mason had been agitating for a trip to Grandview Grill, so we went. It was crowded, but I had their delicious biscuits and gravy which pretty much sustained me until dinner time.

I also made some really good vegan sugar cookies, which, yes, I cut out in the shape of a turkey.



Picture: A muppet-y sort of shocked looking, turkey-shaped vegan cookie.

Very tasty, however. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, I guess? You can make amazing cookies with margarine and/or Crisco, so it stands to reason that the expensive version of those things would work just as well. This terrified turkey represents my biggest vegan success, so far. However, I have not yet tried out all the recipes that y'all have passed on. I am looking forward to those.

I do have to say that I appreciate the crowd over here on DW. I am _still_ getting advice on how to fix my vegan gravy, despite not asking for any. I do understand that my friends are literally just excited to help, but "cornstarch?" makes me laugh. Yes, my friends, I have heard of it, thank you for assuming I had _not._  This is literally the bonus of longer form, however. I guess I should just get in the habit on social media of writing a longer explanation, but, to me, that isn't how FB is supposed to be used. 

Anyway, that was my weekend. My big plans today, besides continuing working on the novel (that the Star Tribune will apparently hate, in my dreams, at least,) I have to take Willow to the vet for some booster shots at 11 pm. I should probably dig the carrier out of the basement now, actually. Her BIG appointment is in a couple of weeks... sometime after my birthday (which is coming up! Nov. 18!)

Hope you all are well!

 

I see that the last thing I reported was that gingerbread cookies were on the agenda for Thursday night. I am happy to report, they were made. We have successfully captured the gingerbread people (including the rare cyclops ninja)  and trapped them inside this cookie jar.  Resistance is futile.

As you can see, we had too much fun decorating these. Initially, I thought I'd stay out of the kitchen and let Maria and Shawn catch up. Maria is a former colleague of Shawn's. She used to work at the Minnesota History Center, but has now moved on to records management, maybe? (I wasn't entirely paying attention early on), at Thrivenet, formerly Lutheran Brotherhood.  BUT, when it was clear that what they wanted to do was drink wine and chat, I let them settle into that and did the rolling and baking. At this point, it's second nature to me, so I could join in the chat while getting things together.

When the cookies were cooled, everyone did the decorating.  

I had bought the "googly' eyes from Micheal's along with a bunch of other odd edible bits, including lips and mustaches--they all came in a packet for a couple of bucks. I also bought a few frosting tubes because I was there and decided that I was feeling too lazy to do the frosting from scratch on top of everything else.

They're quite whimsical, so I'm very happy with them.

Tasty, too.

I got together with the usual crew on Friday afternoon, except for Eleanor, who was off getting her hair cut. pegkerr brought along her holiday cards to label and stamp. It's interesting to note that Peg's family has always done a Christmas family newsletter. She and I had both come across recent articles talking about how fewer people are writing these sorts of things any more and how this is a concern for historians, as sources of 'mundane' life.  The article I had read was from the Smithsonian and was called "The History of Our Love-Hate Relationship with the Christmas Letter".

I happen to enjoy a well written holiday letter, myself. But, given that I still enjoy the long form of blogging, that's probably not a surprise.

But, otherwise, we were all fairly low-key on Friday. naomikritzer is still, in many ways, recovering from her trip to Taiwan and China. And, I think we were all suffering from a lack of sunshine (though it's been more sunny here starting on Friday. Previously it had been gray with gray sauce.). These dark nights have been tough on me. I'm already an early to bed sort and when it's dark at 5:30 pm, I think, "Okay, great! Time for bed!" Except, yeah, it's like 5:30 pm.

Saturday was a busy day for our family. I took Mason into his job at the Science Museum at 10 am. I was able to say "hello"/"goodbye" on a hangout with jiawen , but then had to take off to go to Mason's work's "open house" that they had scheduled from noon to 2 pm. The Science Museum is not normally more than 10 minutes from our house, but we have gotten in the habit (thank goodness) of leaving a bit earlier because it always seems that there is something happening at the Xcel Center. Saturday seemed to be no exception. There was a Minnesota Wild (our hockey team) game happening and we ended up having to pay $20 for parking. (Outrage! Except, that Shawn pointed out that we could think of it as a donation to the Science Museum, which we happily support in all of its endeavors.)  

The open house was cool.

The program that Mason works for is called KAYSC, which stands for the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center. They're a nifty little organization that focuses on bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills to high schoolers in underserved communities. Mason goes to one of their target high schools, which is how he ended up able to apply. Washington Technical has a predominantly Asian-American student body, with Caucasian students making up only 6%. At KAYSC, Mason gets an opportunity to get paid to learn STEM and project management skills, with a focus on using the sciences to served local communities--something the KAYSC people call "STEM Justice," which is a term I adore. Honest to gods, I would have killed to have a job like this when I was Mason's age. Heck, I'd love one like this _now_.  

At the open house, we got to see some of the areas of interest that the students had identified for themselves. They had set-up various presentations (some static/interactive displays, a couple of video programs, and one tour). I wanted to do the tour, because they were going to talk about gentrification, but we also didn't want to miss the big team reveal at the end of the open house, where Mason would find out which project leader he would be assigned to. They have four "tracks." There's an environmental sciences and sustainability one, which is where Mason ended up, a Engineering and Design, a Biological Sciences and Public Health, and a Media and Technology one. There were some really well put together displays, including Mason's which focused on stereotypes in storytelling.  I was also really impressed with a team that had micro greens growing and talked about ways in which low-income houses could cheaply incorporate more nutrient rich foods.  Another group has a display about the problems GLBTQIA+ students have in high school.  

So you can see the sorts of things they focus on.
 
Mason seems very happy with the assignment. Engineering and Design had been his first pick, but Environmental Science was his second. Given that he has an engineering track at his high school, I imagine they factored that into their decision where he might learn the most.  Because, getting serious, this job is 100% about getting paid to learn, which is why it is SO awesome and probably the best first job any high schooler could hope for. 

But, the event was high energy and full of people moving around and OMG, even this extrovert needed a NAP after that. 

Mason, meanwhile, had us stop at home to pick up some gaming stuff and headed over to his friend's house to play D&D with his robotics crew. He was there, with them, until almost 10 pm. 

Shawn and I came back and collapsed into a heap, but we got back up to make homemade pizza for dinner. Shawn had a work holiday party at a house on Summit Avenue (fancy!) which I bowed out of for a bunch of reasons, but not the least of which was that I am staring up some RPGing of my own. 

I had such a lovely time doing a Star Trek: Discovery one-shot with jiawen and bcholmes at CONfabulous this last year, that we decided to try to make it a regular thing. We spent Saturday night rolling up our characters, and I'm already very happy to watch everyone's character histories comes through my e-mail feed. We're doing this online, as our players are scattered across the globe. I'm looking forward to the campaign beginning in earnest. It's been some time since I had a regular gaming group... probably college, which is going on 30 years ago. Though to be fair, I did keep up with some folks a few years after that, so let's call it 25 years ago?

Even so, that's a long time ago.

I had gone cold-turkey from gaming about the time I started concentrating on novel writing as a career because, for me, I felt it used a lot of the same mental muscles. I felt I could EITHER use those muscles to write _or_ RPG. I'm not sure I was right about that, however--I know a lot of pro writers who could do both.

But, that was the choice I made. 

I'm excited to get back into it, regardless. I also love that in the twenty-five or so intervening years the demographics have flipped. The STRONG majority of us are women (4/5ths). There's only one guy gaming with us. That's amazing. I can't wait to find out what that's like. In the past I was always the only woman or one of a very few... I met my wife gaming, but we drifted together partly _because_ there weren't many women in that campaign... though I think there was at LEAST one other. (To be fair, it was actually love at first sight, since when she asked me to draw her character and said that they should have blonde hair and brown eyes, I told her I thought that was an unusual combination, and she said, 'that's what I am,' and I looked up and literally said, "Oh. You have the most beautiful eyes I have EVER seen." So, you know....)

Anyway. I'm not sure exactly what happened on Sunday, except that Mason and I got into a hormone fueled bickering session that ended with us marathoning several hours of the new Super Smash Bros, Ultimate game on the Switch in order to work it out (which we did. Gaming as therapy is real in the house of hormones, which is what we call our house as Mason is in puberty and Shawn and I are both in various stages of menopause.)

So, that's me. How's by you?

 I call this batch "A Sound of Thunder" for reasons.... 



For those that might not be familiar: "A Sound of Thunder" is the Ray Bradbury story in which a time traveling tourist goes back to the age of dinosaurs and is warned to stay on the predetermined path. They end up stepping off the path, accidentally killing a butterfly, and famously think, 'Ah, well, at least it wasn't anything important,' only to discover the world is monumentally changed by this single, 'insignificant' act. The term "the butterfly effect" was coined, in part, due to this story.

I made these nerdy cookies in order to share them with my cousin Tracy who lives in Saint Louis. She's a former chemist and all around geek, so I suspect that they will make her smile.

Yesterday, besides making and decorating these, I finished our Yule decorations, including prepping our Yule Log.  Our Yule Log is birch and was 'liberated' (read: stolen) from the Eloise Butler Nature Center by Shawn and our mutual friend Julie, back in the 1990s. We drilled three holes in it for candles and every year I staple some pine boughs to it and decorate it with pine cones and ornaments. If I remember, I'll take a picture of it at some point. It sits on top of our piano, which serves as our mantle, where we hang our stockings.

Yesterday, I also hung out with naomikritzer who has finished up her yearly "Gifts for People You Hate" post over on her WordPress blog, which is always a delight to read. 

Thanks to a conversation with her (and then again later with my wife Shawn) about the Loscon 45 incident with Gregory Benford, Shawn and I started to read the link he posted to about victimhood (in lieu of an apology) that seems to imply that people are just too sensitive today and are over-exaggerating issues of oppression in what the authors consider today's "victimhood culture."  Okay.  I'd been feeling sympathetic with Benford having been escorted out of the con in the middle of his signing--which I still think was overkill--but maybe just apologize for some bad behavior too? Instead of linking to an article that basically implies YOU PEOPLE ARE TOO SENSITIVE?

I think there are a number of issues going on here.

One of them is going to be an on-going problem until the next generation decides they whether or not to fully invest in the culture of live, in-person science fiction conventions, and, that is, "you get what you pay for." Which is to say that panels like the one Benford was on are assigned on VOLUNTEER basis.  

It sounds, in fact, like LosCon _tried_ to have decent representation on this panel--a woman panelist was a no-show and there _were_ two people of color on the panel (which led to Benford's other alleged comment about Latinx names having "too many" vowels for him to properly remember them). So, this con had enough volunteers to attempt to mitigate the "old, white guy" problem. Unfortunately, the more incidents like this, the less women and PoCs feel WELCOME both in the audience, but ESPECIALLY at the table, as it were--to volunteer to be on the panel. So, this sort of thing is likely to remain an issue until we swing the demographics in our favor--and provided that that's what we want. That is, people may chose to abandon cons entirely. I'm not sure I would blame the next generation if they did just that.  

Let me just say, that I love going to science fiction conventions and have been doing so, as a fan and as a professional, since some time before the internet.... which was when cons were particularly useful, as it was one of the ways to find one's fan group, one's people.

The thing is, I recently did a podcast with my friend Minster Faust, who is the author of COYOTE KINGS OF THE SPACE-AGE BACHELOR PAD (among other things.) I met him at a science fiction convention, NorwesCON, when we were both up for the Philip K. Dick award. He's Canadian and a PoC and when we chatted, WorldCON 76 was blowing up, and so we talked about all of this. He was very leery of the benefits of attending cons-because travel is expensive (in his case, international), and the question is: do you get anything out of it other than a slap in the face? I spent some time trying to convince Malcolm that the sense of community was worth it, but I ended up stopping myself from pushing that idea too hard, because this girl has all sorts of privilege that Malcolm would not. And, it's not just an issue of systematic racism, which is absolutely a factor, but also because I have a ton of advantages, including being well-known to my local capital-F, Fandom (which is to say, the in-person, con-going community, as opposed to a specific interest group) AND living in a town where you can hardly turn around without hitting a local science fiction convention that only costs me, at MOST, the price of admission. 

A lot more people out there are in Malcolm's shoes than mine, which is to say that they are trying to make financial decisions (as writers or fans) about travel, hotel costs, food expenses, etc., and weighing the question of "is all that money worth it" against the whole series of issues, including very basic ones, like, will they even get impanelled, as it were, being somewhat "unknown"? Add to that concerns of having to deal with being misgendered in the programming material or being actively harassed on a panel for having too many vowels in your name or just looking around thinking "WTF, am I the only [queer, trans, PoC, disabled] person here?? How uncomfortable is this??"

So, to me, this is the number one issue that these incidents like Benford's blow-up and non-apology represents. The more crap like this happens, the less likely it is to convince people that cons are a worthwhile venture. If fewer people show up, the smaller the list of panel volunteers there will be, and... you guessed it, the more of these fails will happen because all that will be left are the dinosaurs...

The other general issue that things like this keep bringing to mind is that authors of a certain age, but really, all of us, need to understand the ways in which "the interwebs" have changed con culture.

It used to be, back in the late Jurassic, a person could say something that was maybe even just an innocent "failure mode of humor" (= a$$hole) and only offend the 70 or so people in the room.  Now, you say something like that and there is a statistically significant chance that it might go viral. Or, at the very least, if you are an "esteemed con guest" be noteworthy of a site like File770.

I have no idea to the extent to which Benford's comments were, in fact, the failure mode of humor, but it doesn't matter.

As an author, he should know that authorial intent really doesn't mean diddly if the audience doesn't read things that way.  This is a lesson learned I learned in critique group when I was twenty-five years old: if six or so people, out of the seven who read your work don't GET the point and, in fact, take it the opposite way you intended the scene to read, you have FAILED to express the scene appropriately and the story needs revision. That's just how writing works. And, as it happens, real life. If you fail at a joke and accidentally fall into failure mode (aka a$$holery), you can apologize and try to be better the next time, aka, a kind of revision of the story of your life.

/rant

Anyway, the cookies are delicious. And, apparently, Mason's favorites.

 ...I turn to baking.

Shawn really likes to have a LOT of cookies around for the holidays. Not only are they nice to trot out for our usual Thanksgiving guests, but also they are a Sustaining sort of Smackerel to get us Minnesotans through the dark months.  This weekend, we made: Snickerdoodles and Pizelles (Saturday). Nutmeg teacakes, the dough for date cookies, and "failed" pecan tassies were made on Sunday. 

Kowalski's had a whole cut-up chicken on sale, so I made a big roast with mash potatoes, gravy, and green beans. I also made my first French bread loaf of the season.



The recipe I use technically makes four, more traditionally skinny baguettes, but I like my bread to be like me: fat and stout.  So, I have always only made two loaves from the recipe, that's why they are not especially baguette-looking. 

They sure are tasty, though.

And, ah... but the eating was gooooooood 

What am I reading these days, anyway? A lot of manga still. This week, I read My Hero Academia / Boku no Hero Academia volume 10, “All For One” / “Ōru Fō Wan,” Blood-C 1 by Kotone Ranmaru, and four and a half volumes of Nana by Ai Yazawa.  I was sort of 'meh' on the first two series, but I'm really enjoying Nana so far, which is good since I think the library has all 21 volumes.  In fact, I was thinking about taking off a little early to go get Mason by way of Roseville Library, so I may just return what I've read and pick up as many as they have in a row.

Nana is about two twenty-something women, both of whom are named Nana. Both are originally from small towns and they meet each other on the train to Tokyo, one wintery night.  Nana Komatsu is frivolous and the sort of giggly girl who pretty much falls for every man she meets.  Nana Osaki is a hardcore punk rocker, hoping to make it big. It's slice-of-life with a heavy dose of romance/sexy times. I have this huge weakness--particularly lately--for slice-of-life stories where there's just not a WHOLE lot at stake, beyond people just trying to live good lives.  So, I'm not entirely surprised that Nana is the one working for me out of the three series I read this week.

Otherwise, I continue holiday baking. Today, I made spritz:



Here's a close up of ones I was surprised to discover have six-pointed star.  Perhaps for Hanukkah?


The funniest part of all this baking is that we're really not expecting anyone for the holidays.  Shawn just really, really likes having a lot of cookies around.

Who doesn't?

How about you? Reading anything good this week?

I'm baking a LOT of cookies this morning. Mason's Robotics League is having a recruitment potluck and Mason signed us up for cookies, so I'm on batch two of chocolate chip cookies. I keep having weird mishaps. When I first started, I accidentally put in a teaspoon of ANISE instead of vanilla. I had to toss that batch before I even finished making it. The second batch I made, I completely forgot salt and baking soda. Weirdly, they seem fine? I'm going to keep that batch and see if anyone can really tell the difference. I would have thought they'd be flatter? But they seem fine.

Also, in the mail, yesterday, I got my AARP card! Whoot!

But, today is reading Wednesday, so let me see what I've been reading. It's been a food-focused week. I've been thinking a lot about how Americans celebrate food versus how other countries, but specifically Japan (at least in its manga culture), do. It started with me reading Sweetness & Ligtning / Amaama to Inazuma (Volumes 1-7) by Gido Amagakure. The story follows a newly single dad (he's a widower) who learns to cook for his pre-school daughter. By chance, he runs into one of his students (he's a high school math teacher) who is the daughter of a famous cook, who is secretly not good at cooking, either. Together they teach each other to make yummy food. There's a lot of family bonding, great-looking food, and ACTUAL RECIPES at the end of each chapter.

There are actually a lot of manga like this. What Did You Eat Yesterday? / Kinō Nani Tabeta? by Fumi Yoshinaga, which is probably easiest described as a story of a gay couple whose love language is cooking. It, too, has actual recipes in it.

But, in both of these, there's a whole lot of exclamations of "Wow! SO GOOD!" and "Ahhhh!" Plus, scenes of shopping, preparing, and cleaning up. The WHOLE experience of cooking and eating. And, I thought about that a lot when I read these two articles. The first one I came across on Mary Anne Mohanraj's Facebook Page: "Grocery Industry Confronts a New Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking." This started a whole conversation of why cooking is actually a whole lot of work, much of which goes unappreciated, which was then echoed in an article that Shawn found for me from the Atlantic: "'Easy' Cooking Isn' Easy: A Thanksgiving Lament."

And that made me think about a bunch of things, including American cooking shows--most of which involve professional chefs or "home cooks" who "elevate" their cooking to standards that most people find impossible and WAY MORE WORK than anyone wants to do. Which also led Shawn to forward this "how is this not a parody" video of a woman making peanut butter 'slices,' making easy work FAR MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT EVER NEEDED TO BE. "Video Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches Complicated, And Moms Have a Hilarious Field Day."


I also read a few non-food related things. I read the first fifteen chapters of Wolf in the House (a Korean manhwa yaoi) by Park Ji-Yeon, Not Simple by Ono Natsume, and Kasumi by Surt Lim / Hirofumi Sugimoto (Vol. 1).

How about you?

Mason is home sick today. He's got a scratchy throat, and, while he probably could have been alright at school, I thought I should keep him home so that he can be well enough to attend the end of the year party on Thursday. (Also, his grandparents are coming up to celebrate Solstice with us on Thursday, so hopefully he'll feel better by then.)

This has, alas, delayed my holiday shopping. I still have quite a bit to do, actually. I have gotten Shawn's Soltice gift, but nothing -- absolutely NOTHING -- for Christmas. But, I decided that I will not be defeated. Today... I shall bake even more cookies!!!

This house will be overrun by cookies. It will be awesome.

'Twas the day after Christmas and somehow my family is still asleep even though it is AFTER 9:00 am. Of course, I'd still be asleep myself if it wasn't for the fact that I had to get up to move the car for the latest snow emergency. When I was out scraping the car, I lifted one of the windsheild wipers to brush the ice off it, and guess what? It came apart in my hands. Like, the rubber shredded and the various peices snapped in two. No, it is not THAT cold outside. I have no idea why that happened, outside of the fact that the universe is determined to give me car hassles all winter long, it seems.

Speaking of, we've also developed an odd clunking under the car. If they hadn't just replaced struts and such, I'd say that was what it sounded like. Alas, I think that means either something they installed when awry OR something they attached a new part to has finally given way. (The latter seems to happen with old cars... you put something new and shiny on something old and rusty and suddenly the old bit can't cope and falls apart.)

The good news is that we have some vacation still, and I can take the car in with minimal hassle. At least I won't have to worry about getting Mason to school on time. Shawn's work is more flexible. If I had to I could take her in super early and pick her up super late. They don't really let you do that at public school. :-)

Christmas was lovely. As I meantioned earlier, Shawn's big present this year is Internet, but I also got her -- as a HUGE suprise -- an iTouch. Both presents have been a lot of fun for the whole family. Of course, I'm briefly turning into one of those people who Twitter too much (but I assume once the excitement wears off, I'll be back to normal. Don't unfriend me yet. I promise to be better.)

Probably the next best present was one I got from Shawn, which was cookie cutters in the shape of ninjas. I'm planning to use those to make sugar cookies for our kuk sul wan test, as everyone is invited to share in a potluck afterwards. I thought, for good luck, I'd be sure to put yellow stripes on the frosting belts. :-) I supposed I'd better find out the order of colors and stripes so I can make some lucky cookies for other folks too.

Ah, I hear actual movement upstairs. I suspect the family has awoken from their deep slumber.

The other presents/loot I got were a ton of cool cookbooks that Shawn hunted for over the year at various used bookstores, including a fabulous book called HOW TO FRY ALMOST EVERYTHING. Tell me that's not made for me?

Mason, of course, is swimming in LEGOs. Though he did get a cool new DS game called "Super Scribblenauts," which he hasn't tried yet, but seems awesome as you can type in whatever you need, including things like "flying angry pink mouse!" I can't wait to see how it works.

Anyway, I should go hunt up breakfast for my clan.