Hello! I am still here! Sometimes!

The weather has finally turned nice in Boston and so I have been spending a lot of time outside, which is great. Here are some of the things I have done outside recently:

• Gone to a Red Sox game (they lost to the A's 6-0, but we at least had great seats on the right field roof deck, and the weather was amazing), and we ate various kinds of disgusting stadium food including some horrifyingly bright-green "margaritas".


• Gone for a hike in the Middlesex Fells, a largeish wooded park/conservation area a little ways outside of Boston - there is lots of hiking and scrambling, and there are wild blueberries all over the place! I ate loads, and I may go back on a dedicated blueberrying trip and make a pie or something.


• Walked to and from work every day (except when I had to go somewhere else on the way home from work).


• Walked along the waterfront to see the Tall Ships, which actually I wasn't crazy about, but while I was there I visited the ICA and saw me some contemporary art, which was good.


• Watched fireworks and saw Revolutionary War re-enactors on Independence Day weekend.

And probably various other things I'm not remembering. I went to the Arboretum, but that wasn't due to the nice weather; I wanted to try out my new rain pants in some rain (they worked!). Now that the rain has stopped, I am actually really loving this cool summer we're having. Although it is way too cold inside at work - I have been wearing sweaters (sometimes multiple sweaters) and right now my fingers and legs are still freezing. I may bring in some tights to wear just while I'm at work.

Next week I'm going to the Cape with asvern, which should be nice and will involve additional good outdoors times. Which mean, yes, I'm taking another week of vacation. According to my pay stub, I still have more than three weeks of vacation, but this is due to some kind of mistake (which I have not gone out of my way to correct). Still not sure what I am going to do about that. I think I am just going to sit on it and try and use it up a few days at a time, whenever I can. But I think I will have to work all of August at least to divert suspicion!

Interesting day at work! I spent a bunch of time in the archive today pre-cataloging (if that's a thing) and packaging books. A lot of that just meant deciphering titles printed in old German Fraktur fonts (useful guide to transliterating said Fraktur fonts here, which I'd printed it out before I started instead of halfway through), but there were some cool oddities up there. We have a lot of old pharmacopeias (or pharmacopoeias, or pharmacopoeiae, or pharmacopoeen, or you get the idea), which you would not think would be particularly interesting, but I ended up getting to play with the Pharmacopoeia Pauprum Edinburgensis, i.e. the Poor People's Pharmacopeia (!) from sometime in the 18th century. I got to touch the oldest book I've ever touched, a London pharmacopeia from 1720.

That's not all I got to see and learn, either! My boss was looking at a modern German book, and it had a picture of what appeared to be Jesus in an old-fashioned apothecary shop. "Look, it's Jesus the pharmacist!" she said. "No, it's got to be the patron saint of pharmacists or something. It's not Jesus," I said. Then I had to go do some other things outside of the archive, but before I left, my boss showed me another German book, this one called... "Christus als Apotheker"! Apparently paintings (and stained-glass windows, and wood-carvings) of Christ as an apothecary were very popular with 17th-century Lutherans. Very, very popular. I was fascinated. This whole (admittedly short) book was just images of Christ as an apothecary.

Anyhow, had lots of fun in the archive. Almost makes me wish I did archives stuff.

So. You guys. I have been seriously busy! First, weekend before last, I went to Iceland. Which was great. It is a lovely weird quirky place, very beautiful in an aggressively austere kind of way. I give Iceland two thumbs up and intend to visit again. I bought loads of yarn but I should have bought more. Delicious food, especially the fish, butter, and lamb.

Second, this past weekend I went to New Hampshire to go mountain climbing and sledding. This is something that my dad's wife and her friends have done for at least the past ten years - they climb halfway up Mount Washington (the tallest mountain in the Northeast US, which is to say not a particularly tall mountain in the grand scheme of things - it's something like 6000 feet - but still a pretty good climb, especially in April), then they sled (or ski, sometimes) down a different trail (the Shelburne Ski Trail). Some of the group members also sometimes ski the Tuckerman's Ravine bowl (this is where my dad rescued some girl who had been buried in a not-really-avalanche last year). My stepsister has been going since she was about 8 years old (she's 21 now), and my other sister's husband proposed to her in the bowl (and dropped the ring in the snow, wow). But I had never been on this trip before!

It was, in short, loads of fun. The hike up took two hours, maybe just over, then we hiked a little way towards the bowl but turned back because it was cold, windy, and foggy the higher we got. Then we sledded down. I need to work on my sledding technique. Basically you can either sit in the sled or lie on your front (do I mean lie? or lay? anyway). On your front, you either have to keep your pack on your back, which made it hard for me to lift my head to see where I was going, or you have to lie on top of your pack, and my pack kept wanting to sneak out the front of the sled and get caught underneath it. Pros of lying on your front: you can steer and brake with your feet, elbows, or hands. Sitting, you don't have any pack problems, but you have to either steer with your feet (and kick up loads of snow into your sled) or steer with your hands (which felt like a wrist injury waiting to happen). I experimented with both, but never really came to a satisfactory conclusion.

As I say, it was loads of fun, though it felt incredibly dangerous and stupid. By the time we got down Pinkham Notch (concessions, restrooms, parking, etc.), I was soaked through three layers of trousers and long johns and underwear, and I'd managed to get the shirt I was wearing under two layers of fleece and a water- and wind-proof shell covered in dirt (there were a lot of bare patches on the trail). We had beers, candy, and cherry pie in the parking lot, and then I went home. I think I went to bed at about 8:45PM, having taken a couple of handfuls of ibuprofen beforehand. I am still covered in bruises, but my climbing muscles aren't sore anymore, which is great! Looking forward to doing more climbing this summer, though of course that's what I said about skiing this winter.

Seriously, though! I might even join the Appalachian Mountain Club!

So, I had a busy weekend.

Friday: Opera! Went with kmusky to see Rusalka performed by the Boston Lyric Opera. We were up in the balcony (at the Schubert), which is about as steeply raked a set of seats I have ever sat in in my life. Not for the vertigo-prone! Or anyone who has any trouble with stairs - there is no elevator to the balcony, and I think it is probably the equivalent of four flights of stairs to the top. We were above the chandelier (sightlines were perfect, though, except we couldn't see all of the orchestra pit).

As for the opera itself, I enjoyed it. Rusalka is a mermaid/water nymph story that borrows a lot from The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson version) and some assorted other water-nymph stories. It actually ends up being a little bit darker than even the Anderson Little Mermaid (Rusalka is doomed to drag men down to their dooms and the Prince dies!). The tenor who sang the Prince was fabulous - and very loud, especially in his death scene. The soprano who played Rusalka didn't really wow me in the first act, and then she doesn't sing for most of the second act since she's been rendered mute (who thought The Little Mermaid would make a good story for an opera?! besides Dvorak and his librettist, I mean). But she mostly won me over by the end. She seemed to have a lot of difficulty moving around, though - I don't know if she has arthritis, or was recovering from an injury, or has a bad back or something? Not to say she shouldn't have sung the part because of that, but maybe they could have blocked her so that she wasn't kneeling down and getting back up so often. It looked a bit painful.

Saturday I worked at the Museum, but that was actually also a sad day in our apartment because kmusky had to put her old cat Watson to sleep. Poor old kitty; he had taken a real turn for the worse over the past week or two. He was 18, so it wasn't exactly a surprise, but it was still sad to see him that way. He always liked to sit on your lap and have you slap him on his sides like he was a drum, but he had lost so much weight and was getting so frail that you couldn't do that any more. Farewell, Watson! You will be missed.

Sunday, I went to the Women's Frozen Four NCAA Hockey Championship at BU. Wisconsin was playing Mercyhurst, a school I had never heard of but which has an excellent women's hockey team (full of Canadians!). There were several New England girls on the Wisconsin team, including one girl who my stepsister used to play soccer with, so that was the main reason we went (I went with my dad and his wife, who had extra tickets), and although Mercyhurst had sent a pep band and a little cheering section, there were more people in the arena rooting for Wisconsin (and Wisconsin won, as apparently they usually do). It was a really good game! I think it was the first women's hockey game I ever attended, and the quality of play was excellent and subtly different from men's hockey in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. I will definitely watch the women's hockey in the Olympics next year.

After the game we tried to go to the Publick House for moules frites, but they don't open the kitchen until 4:30 on Sundays, and it was 3:00 when we got there and we were hungry. So we went to New Rod Dee for Thai instead, which was excellent.

Also Sunday, I went to the Handel and Haydn Society concert with kmusky and her mom. I don't know if I was just activitied out or what, but it didn't make a big impression on me. The concert was called "Romantic Brahms". The Brahms was his 1st Symphony, which, eh, it's OK. There was also a Mendelssohn violin concerto that was very good, with a really exciting violin part. I'm predisposed to like Mendelssohn right now because we're singing his Elijah on May 9th at Sanders Theater - bring your friends! ask me for discounted, no-fee tickets! The violinist was also very fun to watch, a skinny little man in a frock-coat who actually physically jumped around during the exciting parts. There was also a modern piece at the beginning which didn't really do anything for me... it sounded like the kind of modern piece that a college choir sings just to show that they can do modern. But one of the paid members of my chorus was also singing in the choir for that piece, so it was fun to see him (I hadn't known he would be there). If you want to see him again, come see the Brookline Chorus's production of Elijah, May 9th at Sanders Theater, student, senior and group discounts available (contact me for details and tickets)!

One thing about Handel and Haydn is that it attracts kind of an old audience. An old audience that prides itself on constantly unwrapping candies and cough drops. CONSTANTLY! Or maybe only during the quiet parts, it was hard to tell.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Iceland - I will probably be updating the travel blog and definitely tweeting while I'm gone.

( Of course there are spoilers, so I'm putting this behind a cut but it's really quite short so don't be scared off... )

In other exciting TV news, The Mighty Boosh is going to be airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim starting a week from tomorrow! I could not be more delighted about this, really. I so very highly encourage my American pals who have not already seen the Boosh to watch the heck out of it - Sunday, March 29th at 1AM. If you're old and an early bird like me, you will be setting your DVR, but seriously, just watch it! I love it to death, and I can't guarantee that you will love it like I do but there is nothing else on TV even remotely like it, so give it at least an episode or two of your time.

So, moderately good things have been happening since last I posted! I had that phone interview, and I don't really know how it went. I haven't heard back (the interview was on Friday) which is not terribly auspicious, but I am doing my best to neither get my hopes up nor lose hope.

Also, I got an email from Jeopardy! and I have an audition in a month (that's my Plan B, hee). Which will likely lead to nothing, once again... I wish I knew what went wrong last time - did I do poorly on the test, or did I just not get called through luck of the draw and not fitting in with the contestant pool? This time I will note down all the questions I'm not sure about so I can at least know how many I get right. That's my evil plan.

My cousin had a baby on Sunday! This is exciting because she's my first first cousin to have a baby. I am making the baby a tiny vest with a kangaroo on the front. It is adorable, and I spent WAY TOO MUCH on the yarn. Dang. See, I thought I had a ball of the yarn I was going to use for a contrast color at home, so I bought yarn to use for the main color. But then I got home and found that I no longer had said contrast color yarn. So I went out and bought another ball. And I had to pick a Rowan yarn. In short: Phoo Eeee. Fortunately, there are no other knitters in the family, so when I dial it back to less expensive yarn for future babies, no one will know the difference.

The baby's name is Alfred (after my grandfather) Wilder (who knows) and apparently they are planning on calling him Wilder. I can't quite imagine actually calling a baby Alfred, although I suppose you can call him Alfie or Freddie or something. Was very pleased to learn that the baby was born 30 minutes after they arrived at the hospital, since said cousin is a blood relative and I figure if I ever have a kid of my own I will find the quick-labor genes useful. Wilder is a peanut, only 5 pounds 9 oz at birth.

What else? On Tuesday night I made the unfortunate discovery that I stay out just as late when I order half pints as I do when I order whole pints. On the plus side, I still love Brooklyn Brown, and the frites at Publick House, though much shorter than they used to be, are still hella good.

I took a half-day at work today because I need to burn some vacation time before I max out again. That was nice. Also there is not much going on at work, what with all the students being on break.

Maybe it's Tuesday still catching up with me or daylight savings or I don't know what, but I swear I could go to sleep right now at 7:30. Maybe I will!

Good heavens, it's apparently been a full three weeks since I posted to livejournal. Clearly I should not ever complain (even in my mind) that other people are not posting enough.

I've got a snow day today, hurrah! There had been some talk about being open until midnight tonight because of midterms, but I guess that is off now. Sadly (?) I left my phone at our concert on Saturday night and have been too lazy to go pick it up (even though the person who has it is mere blocks away), so if anyone wants to change their mind about the library being open when the campus is closed, it will be hard for them to get in touch with me.

Yesterday it was snowy too, which I used as an excuse to putter around the house all day (I didn't go out even to get the aforementioned phone, which I regret a bit now that there is a great deal more snow on the ground). Other than being all house-bound I was really good though - I made bread, cleaned the heck out of my bedroom, started making a braided rag rug out of an old bedsheet with holes in it, lifted weights, read Anne's House of Dreams (I've been rereading the Anne books, or at least the out-of-copyright ones... I don't own Windy Poplars or Anne of Ingleside), watched last week's "Chuck" and a couple of old episodes of the Simpsons and MST3K (a lot of consumption of media I had seen before!), and all-in-all just had a very nice day, albeit one in which I never left the apartment.

Anyway, I have similarly big plans for my snow day today, possibly adding in a trip to pick up my phone. Hey, this is the third week in a row that I've had Monday off! First a holiday, then a vacation day, and now a snow day. Excellent stuff.

All right, time for coffee.

I just spent an hour taking journals off the shelves and cutting them out of their covers so that they can be recycled. I have already spent about 10-15 hours doing this and I will probably need to do another 10 hours or so before I am done. In many cases, these are journals that I myself prepared for binding a year or two ago (this took many hours as well).

It's like an illustration of how completely I am wasting my life energy working at this job. Days like this I really regret not taking one of the job offers I had a couple of years ago.

Also I broke my work mug and lost my work water bottle, so I am thirsty. And I think I'm probably coming down with something. Argh.

You know, I am trying not to pay attention to this octuplets* thing, but I can't help myself. I mean really, what the hell? Are there actual licensed fertility doctors out there who will implant eight IVF embryos into a 32-year-old woman's uterus? I'm no medical ethicist or anything, but that is wrong. I hope that that fertility center is shut down. I'll resist the temptation to be publicly judgy about the mother right now (although seriously, what was she thinking? with six other kids already?), because plenty of people try to make stupid and/or ignorant decisions about their health, reproductive or otherwise, and just because 14 children under the age of 8 living in a 3-bedroom house is not my idea of a perfect family doesn't mean it can't work for someone else. But I think that board-certified medical professionals should hold themselves to a higher standard, and practice scientific medicine, and not perform procedures that are contraindicated by all the evidence.


* or, as I like to say, "octopuslets," which I thought was a laugh riot when I first heard it on Mr. Belvedere (I think) circa 1988, and which has never stopped being funny in the 20 years since.

Today I woke up and there was sunlight streaming through my window and I was all nice and warm snuggled up under my duvet and I vaguely remembered dreams about magic and puppies and then I said SHIT! Because I am supposed to wake up in the dark. I had overslept by about an hour and a half, through the simple expedient of carefully setting my alarm clock and then forgetting to turn the alarm on.

I managed to get out of the apartment in an impressive 5 minutes - pulled on clothes I set out the night before (thanks, forward thinking self of last night! only next time either pick out an outfit with fewer layers, or remember to set the goddamn alarm clock), but sadly that meant I was already 35 minutes late for work by the time I reached the street. I started calling work over and over, but the student worker who was supposed to be working wasn't answering the phone, so I figured the library was full of people wandering around stealing books off the reserve shelves and my student worker was ridiculously late.

Finally another person who works in the library answered the phone and asked if he should open up, which seemed like a strange thing to ask given that the doors to the library should already have unlocked themselves automatically by that point, but I was just glad to know that there was someone else in the library so I said yes.

It turned out that the doors hadn't unlocked at all, and the student who was supposed to be at the desk was waiting at the door to the library with everyone else. Which was why Fran had asked if he should open up the library.

I swear, those door locks are going to permanently damage my fragile little mind. They are supposedly run by computers controlled by the security department, but I think actually they are psychic and they hate me. When I really need them to stay locked until 7:30, they will open early. When I am not around to prop the door at 7:30, apparently they will retaliate by refusing to unlock for anyone at all. I hate those door locks so much. What would be so wrong with having a lock that you could unlock with a key? Would that be so difficult to deal with?

Anyway, I am going to think about happier things now. Like soup dumplings! They are Chinese dumplings with soup inside*. I saw them on No Reservations and so last weekend instead of doing dim sum my usual Museum of Science dim sum crowd went to Golden Dumpling Palace Gourmet Dumpling House** and I got to have soup dumplings for the first time. They were just as good as Anthony Bourdain made them look. You bite a little hole in the top and then suck out the broth, and then you munch down the rest of the filling and outside just like any other dumpling. These are my new favorite food. Why am I not eating them right now? Oh, also there was a fried dough deal that you dip in soy milk. Actually, everything at Gourmet Dumpling House was excellent.

Another thing I am happy about is my new iPod touch! It is so shiny, and it does so many cool things. It doesn't hold nearly as much music as my old iPod, since I was unwilling to shell out $400 for the 32GB version, but I don't even care. It's my new best friend. If only I could use it with the WiFi at work, I would be a happy woman, but work is very unfriendly to devices that are not Windows PCs. Windows PCs running IE, no less. But I can get on networks at a couple of the nearby colleges and restaurants, so it is not so bad.

OK, that is all from me tonight. I am still reading most days even though I never seem to post anymore!



*How does the soup get inside, you may ask? They use a gelatin-rich broth, so the filling is solid when they wrap it up in the bun and melts/liquifies when the bun is steamed. Definitely uncool for true vegetarians, although there was a vegetable version for the flexible.

**I wasn't sure Golden Dumpling Palace was right, so I looked it up, and I was surprised to see that not only was I wrong, I had gotten every single word in the name of the restaurant wrong except dumpling, which, in fairness, is the most important word.

I went to the post office today and apparently my glasses were officially delivered then stolen, and they said I should report it to the police. Boooooooo. So I called the police, and they actually came over to my house to take my statement. Weird. When my computer was stolen OUT OF MY APARTMENT in the North End, the Boston Police just took my statement over the phone and I never heard anything from them after that. That was pretty unsatisfactory, but sending an officer to my apartment to take a report about a $50 piece of mail that was stolen from a common area of the building seems excessive. I almost didn't report it at all because of that. Maybe that's what they want -- to minimize the appearance of petty theft in Brookline by making a big deal out of it, thereby discouraging people from making reports! It's a cunning plan. Or maybe Brookline cops just have a lot of time on their hands. I'm going to complain to the building management too when I get a chance.

Have I posted about my second pair of internet glasses? I don't know why I'm asking that because I'm pretty sure I haven't. They were supposed to be delivered before Christmas, and the USPS delivery confirmation says they were, in fact, delivered on December 23rd, but I have not yet seen them. I've been talking with a nice woman at the post office, who has been trying to talk to my mail carrier, but he apparently was taking some time off for the holidays, and argh.

It is possible that the mail carrier did deliver them and someone in my building took them (we have a sort of mail room area where everyone's packages end up) but who would steal prescription glasses that are someone else's prescription? I guess I just have to find the other person in the building with OD -3.25 and OS -2.50. Who is at this very moment wearing burgundy acetate frames with a magnetic clip-on polarized sunshade. But really it doesn't seem likely that that got stolen when nothing else of mine ever gets stolen. It's all very annoying. Do I really need to start specifying that I need to sign for things when they are delivered? I hate signing for things!

In vastly more positive and exciting news, I just booked a flight for a trip to Turkey and Greece in May (going into June)! OMG, I am excited about this! I am going for three weeks (May 14th to June 6th) and it still feels like not nearly long enough to see all the things I want to see. I think I need to make a list of all the cities and islands and sights I want to visit and go through and prioritize. Right now it's a solo trip, but I am open to considering traveling companions for part or all of the trip. How long do I need to spend in Athens?

Merry Christmas (or holiday of your choice), everyone! (I'm starting with the holiday greetings, because it's quite possible that I will get distracted and forget to finish this entry.)

I'm watching White Christmas, yay! I tried to watch it when it was on Lifetime earlier in the season, but they cut the song "Snow"! And, apparently "Choreography" as well! So I just stopped watching. I have the movie on VHS, but I never get around to watching my VHS movies. But now it's on another channel that isn't cutting out all the best parts.

I really ought to be working on my dad's Christmas present. Which is not done at all. I was up late last night finishing my mom's. Still haven't bought presents for two people on my list. Boo. It was just so hard to get around this weekend. Next year, I'm going to get an early start, for real this time. I don't get any great ideas on Dec. 22nd, I just give up and get something reasonably convenient; I might as well do that earlier. I could always return the present if I thought of something better.

OK, I opened up this entry hours ago, so I am going to just go ahead and post it now.

Happy New Year!

Life seems to be more than usually hassle-filled lately. Partly this is external things, and partly I think it is just me being less able to deal with normal amounts of hassle, but whatever - either way soon it will be Christmas break time and I will at least have a near-complete absence of work-related hassle, and plenty of time to deal with non-work-related hassle.

Hassle #1 right now is work - I hate working during the exam period. People are nasty, the library slowly becomes covered in an inch-deep layer of sticky crumbs and hole-punch holes, and I can never find anyone to work so I end up spending a lot of time on the front desk. Argh. My patience is wearing thin. This week I am basically staying at work until I've gotten a bare minimum of work done and made sure that there are people covering until my evening coworker gets there, and then going home. It is the only way to preserve my sanity!

Another hassle is my glasses, which I broke yesterday. Alas. I love(d) these glasses. Even at this very moment I am wearing them (patched with duct tape, which I have colored in black with a Sharpie - this may be the 21st-century hipster equivalent of a genteel-ly impoverished Regency maiden turning her gowns). Partly this is because I don't want to let them go, and partly it's because I don't really have other glasses to wear. I went to the optician today, but I got the cheapo glasses that come free with my insurance, and it will take them a week to fill that prescription (which is bullshit, but what can you do). I have also ordered glasses off the internet, a first and very possibly a last for me, but I thought I would give it a shot. The internet glasses should actually arrive before it is time to pick up the brick-and-mortar glasses!

More hassles, these of a technological nature: my phone, which keeps wasting all its battery searching for service when there is plenty of service all over the place and I have no trouble making or receiving calls or texts. My iPod, which has developed some kind of screen issue where there are dark lines across the screen, but only when the screen is illuminated, and sometimes they move, I think. Um, and my work computer, which is a hateful thing.

OK, and last but not least, Christmas. I have almost no gifts planned. I don't know what I'm doing for anyone except my dad and my grandfather. Phooey.

Apparently Planned Parenthood (or rather Indiana Planned Parenthood) is selling gift cards now? They say it's because people are strapped for cash and considering cutting back on medical expenses, which I'm sure is true, and is very distressing. But surely, if you're close enough to someone to give them a Planned Parenthood giftcard, you're close enough to give/lend them the money for a doctor's visit, right? Who is this aimed at? I cannot think of anyone who I would give a Planned Parenthood gift card to. The only scenarios I can come up with where someone would give a PP giftcard range from vaguely paternalistic to creepily controlling and passive-aggressive. I mean, I'm sure many of us have friends/family to whom we would like to say, "I want you to take better control of your (sexual) health." But is a gift card really a good way to do that?

Also, I have just noticed that I wrote "gift card" as two separate words when it is unmodified, and as a single word ("giftcard") when I modify it using the name of the place issuing it. I wonder how consistent I am with this? I'll never know now, because I'll be all self-conscious about it.

So, the people across the hall appear to be moving? Or perhaps have moved? Or perhaps are resisting eviction? It's not clear. Basically, the other night (like, the last night of the month, traditionally the last day of a lease), they seemed to stay up all night throwing metal things around, and I ran into them in the hall on my way out of the house yesterday morning and they were bringing things down to a car outside (at 6:30 in the morning, in the rain) and then yesterday when I got home the hall was full of furnishings, including a crib, a couple of mattresses (or possibly a mattress and a boxspring), and various sorts of pressboard shelving units. All of those furnishings are still there now, more than 24 hours later.

What is going on with that? The crib, at least, appears to be in good condition (actually now that I think of it it's more of a playpen than a crib). Have our neighbors moved out and left these things behind? Are they coming back for these things? Is the apartment vacant or are new people moving in? Will these people be annoying? Or perhaps they will be attractive, charming people who like to clean other people's apartments and make delicious baked goods for all their neighbors? That would be ideal, but I would settle for quiet.

So, for a while now, ever since I heard about Iceland's financial difficulties, I have been hovering around the Icelandair website, looking for DEALS, and finally kmusky and I talked each other into taking a Winter Budget Getaway to Reykjavik (Icelandair said that the package expired on November 30th, but apparently they have kindly extended it to December 15th now).

We scheduled the trip for the very end of the winter, in late March, because we figured it would be warmer and less dark then. Which was probably a good idea, but now I'm all, "I want to go to Reykjavik now!" Not, say, four months from now. Also, fingers crossed that Iceland and, more to the point, Icelandair, will stay reasonably solvent for the next four months.

What will we do in Iceland? I'm glad you asked! One thing we will not be doing is taking any of the excursions that Icelandair offered to include in our vacation package, because they were much less expensive on another website. But we are going to take a Golden Circle tour and see volcanoes and things, and go to a hot spring spa, and try and see the Northern Lights, and buy Icelandic wool products (should I bring an extra suitcase for wool?), and eat rotten shark meat. It is ALL TRUE except for the shark meat.

But now I am entering into a state of annoyance about the trip being so very far away. I have decided to postpone buying any guidebooks until after Christmas at least, so that I don't do all my looking-forward now and run out of enthusiasm by March. It is a little difficult to work up four months of excitement for a four-day trip.

Also, I need to use up some of my vacation time before I go to Iceland, at least a couple of days or I will max out again. So I need to go somewhere else in the meantime. And I would really like to take another full two week vacation, or even a four-week vacation once I have nearly maxed out my time again. So I am going to stop thinking about Iceland for a while, and plan a nice long trip, or possibly two nice but slightly less long trips.

You know how you have those movies that you will always watch whenever they're on TV? Maybe they're not your favorite movies; maybe they're not even particularly good movies, but if you're flipping through the channels and one of these movies is on, you will stop and watch it. There should be a special name for these movies; feel free to submit suggestions.

Today I have made a potentially dangerous discovery. At least one of my I-will-watch-this-anytime movies in available on Hulu. Eek! So I have been watching The Fifth Element on my work computer all morning. And now I'm looking at what other movies are on there, and OMG you guys they're got Ghostbusters! And the 1967 Casino Royale!

The mix of movies on Hulu is super-strange -- they've got The Madness of King George, Liar, Liar, Lawrence of Arabia, Beach Blanket Bingo, Koyaanisqatsi... What the Hulu selection lacks in number of movies, it makes up for in breadth of genres.

I've only really looked at TV shows on Hulu before. This changes everything!

So, I had a really lovely Thanksgiving - almost ridiculously wholesome and friendly and fun. Everyone seemed to be in really good spirits, and when we went around the table and each said what we were thankful for (yes, we really do this!) it was all so touching that I ended up a little teary. One of my cousins (my hard-nosed, New York-dwelling, lesbian public defender cousin) said she was "thankful to be living in a time of hope," and insisted that we sing the Johnny Appleseed song. Good heavens! However, she did also wink at me when my grandfather went on for a bit about how none of what we have would be possible without the Lord who made it all, so she hasn't gone entirely soft.

Yesterday I worked at the Museum, and it was very busy - not completely unmanageable, but it kept you hard at work. Then about a half-hour before I was going to leave, a little girl hurt her hand on one of the exhibits, and screamed up a storm! We called the museum public safety people, and she had already calmed down a lot by the time they got there, and then once they opened up their little EMT bag she was much more interested in the contents of their bag than in her hand. She received a SpongeBob bandaid and the public safety people took notes on what had happened, and everyone went on their way. My coworker said, "Well, I'm glad she's all right. And that killed 15 minutes!"

Did I complain here about how my mother apparently doesn't want to hold our traditional Christmas Eve festivities on Christmas Eve this year? I guess it is because my uncle Michael and his family aren't going to be able to come on Christmas Eve this year? And so now we are apparently going to have it on the Saturday before Christmas, which is approximately the worst possible time for me in the entire Christmas season. My mom emailed me to ask if it "worked" for me, and I was like, "obviously not! I work every Saturday and this is one of the busiest times of the year!" but I said I could take the day off if I absolutely had to, although I don't know if I'll be able to get anyone to cover which would mean seriously inconveniencing other people.

But the more I think about it, the more I am annoyed that I even offered to take that day off. And my uncle Michael and his family are super-flaky and I suspect there's a decent chance they'll back out at the last minute or only stop by long enough for the kids to open their presents and then go. If they do that, I will be incredibly pissed.

Grr. I mean, I want to include Michael and his family, even if they are flaky. I even think it's important to make a special effort to include them because they have a somewhat rocky relationship with the rest of the family. I just would prefer not to have to take a day off from work to do so when I have a WEEK AND A HALF off from work immediately afterwards.