Winter Holidays

The Winter Solstice Party went much better than anticipated this year. We managed a lightning fast clean up and cover up of most of the house and just hid the rest.

Christmas evening was spent with my family. I greatly regret my gift budget was not what I wanted it to be but I promise to do better for everyone next year. Dinner was roast duck, pork roast, green beans, thrice baked potatoes, sweet carrots, horrible wine, good olives, and home made nut cake, cookies and caramel flan for desert.

Yesterday was spent in Alabama, treasure hunting in antique malls and eventually taking MonsterMustDie's mother to eat at Cracker Barrel (her favorite) and shopping at Wallmart.
We finished the day by making it back to Atlanta in time for Silver Scream Spook Show, where we saw "Destroy All Monsters".

Tonight we were planning to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus but we can't theatre listings anywhere for it, so it looks like we're going to the new Sherlock Holmes instead.

My housemate is now off work until January. With pay.

and from Fussy:
"The greatest sin is judgment without knowledge." Kelsey Grammar
"Comedy is the most important thing in the world except for justice." Sigourney Weaver

The interesting weekend

Still cleaning the ruins. Bedroom is done. Main bath is done. Kitchen is mostly done. Lots of laundry going on - clothes, cleaning cloths, and sheets used to cover the big things.

Then morning a new leak over the couch appeared and the power went out due to the enormous tree that fell across our street this morning. Phoned the roofer, who had a man at the house to make a temporary patch within the hour. He was a ginger-bearded character who, when I peeked outside, was surfing on top of an SUV another person was driving to get to the lowest point of the roof, rather than just using a ladder. He was fast, polite, and seemed to have it capped when he left. Still, the SUV surfing had me amused.

As I left the house today, I saw the Power Company crew had the street closed off entirely and many large trucks and with bright flashing blinky lights were working on breaking down the fallen tree and putting up new power lines. The ginger-bearded roofer had already alerted me to the alternate route out of the neighborhood, past the school, so no problems there.

I hope the power is back on and the living room is dry by the time I get home.

The latest news is that I must go to Alabama the day after Christmas with Monstermustdie so he can help his mother buy a car that she probably has no business driving.

Party in the shambles

The house is a wreck today since the landlord chose this week to have part of the roof replaced on the house, starting today. The crew is originally scheduled to complete work on Friday evening but there is a great amount of rotten wood in the roof and ceiling that needs to be replaced. As I left this morning, my office ceiling was part open sky and everything indoors was covered in sawdust and black grit because we have no attic. I wish I had the foresight/warning to cover everything and move what I could downstairs to the basement.

The Winter Solstice Party might be a bit more casual than anticipated. I'll might just cover things with festive sheets and carry on.

Stuffed

Went with Monstermustdie to his company holiday employee appreciation dinner tonight at Canoe.

Great food. Good company and amusing conversation. I had delicious smoked salmon, roast duck two ways with root vegetables, and rosemary icecream on grannysmith apple pie. He had venison carpacio, oysters, and trout followed by a desert that was essentially a semisweet dark chocolate caramel truffle on steriods. I now have the coleslaw recipe I have dreamed of from a different party coming my way soon and I've promised to provide a CD of decadent southern gothic story telling to our host.

keeping the fire alive

Dreary, gray, and wet outside. Working up the motivation to get out into the world this morning. I'll probably do a bit of shopping. There are a couple of things to look for. I'd like to find a couple of new ornaments for this years' tree. I know a place in Decatur that has some very cute glass robot and owl ornaments. Also, if anyone knows where I can find some pine cone ornaments, please let me know.

I'm also searching for Java Logs or a similar, unsmokey, close to environmentally approved fuel for the winter fireplace. Cold wet weather makes me want to sit in front a fire with the cat, hot mug in hand. We haven't yet had any fires here this season. It's past time for that first fire of the year.

I went to work yesterday and was immediately told there was nothing to do, but since I'd already spent the time, gasoline to get there and bought a to-go lunch to bring with me that I would not have purchased otherwise, I decided to spend a couple of hours filing old jobs away in the archives and checking on the status of those still floating in limbo.

Today will hopefully have a couple of things to do. Mondays and Fridays are always dead but the days in between usually offer some hope of activity.

THe Vendor - Client Relationship

Woe to the Weremonkey

Very disappointed that I missed out on getting tickets to the Neil Gaiman event on December 14th in Decatur with Agnes Scott College and Little Shop of Stories.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Thanksgiving 2009

We ate with Fun Lisa and her family in Suwanee. It is a family of aesthetics and comedians so we were entertained and well fed. MonsterMustDie actually cooked sweet potatoes today. He finally ate some of those poison orange vegetables. Of course, it was wrapped in meat. He found a way to prepare them in Mark Bitman's column in the NY Times - parboiled wedges wrapped in prosciuto with fresh sage leaves and finished by roasting in the oven with a bit of olive oil and a pinch salt. So that was our contribution to a dinner that included roast turkey & dressing, ham, brussel sprouts, fresh cranberry-orange relish, and traditional green bean casserole. Desert was pumpkin pie and Lisa's bourbon pecan pie.

uninspired

I spent all day being cold, sluggish, moping around the house.
Must get up and get active tomorrow.
Tuesday is the last day of MonsterMustDie's two-day work week before Thanksgiving.
I've done nothing but watch Venture Brothers on DVD and downloaded videos today, while eating snacks with more calories than nutritional value.

Jim Stacy gets 'Delicious' new gig | accessAtlanta

Jim Stacy gets 'Delicious' new gig  | accessAtlanta

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MARTA to stage emergencies Saturday evening | ajc.com

MARTA to stage emergencies Saturday evening  | ajc.com

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Goth Picnic 2009

The Annual Goth Picnic at Oakland Cemetery was awesome. The beautiful weather made for a very long picnic this year and nearly everyone stayed til it was dark. Some people were there a bit after sundown, still cleaning up and talking with friends they'd not spent time with in a while.

In the absence of Kisa Bastet, I brought coffee this year, which was hardly touched. Previous, much colder picnic days have seen a lot of coffee and hot beverage consumption. This year, there was more wine and beer consumed - which also led to more painful Mondays this year. One housemate in particular could not rationalize how he got so drunk by the end of the day when I drove him home, where he crawled into bed and I went back out to join the Gillimonster and her inebriated hubby for dinner.

lunch date

I had a very nice, long long overdue lunch with J.Paul today. We met at Ru Sans L5P, which has an excellent $9 lunch buffet. Once we started catching up, there was not enough time to exchange information and we agreed to do this again in three weeks (or there abouts).

Came home. Had leftover munchies, cheese, baguette,strawberries for dinner with red wine. Watched Bourdain in Australia.

It might be officially 9PM but it feels like 10.

Bedtime now.