The great holiday round up

[jethrien]

Back at home after a trip to Boston. Many things make a post?

- Google ads seem to have decided that my thing for the day is some diamond company that puts a special mark on their diamonds. Their tag line is something like "Only 1% of the world's diamonds have a Forevermark" or whatever it is. Which I suppose is supposed to drive scarcity-based value. Thing is, I don't see how this mark makes them better. I could also arrange for a handful of diamonds to get licked by a dog and say "Only 1% of the world's diamonds have a BestFriendsKiss."

- We got a bunch of gifts from vendors today. I scored a nifty mug and a coffee frother. (And coffee, which I promptly donated to the office coffee stock.) We also got two giant Harry and David fruit baskets. Moose Munch!

- The annual wine dinner had some mishaps, but overall was a success. Which reminds me that I owe my parents some recipes, including for a cake that's amazing and I kind of doubt they're ever going to make because it takes the better part of two days, what with all the separate layers that have to be cooled. (Deconstructed Black Forest cake: a layer of flourless chocolate cake with a layer of stabilized white chocolate mousse spiked with kirshwasser and nutmeg, with a topping of what's essentially brandied cherry pie filling.)

- Our seats on the Bolt Bus kind of rocked back and forth, which was unnerving. Still better than Greyhound--at least we knew for certain we were getting on the bus.

- My uncle introduced us to a restaurant in Cambridge called Oleana which features amazing Arabic/Mediterranean food. So delicious. The fried haloumi cheese was fantastic. (Where can I get haloumi in New York? There's gotta be some around here somewhere.) One of their signature dishes is called Sultan's Delight--a glazed short rib with a smoked eggplant puree that is just a revelation. My uncle gave us the cookbook for Christmas. The short rib isn't likely to happen--three and a half hours in the oven, then reducing the glaze, then another half hour of futzing on the stove. But the eggplant has an excellent chance of making it to the table. Or rather, being eaten with fingers in the kitchen before it can get to the table.

- My uncle and his partner have slowly turned what was a nice New England house into an amazing work of art. Their bathroom has heated floors. Heated floors. My fantasy house has acquired a new feature.

- Also, they cook really well, as does my cousin. Christmas dinner was absolutely perfect pork chops with homemade chutney, brussels sprouts with bacon and walnuts, wild rice with butternut squash, sweet potatoes with red onions and sage, and fantastic homemade rolls from their friend two doors down. I've eaten enough calories in the last week for a month.

- We had a long extended conversation about the worst Christmas songs ever written. Because they love us so, our hosts stayed up late Christmas Eve tracking down every single last one on iTunes and buying them to play them for us on Christmas morning.

- The priest at Mass chose to do the long form version of Matthew (which is already the most boring of the Christmas gospels). The first five minutes, seriously, is "Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers..." for 28 generations. It was the 4pm children's Mass. The long form is optional. A room completely full of squirming children, with the very most child-accessible Bible story of the entire year, and the priest chooses to do the homily on numerology. Seriously. What was he thinking?

- Everyone basically got along all weekend. (Some minor bickering. But without that, I would have wondered if certain family members had been replaced with pod people.)

- For the first Christmas in a couple years, I didn't have to cross state lines in a massive snowstorm. Thank goodness.

Comments

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a terrible idea for a children's Mass. I went to "Midnight" Mass (at 10 pm in our town) where the priest gave out $20 bills for answering his questions. I've never seen that before and I doubt I ever will.

(The homily was based on The 12 Days of Christmas and what each day represents. So whenever someone answered it right, they got money. Which means he was out $240 by the end.)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Wow. I can see doing a dollar, but that's really generous. I guess he had everyone's attention, though!

And yeah, it was...impressive. By which I mean, completely baffling. I'll admit, around the time we hit David, I completely cracked up. Not audibly, but my shoulders were shaking. I couldn't even look at my mom--I had to stare very intently at the wood grain in the pew in front of me to keep from laughing aloud. It was just so completely ridiculous, this priest droning on and on and on, "and Jehosiphat the father of Jehoram...", while the kids squirmed and the babies cried and the priest kept raising his voice louder and louder to be heard over the parents trying to shush their increasingly bored children...

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

Speaking of frothers....I thought you might appreciate this from a recent holiday advice chat of holiday horrors: "Where do I begin? My family lives to make a mess out of Christmas. There was the time my brother stormed out of my sister's house because she dared to serve venison instead of goose, and everyone got drunk because really what else is there to do some years? But the best one happened one Christmas Eve when my mother contacted my sister for the traditional long distance call. My sister got on the phone and demanded to know why our mother sent her 12 year old granddaughter a vibrator for Christmas. Our low-key mother was floored. My sister was so angry she wouldn't listen to explanations. My mother (who does not like to talk about sex or any bodily functions) was shocked. Sister hung up on Mother and basically did not talk to her again for two years. Vibrator? No, Mother had sent granddaughter a mug, some hot cocoa, and--a milk frother. Yep. My sister cannot tell the difference between a vibrator and a milk frother. Even better, the milk frother was bought from my daughter's school fundraising catalog! Seriously, you'd think my foodie, romance novel reading sister could tell the difference between a VIBRATOR and a FROTHER. I mean, a frother would hurt. No, I never brought this up to my sister. She lives 3,000 miles away. But, the rest of my family and I have a good laugh every year. Because, if you aren't getting drunk, you just better laugh."

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, Carolyn Hax. The Holiday Hootenany of Horrors is the best advice column all year.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

Totally. It makes me wonder what that must be like - my holiday experiences seem to lack that kind of crazy.... :-P

[elissali.livejournal.com]

re: heated floors - my parents' and grandparents' houses have heated floors throughout (heated water in plastic tubes set into the concrete). It's a method of heating using radiant heating rather than forced-air, and in my opinion is totally superior. They need the woodstove, too, at my parents' house, the floor isn't enough by itself.

But it is an awesome feature, and it's unusual. If you ever want to know more, my dad can tell you all about it because he laid those floors. :)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I would have to actually own a property before I could start thinking about that one.

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

Radiant floor heat is *awesome*