Welcome to the light

Happy Solstice! The days will start getting longer now; the dark will be pushed back. And not a moment too soon, I say.

I used to prefer night to day (and darkening autumn days to any other time of the year), and in many ways, I still do. But being unable to drive at night now makes me feel unsettled somehow. In the winter, I have to plan my days carefully so I’m not out and about when twilight descends. There are more hours, it seems, when I’m unable to leave the house unless I’m walking somewhere. (Yes, I could get up earlier, but where’s the fun in that?) It all adds to the sense of winter being a time of hibernation, but alas, in our modern world there isn’t time for that.

Speaking of time, it’s been racing by so fast that I can’t believe I haven’t posted any journal entries. Problem is, I write up bits of entries each day, but never seem to have the time to put them together into anything cohesive…and then days have gone by and attempts at cohesivity (hey, if it’s not a word, it should be) seem daunting. So, here are a bunch of random things from the past couple of weeks, roughly in order of when they happened.

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Another busy weekend. Saturday included errands and picture-hanging and lord knows what else. Yesterday we (Morgana, Thomasina, Ken, and I) went down to Orange County and met up with Ken’s mom. We browsed the antique shops, had tea at the Victorian Manor, drooled over many fabulous houses on the French Park Home Tour, got hugs from our friends who own one of the houses on the tour as well as all the docents in their house who were also friends of ours, and moaned in delight over Cuban food at Versailles on the way home.

In other news:

We are in possession of a new DVD player. The second-cheapest one at Circuit City, and it’s actually dual-region so we can watch both NTSC and PAL DVDs without even having to change the code. Hot damn!

My hair is again purple, a bit lighter this time.

We’ve pretty much finished the Great Sewing Room Purge and Organization Project. I need to do little things, like make labels for the bins, and put together the swatch notebook properly, and Ken needs to take the main sewing machine in for a cleaning and overhaul. Unfortunately, we had to move everything we were getting rid of (SCA-wise, that is; most the mundane stuff has gone off to the Salvation Army except for a few items to sell on eBay) back into the sewing room in order to clean out the living room and dining room for Yule decorating. Also unfortunately, I want to dive in to fifteen different projects simultaneously…

Aaaand, Ken got the hot tub working again! It may be temporary; the thing is old and was used when we bought it, but for now, it’s a blessing! I hope we can sit in it on Christmas Eve, because I remember when we did in Wales, the snow gently falling and eventually soaking our hair, before we ran back into the house and decided that because it was after midnight, it was officially Christmas, and so we opened all of our presents before going to bed…

A nice surprise package in the mail: A German edition of Sex on the Move (which makes it Liebesreisen, apparently). Oddly, two stories were deleted from this version, including my solo one, “On Tour.” Our Sophie story, “The Brinks Job” (“Der Brinks-Job”) remains, however. It’s always fun to see a translated version of my work!

Meanwhile, stories come in and stories go out. E-mail submissions are so wonderful and easy, but the rejections come back faster, too!

The library continues to be a maddeningly seductive place. I don’t know why I’m suddenly all about checking out books when I have over a hundred in my TBR bookcase, but there you have it. Maybe it’s just because I want to vary my reading more, so mysteries by favorite authors (Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton) have been extra-tempting.

So, remember when Ken had that infection in his knee? He needed bigger Band Aids, so I unearthed the ones we bought in Dresden, Germany, on our three-week Alps motorcycle trip. German Band Aids are one big square, and you cut the strips to the size you need (which was unhelpful given that we had no scissors with us at the time). We were amused to see they had an expiration date, because how can Band Aids expire? Ken soon found out: The sticky stuff adhered itself to his knee. I mean, to the point that he ripped out hair trying to remove the Band Aid. He ended up having to shave part of his knee to get that goo off!

That was the funny part. The unfunny part was that shortly thereafter, when the infection was cleared up, little infections dotted up around the original area. We went back to the doctor, and apparently he’d made some tiny nicks when he shaved, and the infection had trotted over into those little wounds and set up camp. So he’s on antibiotics again.

Since we sat at the doctor’s so long, we went out to lunch that day, and by dinner time, Ken realized he had food poisoning. Poor guy! But, by midnight that night he was ravenous and eating a frozen pizza, so he obviously suffered no lingering ill effects. While he was feeling awful, though, he didn’t want to watch anything new, so he requested the Buffy musical episode (because we listen to the soundtrack a lot) and then Love, Actually, which is my favorite holiday movie.

I’m a little grumpy where our holiday cards are concerned. They were fabulously easy to design in iPhoto and then order via Apple, and they arrived super-fast…but then I discovered almost half were missing (I’m guessing a second box never arrived). So I pinged customer service, and got a swift response back saying they were refunding the amount I didn’t receive, and if I wanted to reorder, to do so. I did, noting that I was reordering only the amount I didn’t receive, and they responded, saying no problem, plus I could keep the refund as a goodwill gesture on their part. Spiffy, thought I.

That was on the 14th. Still haven’t seen my new order, nor is it listed in my account. I’ve written again, but haven’t heard back yet… So, despite the fact that I was organized reasonably early, almost half the cards will be late. ::scowl:: (If you haven’t received a card yet, not being in the first wave means nothing. Labels were slapped on randomly.)

I didn’t mean to leave this on a down note. Um. ::thinks madly for something chipper to say::

Um, we finished watching season three of Veronica Mars, and I’m grumpy that it’s been cancelled because it was one of the better shows on TV, but now we’re going to start Alias, so that should be fun. Plus we’re still working our way through season two of Hex, which was a much better show when I was on drugs for my back. I mean, it’s still awesomely atmospheric and such a refreshing change from the bog-standard vampire shows, but sweet lord and lady, they must’ve overspent on the special effects and not been able to afford a continuity editor!

Congratulations if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this long and rambly post. I’ll do my best to keep up from now on!

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Currently Reading: Sight Unseen, Samantha Graves
Lately Listened To: holiday playlist
Recently Watched: Hex, Doctor Who (we’re watching all the Captain Jack episodes because Ken hadn’t seen them, and I also made him watch “Blink” because it’s the Best. Episode. Ever. Scared me even more the second time around, too!)