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Merry Christmas! Dan, Henry, and I are spending Christmas with my sister Kirsten and her husband. They live in a nice house on a hill in El Cerrito, which is just north of Berkeley. We can see San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge out their front windows! We drove up here on Saturday, which took 10 hours, half of which was spent going 200 miles through Los Angeles. Bah! We’ve been having a great time, eating, playing games, cooking, watching fun tv and Christmas movies, etc.

Right now, Henry, Kirsten, and I are lined up on the couch with laptops, playing games and waiting for the men to wake up so we can open presents. And it’s time to put the turkey in the oven, brb…

Ok turkey is in the oven. I’m doing it the same way I did the Thanksgiving turkey, following the slow cooking instructions at How To Cook A Turkey Perfectly. Yesterday Kirsten made a pumpkin pie and I made an apple one. And we’ve got things for stuffing, and rosemary rolls, and good cranberry sauce, and green beans, and other things.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 14: William’s Christmas Eve

End of the book! Hope you enjoyed it, and Merry Christmas!

Zoot brought his roflcopter to Honor Hold so a few of the guildies could admire it. That’s Zinny (Henry) on the left, on the big white tiger. I’m in the middle with the blue ponytail. Dita, our guild leader, is riding the ram, and that’s her fellow, Holyberry, on the right. We have the world’s best guild!

Zoot then applied some holly (from the Metzen quest) to his ‘copter and it became a flying reindeer. Awesome!

Henry seemed droopy and faded over the weekend. I thought he was probably coming down with something, and, sure enough, last night he developed a sore throat. I haven’t been feeling quite right for days, so I hope I either had it in some other form, won’t get it, or will get it SOON so I can get it over with before Christmas! Henry’s feeling a lot better today, so I’m sure he’ll be right as rain in a couple days. He’s been playing an rpg with some homeschool friends via yahoo messenger and having a lot of fun.

We’re getting settled in our new place. We got the heater fixed finally (The guy who “fixed” it last week didn’t actually fix it, so we paid to get it done, because the landlord was SO SLOW and we were freezing — it’s been 38 degrees at night) and now we’re waiting for them to come and fix our eight sparking electrical outlets. But other than that, it’s a fantastic little house. Snug, nicely laid out, lots of windows, very comfortable. I love living here! No stairs!

Also, since we had hookups but no machines (the landlord lied about laundry machines being included) we splurged on an inexpensive but brand-new washer and dryer. They were delivered on Sunday and they just WORK. They’re in a little room right off the kitchen. It’s the height of luxury, I tell you!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 13: William and the Ancient Souls

By popular demand (Lena!), my recipe for Dan’s favorite soup. Sorry I don’t have any specific amounts — use more of the things you like and less of the things you don’t.

You’ll need:
A crock pot
A handful of green beans
A handful of baby carrots
A sweet red or green bell pepper (or both)
An onion
A couple of stalks of celery
A can of Roma (Italian) tomatoes
Beef of some sort. I get whatever looks good and doesn’t cost more than $3/pound. Get anywhere from one to three pounds, depending on how beefy you want your soup and how much you want to make.
A thing of good beef broth
Salt, pepper, thyme
(Other optional veggies — cabbage, mushrooms, whatever you like)

Ok. Cut up your veggies and toss them into the crock pot. Trim the fat off your beef, cut it into bite-size chunks, and brown it, a handful at a time, in a little oil in a big skillet. As it browns, add it to the pot. Cut up the Roma tomatoes and pour them with their juice into the pot. Now add some of the beef broth but NOT TOO MUCH, maybe to an inch or so below the top of the things in the pot. The veggies will cook down and everything will get wetter, and if you start with too much broth it’ll be a very thin soup. Add salt, pepper, and a few pinches of thyme. Cook it all day on low, or for maybe 5 or 6 hours on high, depending on your crock pot. When the green beans and carrots are nice and soft, it’s done.

This freezes very well so make lots! I usually make this on Monday so Dan can look forward to a few more servings through the week. I prefer my veggie/barley soup, so I tend to make that on Friday so I can eat it all weekend :) We both like soup!

Last night Henry and I went out to get meat so I could make crockpot beef/veggie soup today (Dan’s favorite). I make it on Mondays, usually, but missed last Monday and Dan was yearning for his soup :) Up in Oceanside we shopped at Stater Brothers, a good no-club-card grocery store with a real butcher counter. I like being able to say, “I’d like about two and a half pounds of the flank steak, please” (or whatever is suitable and on sale) and then the nice butcher weighs it and asks me if it’s ok and then wraps it up. Very pleasant. There are no Stater Brothers stores in our part of town, so we tried Ralph’s. Yuck. No butcher! And a very bad selection of possible soup meat. I got something good enough, but it was smaller and more expensive than I’m used to. Also they do the club card thing, which I refuse to participate in. Also the store was FREEZING.

I figured the homeschool community could help me find a better source of meat (and whatever Trader Joe’s doesn’t have) so I posted to the yahoo list and got back some very helpful replies. They say that Henry’s Market (which used to be Boney’s) has a real butcher. There’s a Henry’s just past the Ralph’s, so I’ll try there first. They should also have some of the other things that I can’t get at Trader’s, such as barley and cabbage. There’s also a genuine butcher shop down on Morena Blvd, not very far away, which would be fun to try as well. And some folks get small quantities of expensive but, you know, organic/free range meats at Whole Foods. So I have a lot of options and I feel better.

Henry and I went to the laundromat today. It was clean and uncrowded, but very expensive. We left the laundry washing there (it was a front-loading machine, so I figured if anyone tried to steal our stuff they’d get soaking wet) and walked over to the nearby Longs for a few things. They have a touch-screen computer assistant to help you find what you want in the pharmacy. It worked great and was very entertaining! However, we will keep picking up our prescriptions at the Stater Brothers pharmacy. Howard and Jeff recognize my voice when I call them. How can I give that up? (At least as long as I still have to go north a couple of times a week anyway :)

Oh, and we got our Christmas tree today and set it up. Maybe I’ll post a photo tomorrow.

We’re in our new rental house, yay! The heating system didn’t work for the first two days we were here, and it was down near freezing every night — brr! But Dan made the landlord send someone out to fix it yesterday so we are finally warm enough :) It’s a great little house, very comfortable. Dan set up the network on Sunday so now we have internet! I still need to clean the old place and bring down a couple more carloads of awkward things, lamps and posters and whatnot.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 12: The Reform of William

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 11: William and the Smuggler

Packed all weekend. Bah. Got rid of lots of stuff but not enough! Dan found $60 cash in a box of floppy disks. Uh, ok… no idea how that got there, but hooray! Also watched A Private Function (Michael Palin, Maggie Smith) which I’d seen part of years ago, and which finally floated to the top of my greencine queue. Very enjoyable movie. And when it was over, the DVD player displayed this interesting error message poem for us:

“System error is detected, system error is detected”

Also finished sewing 30 morsbags, made from many donated pillowcases and one old sheet. Sorry about the horrible photo:

Note the elegant dog water dish under the table. The dog is so old and crippled that we moved her bed into the dining area, right by the door, so she doesn’t have to struggle over the slick floors to get out.

Dan’s recently changed jobs and has a horrible, horrible commute, and there’s no decent public transportation, so we decided to move south to be nearer. Luckily we found a nice little rental house in a good neighborhood, only a mile from my cousin’s house! It’s all rather sudden, but at least we’ll be all settled before Christmas. And the new house has no stairs, which will be easier for me. Plus it has a cute little grassy backyard and a big covered patio, and we’ll be near Actual Cultural Activities like the zoo and the museums! Oh, and the neighborhood is much more pedestrian-friendly than the one we live in now. It’s relatively flat, has sidewalks, and there are lots of shops and parks only a few blocks away. It’s good for me to take walks but I can’t handle the hills where we are now.

So, although moving is horrible and stressful, I am looking forward to living in our new house!

Now it is time to get rid of some of our junk so we don’t have to pack it.

Anyone have any empty boxes?

I got stuff done today. Man, did I. Got up and sat on hold with apple tech support for half an hour (before being accidentally hung up on) while getting soup into the crock pot. Also called car dealer (my scion XA has a check engine light showing that just won’t go away), the dentist (to reschedule our cleanings for January), the pediatrician (nothing serious), showered, and ate an english muffin with cream cheese and pumpkin butter (which should really be called pumpkin jam, don’t you think?), and then took Henry to our music class. On the way home we did bank, dentist (the other dentist, who filed a claim with the wrong insurance company), and library. Henry chose a stack of cookbooks. As long as he reads something, I don’t care what it is. Also I approve of him learning to cook, yes indeed! And I got a few Dorothy Sayers mysteries and a couple of other off the shelf near Sayers, can’t remember what they are though. Then home and leftover turkey for lunch, and then some WoW with Henry, and then he read his Japanese cookbook while I taught a student, and then we went to karate, and then home for Beef Soup, yum.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Chapter 10: The Helper

Twitter is scheduled to be down from 8 to midnight tonight. Isn’t that kind of an unacceptably long outage for a web company? Anyway, I miss my twitter. So I’ll probably just post a lot of random short posts tonight to take twitter’s place.

We paid a visit to Bob and Chloe tonight, very much fun as always. I ripped out Henry’s too-small DNA sock and started fresh on 52 stitches, and from the toe this time. I worked an entire 38-row repeat of the cable pattern!

Now we are home and playing WoW.

If you are reading this before Christmas 2007 and your name is not Kirsten Shallenberg, go HERE to see something I just made :)

Houndstooth Check Fingerless Mitts: a present for Kirsten! I followed my Three-Color Mitts for Henry pattern, but did 1×1 ribbing, worked increases until there were 15 thumb stitches, and knit the hand a little longer. Here’s a chart for the houndstooth check pattern. It’s a 4-stitch, 4-row pattern. I divided it into 4-stitch sections so you can memorize it more easily. O is gray, X is black (or whatever).

And here are the finished mitts:

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! It’s just Dan and me today, so I’m making a turkey, fresh cranberry sauce, green beans, and salad. The smallest Trader Joe’s turkey was 12.5 pounds, so we’ll have plenty, heheh.

I’ve got the Macy’s parade on tv, but the coverage sucks, as usual. Too many celebs, too much “entertainment”, too many musical (ha!) numbers. Why, oh why, can’t they point a camera at the parade, and let us just watch? This has been aggravating me ever since I was a kid. I want marching bands, dammit! Not a crappy, lip-synced, musical remake of a crappy movie, or, god forbid, “Up With People”! Yeah, I know why, you don’t have to tell me. Gotta push the TV shows and musicals and acts and what-not. Oh well.

Oh my god, they’re actually SHOWING A MARCHING BAND RIGHT NOW! Please hold while I watch… Well, that was an enjoyable 30 seconds :)

Ok anyway.

Yesterday I acquired all three seasons of James Burke’s amazing TV series, Connections. I’ve been waiting and waiting for this show to be released on dvd. I remember watching it with my parents on a little black and white tv in the early 80s. Mom and I watched the first episode yesterday and it was just as mind-blowing as we remembered.

Here’s a screenshot from wikipedia (hope they don’t mind me linking)

Dan’s up now and we’re watching the parade and making fun of the crappy acts :) Why doesn’t Macy’s consult us? We would tell them how to un-suckify their parade. At least there have been a few 30-second marching band shots. We love the corn-fed midwestern flag girls! So cute!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 9: The Revenge

A friend lent me her copy of the BBC’s radio play production of Strong Poison, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery by Dorothy Sayers. I love a good radio play, and this is truly excellent. The characters sound just exactly right. This is first rate entertainment and highly recommended!

Crazy busy day, full of errands and phone calls. Henry to school -> notice “check engine” light is on -> call mechanic-> mailbox place -> home -> fill in second set of insurance papers -> dr. appt. -> lab -> mailbox place -> home -> call toyota -> deal with email -> pick up henry -> drop off at friend’s house -> bank -> mailbox place -> home -> more phone calls -> work on cataloging two librivox projects while wishing I was playing WoW and knowing I ought to be writing/recording a thing on mysteries for the next podcast, also thirsty, also paying bills at the same time.

Also think I ought to rip out the houndstooth mitts and re-knit a bit firmer. Also need to rip out the DNA socks and re-knit with more stitches.

Also tired and rather PMSsy.