Christmas, She Gone

It took us three days to get ready for five hours of festivities, but it was worth every minute. At left is a happy crowd of neighbors and friends starting to eat on Christmas afternoon, at a twelve-foot table set up in the addition (which is usually the guest room/meeting room/lumber room/sickroom/art gallery/auxiliary summertime retreat). We unearthed my grandmothers' dishes and glassware and table linens, and now I'm glad I kept them around.

Rob cooked a magnificent 18-pound turkey, plus stuffing and gravy and two pies. I made cookies and cranberry bread (totally unnecessary) and cranberry sauce (absolutely essential), and was in charge of set design, which included IRONING THINGS, two six-foot tablecloths, for example. Everybody else brought rolls and potatoes and squash and cake and a third pie, and we ate until we could barely sit upright.

Yesterday Rob and I utterly collapsed, and I read most of HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Audrey Niffenegger, the best book I've read in a long time. I've been casually meaning to read her first one, THE TIME-TRAVELER'S WIFE, and now I'm deadly serious about that. Rob also gave me the much-anticipated WOLF HALL for Christmas as well as Bill Bryson's SHAKESPEARE, so I'm set for a while.

And we watched the 1997 BBC/A&E edition of "Ivanhoe"--part of a boxed set of dvds my friend Shelly of Connecticut sent me for Christmas--and it was so satisfying we stayed up until 11 when we meant to go upstairs and read at 9. Such is addiction.

And before Ivanhoe we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special on YouTube. What a wonderful invention that is (youtube, I mean, although also DW). I'm very eager for part two of this David Tennant victory lap and can't wait to see how they handle the transformation.

In other words, a complete two-day debauch.