Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all of Teh Flist who celebrate it!

Thanksgiving is Bobby's and my holiday in the Family Holiday Cycle, so it has been a busy week for us. On top of that, it was the last week of my first semester, so I had two major essays due today that I have been working on for the past three weeks. I am writing this now because I just turned in the last one, and this is (one of) my promised rewards. :)

So ... first things first: Thanksgiving. Went great. Bobby and I love to cook and love to experiment even more with recipes, so we really enjoy having the honor of cooking for Thanksgiving each year. Our respective families contributed dishes as well; Bobby and I handled the rest.

( Food pr0n below the cut! )

The other cool thing about our dinner was that the turkey and the veggies were all local. Bobby and I made up our minds early in the year that we wanted to do this, so we bought enough of different veggies in season (like the sweet corn) to freeze it for Thanksgiving. Others--like the squash and apples--are in-season now and came from local farms.

The turkey, which I named Sarah, was also from Manchester.

Because our menu was a little on the ambitious side, Bobby and I have been shopping and chopping for Thanksgiving all week. It was worth it, though; at one point, as Bobby and I went last to fill our plates, the noise from the dining room was complete *silence.* We had actually silenced our families! That is a feat along the lines of silencing the Niagra Falls!

( Cut to keep my misbehaving family from making this post non-work-safe )

In all, it was a fun night. Bobby and I retired to the basement after everyone had left (and we had finished cleaning the dishes) and put on Home Alone and fell asleep about halfway through.

Because, as though cooking a massive dinner for nine wasn't enough to occupy me this week, my first semester ended this week, so I had two major research papers due. ( School Blathering )

Anyway, because Thanksgiving was rather late this year, I was confused into thinking that I had a week off before I start my next semester. Nope! I start on Monday. So all the big plans I had to get stuff done for the SWG and SCA and beta-reading and so on will have to share my attention with schoolwork again sooner rather than later. My classes for the next semester are Women Writers, English Literature 18th Century to the Present, American Poetry, and African-American Literature. I am looking forward to all of them and only dreading American Poetry; I am not very comfortable with poetry beyond the Renaissance! I am going into that one hoping to focus more on literature I've neglected terribly and learn a lot.

So it seems I'm only freeeeee! for two more days, but I plan on making the most of them!

I do believe that if Dante had contrived a tenth circle of Hell in his Inferno, then it would have required those being punished to endlessly endure the process of getting enrolled in and financial aid for a university. It would have required them to deal continuously with cotton-brained administrative staff with very long fingernails. It would have involved numerous phone calls, holds, transfers, and listening to many prepared statements read in bored voices and, of course, would cap off every time with gratitude for understanding and patience that they don't actually feel at all.

( Grousing )

Because I've spent the day dividing my attention between catching up on beta-work and watching football, I lack the coherence to string together, like, actual paragraphs....

( Life in Points )

...is that Bobby and I are going back to school.

( The Big News )