Christmas Time is Here

I think this may have been the longest I've gone without posting since starting this blog one year ago today. I've had a lot I've wanted to say but just never got around to blogging. Well I am back in Utah for the moment--yay!--and spending Christmas Eve with my family. Well, except for right now while I'm typing away. And fall quarter is over, thank god! I'm still not sure how I feel about Seattle or if LIS is the right program for me, but I know that I hated 510, along with the rest of my cohort, and I will never take another class from that professor if I can help it. And that's all I will say on that except that I aced my final--booya! I thoroughly enjoyed my other class which was engaging, challenging, and good overall. I only took 10 credits this quarter and am signed up for 13 next quarter and looking for a part-time job. So we'll see how that goes. But for the rest of the break I'm not going to think about school except that I really need to go through my school email inbox which has been a disaster since late October.

There was a lot of bonding that went down at the end of the quarter so that's really good. First there was the Mad Men party hosted by Janelle and Althea, who live in a charming house in Ravenna with four other girls, and that was really fun. Here are some of my fellow library students. Since I didn't have a suit I took my inspiration from Miles Fisher in season three, which I haven't seen, but where I believe he plays a dope dealer. Miles Fisher, by the way, is the love child of Tom Cruise and Christian Bale. Anyway, my find that day was a knit tie at J.Crew for $10! Pretty much awesome. There were '50s and '60s records and dancing and lots of booze. There was a sherbet punch that had a good liter of gin or so and tasted like candy but aside from that I stuck to Jameson neat. They had gin but it was the cheap Monarch stuff that comes in giant plastic bottles and I just can't get down with that. When I went home I did make myself a proper Gimlet before retiring for the night.

I took my final for 510 on Sunday and my last paper for 520 was due on Friday, so on finals week I only had class for 520 since we didn't have an actual final. On Monday night, after class, we hit up the College Inn Pub for some beer and nachos, and then we stopped in at Big Time since I had a coupon for a free growler. If like me you didn't know what a growler is, it's a gallon sized bottle for holding beer--or other forms of alcohol--it looks like those moonshine bottles with all the Xs on it. However, they didn't fill my growler they just gave me the bottle, which was lame. But we had some more beer anyway, and then made our way to Flowers for more drinking and some grub. I ordered a Negroni off their menu listed as gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth, so I thought I was safe. If you know me, you know how much I adore Negronis but I have no idea what I was actually served--cheap gin with a splash of sweet vermouth. I couldn't even tasted the Campari which has a very strong flavor, and it was only the faintest of red while a true Negroni is a beautiful ruby color. Still, a pub crawl on a Monday night--how awesome are library students?

I also hung out with Maggie whom I had hardly seen since midterm. We grabbed some delicious pizza at the Wallingford Pizza House. And on another night we rented Julie & Julia and I opened a bottle of Cava I bought for the end of the quarter and we made Buddy the Elfs. Buddy the Elf is a drink my friends and I invented. My friend Dain is really into making liqueurs by macerating fruit in liquor. He's made some good limoncello as well as a strawberry liqueur, but his zenzerino is the best. Zenzerino, Italian for little ginger, is a liqueur with grated ginger peel, orange and lemon zest, and I believe a cinnamon stick or two and some cloves. Soak it in some vodka and Everclear for a bit, strain it, and add a bunch of sugar water. Awesome. Anyway, we took an ounce or two of zenzerino over ice, added some amaretto, and topped it off with ginger ale. It smells and tastes like Christmas. We originally called it spice cake before changing it to Buddy the Elf--what's your favorite beverage?--over my strong objections since I don't really like Elf, but the name has stuck. Anyway, if you are ever in possession of some zenzerino, you need to make this drink, especially around Christmas.

By the way Julie & Julia is really good and was one of my favorite movies of the summer. I love Julie Powell's memoir which is hilarious and profane, and if you like cooking, breakdowns, and butter, you should definitely read it as long as you don't mind a few F words. Okay, a lot of F words. However, in the film it's the Julia Child storyline that works the best based on her memoir My Life in France written with Alex Prud'homme. Meryl Streep earned herself two Golden Globe nominations--one for Julia and the other for It's Complicated which comes out tomorrow, I believe, and which I need to see. She was also in the nominated Fantastic Mr. Fox which I will not be seeing since it is stop animation. Speaking of the Golden Globes, there are nine more movies which I desperately need to see including Up in the Air which is getting all sorts of critical love, Nine, A Single Man, The Princess and the Frog, The Young Victoria, The Last Station, Invictus, Precious, and Avatar which I thought was the stupidest looking movie I had ever seen a trailer for, but which is not only nominated for Best Picture but is also getting excellent reviews. Fine, James Cameron, I will go see your movie.

So on Saturday I made my way all the way down to Sea-Tac which is $48 far away plus tip. And after a very short, 90 minute flight, I was home in Utah. On Saturday I got together with college friends for Apartment Christmas and fondue, presents, and old friends. Valerie gave me the seventh and final season of The West Wing to complete my collection which began at Christmas seven years ago. Slow but steady wins the race. Anyway, I'm already half-way through. It's not nearly as good as the first four seasons, but the seventh season is much better that seasons five and six. In addition to The West Wing, I've been catching up on Dollhouse which is insane! I can't even handle it. On Tuesday I saw Elise and Justin and we watched Meet Me In St. Louis which I had never seen before. We saw Judy Garland and her corsets, singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and learned about bloom. We also decided that between the three of us, we could handle twenty men.

Yesterday, I drove around Salt Lake shopping for my final Christmas presents which are for my parentals who are the hardest people to shop for which means they will have to settle for gift cards. By the way, I love driving in Salt Lake--compared to Seattle there's no traffic, free parking everywhere, and you actually know where you're going--most of the time anyway. However, I have to use my family's cars since mine is back in Seattle. Boo. Anyway, I got my mother a gift certificate for a Japanese restaurant, and I was going to get my dad movie tickets for his favorite cineplex--which is half an hour away--but they were sold out of gift cards. How do you sell out of gift cards?! Especially at Christmas?! So I ordered one online from a different cineplex, and he'll just have to wait for the mail to deliver it. He also wanted The Road by Cormac McCarthy which I own and have been reading, so maybe if I finish it today, I'll wrap that up for him. I bought The Road a couple of years ago but just recently decided to give it a go, since I'm not really into post-apocalyptic art. However, it's better than I expected, plus it's really easy/short. Well this brings us to Christmas, so there you go. Time for more parties and lots of movies. Hopefully there will be more posts soon. Merry Christmas Everyone!