Festive Figments

As some of my earlier blog posts may demonstrate, I was so caught up in grading and writing before Christmas that I all but forgot the holiday loomed so near. A day or two before Christmas itself, I. was walking me in to the university library when we passed one of our favourite charity shops. This one had been selling Christmas trees for nearly a month, but the formerly expensive trees had been heavily discounted to £5 and £10 (for small and large trees respectively). With all our Christmas decorations in America, we decided on a whim to get a small tree, figuring that we could make enough trimming to make it properly festive.

While I was in the library, I. and the shopkeeper worked out a deal whereby I. came home with a much larger tree than expected (for much less money than we thought). Christmas eve was a day of great origami; I. made cranes and boxes, and then we both attempted the beautiful kusudama flowers a friend of ours had made a few years ago and which I'd found online since then.

Also on Christmas Eve, I discovered that despite his pitiful sighs of lament over all the candy he couldn't eat, someone! had eaten some of the construction materials for my yet-unfinished gingerbread house. Unwilling to buy another bag of licorice, I improvised, and the resulting house had a slightly oversized "stone" fireplace of M&Ms rather than the licorice bricks I had expected.

Christmas itself was splendid. We attended the beautiful Episcopal church we found last week, and had a wonderful time again, then came home and sipped coffee on the couch. Presents were sparse, but the absence of gift-wrapped items made the festivities more about spending time together, and we enjoyed sitting and talking, sipping delicious beverages, and watching the occasional sci-fi show.

This year, I. was in charge of cooking our Christmas dinner. At the Christmas Eve farmers' market, we had bought a lovely slab of ham, which he simmered in cider and then roasted in the oven with a mustard glaze. I. made fresh herb bread and then transformed his beautiful baked slab into stuffing, and supplemented these with mashed potatoes and carrots. As a treat, we had also bought some of our favourite local cider at the farmer's market, which went beautifully with the ham.

On Boxing Day, we slept in ridiculously late (during which time I learned exactly how much I had been pushing myself in the grading and writing marathon) and spent a lazy day doing very little. I. took me for pints and word games at the pub, and then! we went to enjoy my Christmas present, which as two tickets to (very good seats at) The King and I, onstage at the nearby Edinburgh Festival Theatre. While not quite as amazing as last month's trip to Top Hat, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The 27th marked the three-year anniversary of I.'s proposal. I. made an amazing soup for supper, which was Thai in flavour and contained shrimp, coriander, and my favourite kind of noodles.

We've had a fairly lazy end of month; I'm now caught up on grading but a bit behind on writing, and am looking forward to the start of a new semester, and to a bit of exciting travel for conferences and research as I embark on what is supposed to be the home stretch of thesis writing.

DPP Day 25: Knots So Hard

After the mad gift-giving spree of our first Christmas (facilitated by the fact that my parents came and I.'s family sent gifts along with them) and the abundant presents under the tree on our second Christmas (more family visits and more family gifts), the unwrapping portion of this year's day was a little more relaxed. Still, I tied one of I.'s gifts so elegantly that he was forced to get out his lockpicks (and eventually a good blade) before the contents could be revealed.

DPP Day 24: To Market, To Market . . .

I am told that a major holiday is scheduled to take place within the next few days or so, which (apparently) is the cause for the hundreds and thousands of shoppers who were clogging up most of the sidewalks and store aisles in Edinburgh today. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a leisurely stroll to the weekly farmers' market, where we purchased a fat pig (well, part of him or her) and some cider made by one of our favourite brewers. The market was lovely and exciting, as ever.

DPP Day 23: There's No Taste Like Scone

Back in the day, I. managed to find himself a job at one of the more popular cafes in St Andrews (after which, both we and our friends became significantly pickier about the items we would and would not eat from their kitchen). Part of his job was to arrive early in the morning to make two batches of scones (in bulk), that would emerge from the ovens, fresh and warm, by the time the cafe opened. (I still think my scone recipe from my postgraduate year was better, but most of my peers disagree). At any rate, today he performed a small-scale reprise of this once-significant task, and surprised me with fresh scones, strawberry jam, and a tub of clotted cream for breakfast.

For the uninitiated, clotted cream tastes a little like whipping cream (but better)but and the consistency of butter. Traditionally it comes from the milk of a certain breed of cows from a certain county of England, but I believe these rules are often bent. I am not sure that any more amazing food exists, and, although we eat it pretty sparsely (you know, for health reasons) it is one of the things I miss most when we are in America. I. considered himself to have survived romantically when he passed clotted cream on the list of things I like. At any rate, our breakfast was magnificent:

DPP Day 22: Sun Light, Sun Bright

In photography, timing can be everything, and today's photograph was a masterpiece of timing. Last night was the longest night of the year, and the past week or so, although the weather has been warm and the rain has stayed scarce, has been a week of beautiful, billowy, grey clouds. Today the sunbeams reached through the clouds on two separate (but brief) occasions, and on the latter of these, I was speedy enough to grab my camera out of my bag and photograph the resulting sunbeams and shadows before they faded away.

Although my library carrel did have an awesome view over the Lothian hills (pictured in yesterday's photograph), the image captured in this photograph more or less reflects my day (I read all but four of the books pictured), which was mostly spent working very hard on research for my thesis and, later, grading student essays from my online course. No rest for the weary, they say, whomever 'they' is.

DPP Day 21: Books with a View

Today: a rousing day of research excitement in the Edinburgh University Library (another reason I'm glad and blessed that we moved to Edinburgh this year). In between staring out across the beautiful hills as the sun set a little before four, and leaving the library when the fire alarm went off, I managed to read a lot of books (about fifteen) and take a lot of notes (several thousand words). Productivity gives satisfaction.

DPP Day 20: Climb of Twine

This afternoon, for a study break from my virtual grading stack, I dragged I. into the great wide world of Leith for an afternoon stroll. The skies were grey but not releasing water droplets (an improvement over yesterday) and we walked through the nearby Links park, which--like St Andrews--claims to be the home of golf. The park is quite large and features a lovely playground, near to which is this amazing rope construction (easily fifteen or twenty feet high) upon which, we determined, children are also allowed to play. We enjoyed the grey-blue skies, the fresh ocean air, and the chance to see our neighbourhood in the daylight before heading back to our cosy flat, armed anew with a stack of books we discovered in a nearby charity shop at remarkably low prices.