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May you find joy in the little things around you.
I wish all my Vox friends and acquaintances all the happiness and comfort that could possibly come to you, whether it be in family, feasting, furry friends, or a simple mug of hot chocolate or the smell of pine boughs.
Love to you all,
Laurie
At our Christmas party for the members of our organization last week, I was talking to a member from Montreal, and she had a drink in her hand but I didn't. She asked where was my drink and could she get me one. I said I didn't drink, so she asked, "What are your vices?" I said "Chocolate, for one." So she said, "I'll send you some chocolate next week."
Today, this came. It's about two feet by 18 inches:
It's the Ultimate Collection from Godiva, sent by the member, grateful for our services, for the whole staff (of 16) to enjoy.
Here's the description:
One glance at the sheer span of this impressive gift box and you know you’re onto something grand. Unprecedented in size and unmatched in scope, our Ultimate Collection is a new way to lavish the VIPs on your holiday list with a luxurious chocolate experience like no other. All told, 36 assorted chocolates, 20 assorted signature truffles, and 23 assorted biscuits are included. Large enough for full-scale holiday entertaining. 79 pcs. (2 lbs., 1.45 oz.)
And we polished it off, in one day.
It's supposed to be a good idea to travel with copies of your ID and important papers (like the picture page of your passport) so that if your wallet or purse gets lost or stolen while you're away, you have the numbers of all the ID you lost, for easier replacement. And, of course, you put these in a separate place from your real ID.
But if I stick these copies in my suitcase, then my suitcase goes astray, then whoever winds up with my suitcase has all the info from my ID and could steal my identity. Is that a good idea?
Thoughts?
Blood Orange Madeleines. Recipe from the thick, glossy, free, Food & Drink magazine put out by the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), which has given me great results with every recipe I've tried from it.
Despite my doubts about the orange puree,
which tasted bitter by itself (ever chew on orange peel?), added to the sweeter batter,
it seemed to work.
Let me also say that I'm glad I paid the extra $4 for the non-stick pan. Saves greasing and flouring all the little grooves. And they pop right out with a little nudging.
Then when you half-dunk them in dark chocolate for a finishing touch, they rock.*
* There's a texture to them that's like when you have orange zest in a recipe, so I was aware of little bits of peel. After I finished one, I had a very slight bitter peel aftertaste. The recipe says that using a blender is better to puree than a food processor. Well, I had a food processor, so that may have been it. They're still damn good.
Maybe tonight I'll post an FSotD or two from what I wrote very late last night. But I have to share this sentence I just read in a book called The Ghost Map, about a cholera outbreak in London in the 19th century:
"But reports had surfaced of some customers discovering live eels in their drinking water, which suggested that the filters were not perhaps working optimally."
I love the British way of understatement.
I've finished my edits and e-mailed the new draft off to my agent.
And I'm already uneasy that she won't think I made the changes she wanted the way she wanted.
That feeling should fade once I start doing all the fun things I've been putting off while writing this book. And if she sells it, some publisher is probably going to want more (or different) changes, anyway.
It's the last day I'm editing this novel manuscript and I'm still not happy with the way I've named this one secondary character's job. He works in a children's wish charity. There are other employees who do the fundraising and the communications, IT, administration and accounting. He's the guy who is the one general laborer. He goes and actually gets the stuff they give the kids. He delivers it. He modifies it, if the kid's needs require it. He deals with anything hands-on. But I can't think of an atual job title -- Operations something-or-other? Anybody got a thought? I'm not trying to make him sound high-falutin', just want to be accurate.
Cinnabon Minibon and crispy bacon. Last time I was decadent, I just had the Minibon, but I got logey in the mid-morning because I hadn't had any protein. Problem solved this time.
I'm now fueled to start another day of writing. 25 minutes on, 5 minutes break.
I'm taking an extended break in my 25 minutes-on 5 minutes-off schedule today to post an FSotD to prove that I have been writing today!
With the goatee grown in, David now looked like his own evil twin.
(I stole this from real life -- the same is true of Cappy when he has one.)
Okay, break over, back to it.
A week or so ago I decided to get the H1N1 vaccine. I have asthma and I'd been reading that of the people who wind up in ICUs with this flu, the worst hit are people with asthma. I live alone and I don't want to be sick and miserable and alone, plus, I have a lot of travel (next weekend to see Cappy, plus US Thanksgiving and Christmas trips down there, too, plus some business travel) and I don't want to A) get sick from other people in airports and planes and large meetings, or B) be sick and potentially miss any of my Philadelphia visits. No fucking way. I'd rather spend a day in line than a week sick in bed, or in ICU.
The vaccine wasn't out yet in Ontario when I decided, it's doing a very slow rollout, but they'd posted the upcoming hours of some vaccination centres and one was a couple of blocks from my office at a municipal centre call Metro Hall, starting next week. Then, they moved up the date and planned one for yesterday at the same place. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. People in high-risk groups (including asthmatics) have been encouraged to get the vaccine, well, in fact, everyone has by the various government health bodies, but people NOT in high-risk groups have only been "encouraged" to let the high-risk people go first. (Until a new bottleneck in production and distribution was revealed yesterday, now, as of today, vaccination clinics are only doing high-risk people.
I got to Metro Hall about 8:35 a.m. I imagined I'd spend half the day there. It turned out people were in line from about 5 a.m. There were already about 650 people ahead of me. If I'd walked over instead of taking the streetcar, there might have been 100 more in that 15 minutes I saved. Here's what it looked like from my vantage point, the line snaking back and forth across a courtyard.
Being Canadians, the line was orderly and polite. The luckiest people (aside from the ones inside) were the ones closest to the building. Because it rained. Showers on and off, and then a couple of right downpours over the morning. At 11 a.m. Public Health officials finally came down the line handing out colored tickets for a particular time. I got 1:00.
That's the book I'm reading, Where Men Win Glory about NFLer Pat Tillman going to Iraq and the cover up over his death from friendly fire. I didn't get a ton of it read in line, though, because in the rain, it was hard to juggle it and the umbrella in such a way that the book didn't get water dripped on it.
With the timed tickets in hand, some people left to come back. I was among the first to get the 1:00 ticket, so I stayed in line, even though it was two hours (and likely longer) away. I didn't want to come back and find 400 other 1:00 had come back to the line ahead of me. What bugged me though, was that people could ask for as many tickets as they wanted (i.e. for family members at home who hadn't come to the line). So one person who was ahead of me could get three tickets, and jump 2 additional people ahead of me, because the 1:00 people had to let anyone with a 12:00 ticket ahead of them, even if they hadn't been in line before. That sucked.
It was about 1:00 before I got to the envied under-the-overhang spot.
Sweet, because it poured rain again by then. It was 1:45 before I got inside, then 2:45 by the time I got my shot. I was owed some lieu time from work, anyway, so it didn't matter that I didn't get to work before 3:15.
My arm now feels like it's been punched, hard, but at least I got mine. And the nurse, when I told her I wanted photos for my blog, let me hold up the process to get a good shot of the needle, and offered to take a shot of my arm after. What a champ for a woman who'd been dealing with the flow of humanity all day, in the vaccination zone, also known as Screaming Baby Central. These are good people working with far too few resources.
