Obviously, those of you who have loved ones who might peek may not want to respond.

Blinder and i decided that all of the holiday shopping this year will be minor in nature and primarily for each other- meaning small presents. But we still like to give presents, so we need a place to hide them.

I've got a dresser and he's got a closet. He's got patience; i hgave to stubbornly resist the urge to go and look. Constantly. I can't help it, there are secrets over there!!!

Where do you hide the presents in your house?

http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

I want to see this.

We always go to a movie on Christmas eve, this one won't be out by then so we'll probably go see that movie with the terrible plot and the pretty dragons. You know, the one from the book that I always decide not to read because it looks archetypical, despite the fact that "ERAGON" looks exactly like "DRAGON" if you're in a hurry?

Yeah. That one.

Don't care about the plot. Bring on the dragonses!

But this one is the one i'd choose to see if it were out now, because it looks fascinating.

Dunno. could be a dud, but he'd have to work for it, so we'll see.

I'm back to work today. I do feel better, not all better but it's friday and i can't take the day off, so i'm headed to work. Kitten says, and i quote, "Have a nice day at the cat food mines."

That's right. We work so she can eat. At least she's snuggly these days.

the dragon can't go to work today. I have a fever and damn it when it came time to get out of bed today, i had just enough energy to get as far as the phone, where i called in.

Now i'm curled up on the couch, and the kitten has taken it as her job to hold the dragon still by sitting on me as much as possible for the rest of the day.

guess it wasn't winter till i got a fever. Every freaking year.

I think i'll go back to sleep now.

It's almost time.

Somewhere out there, there's one chosen to die for me.

We will order its demise. It's doomed, anyway. It was raised in captivity, destined for this. They buy them from the nursery, you know, and bring them to the country to raise them. It has no hope of surviving- if it's not for us, it will be for another. We must have our bread and circuses. The new batch is ready, a whole wave of the young and the strong, ready to be harvested, thrown down, limbs netted and body assaulted. The snow will echo with the sound of the sacrifice and the field will lie covered in the broken limbs of the dying.

And we will rejoice.

It was brought up hale and hearty, protected from disease and damage. Only the perfect may be chosen, only the beautiful will suffer.

And we will rejoice.

The weapon is sharp, the season is upon us.

In a matter of days, it will be given the blow that will slowly destroy it. It will be brought to us in an unmarked truck, still alive. We will pay our money and take our prize, bring it to the frame we've already got ready to put it in. We'll force pins against it, to hold it upright now that it's devoid of the power to stand on its own.

    We will keep it alive for weeks, nurturing and feeding it, forcing it to stand, in a semblance of life, for our enjoyment. We will decorate its body with the arcane symbols of our joy; we will delight in the scent of its body and the reminder that we are among the privileged, who can have such a life brought up for our enjoyment, and ended at our whim.

When our season of fun is over, when it has finally been robbed of its last life force, and the illusion of continuing life has faded from it, we will keep the gold and silver, the pretty trinkets with which it was adorned. We will even keep the contraption that held it upright, setting that aside for the next season's victim. We will wrap the body in an unmarked plastic bag, and summon the same service to dispose of it. They'll do that for free. It's included in the original cost of the sacrifice. It will go into another ordinary truck, like ordinary rubbish. We won't give it a second thought in this condition- when we think of it at all, it will be mingled with the memories we formed celebrating around it, as it stood dying in our living room for weeks.

And we will rejoice.

Man, you folks thought HALLOWE'EN was the gruesome holiday!

(Oh, and we're getting a Christmas tree, too. )

My question regarding the firehose/submittal question has been sent to CmdrTaco. If i get a response, i will post it.

Thanks,

sol

Night before last, i dreamt that i was trying to rescue my kitten from drowning, and she, predictably, was a mass of claws and teeth.

Yesterday i woke up with severe scratches on both arms and bite marks on my hand.

I seriously considered trading the kitten in for a piranha; at least i'd KNOW the piranha was always deadly.

She claims that she was only protecting me from "bed mice," cleverly disguised as my fingers, and if i understood the threat i wouldn't be complaining.

Well, this morning, i woke up, and i was lying on my left side. Her Majesty the Kitten was curled up peacefully, against my left shoulder, with her head and body on my arm and one paw draped over it, and her paw curled in my right hand. You know, holding hands. She's the only cat i know who loves to hold hands. She was purring softly and snuggled closer, then she fell back asleep.

No deathfish of the dark waters could EVER tug on the heartstrings like that. Sweetest thing EVAR, and makes it all worthwhile.

Eventually the morning alarms went off, and i hugged her for awhile more and we started our day- with going to the couch for a sit together for fifteen minutes.

Orders from the cat planet are apparently to act as inconsistently as possible, while being lovable at least often enough to not end up being traded for something less dangerous, like a crocodile* or a black widow colony.

(* you know you play too much warcraft when all large reptiles are either basilisks or crocolisks)

Write a description of the rise of the sun, preferably more than a sentence, without using any of the following words, in any form or conjugation:

sun
light
dawn
break
spread
fade
rise
bright or brightness
dark or darkness
red
yellow
black
night
day
morning
star

I was getting ready for work.

blinder: here. (hands dragon some folded up money.)

dragon: What's this for?

blinder: (shrugging) you know, so you can buy treats. And things.

dragon: Well, i suppose i should get some bottled water.

blinder: Well, if that's what you would really consider a 'treat...'

dragon: (hanging head) not really. But it would be a thing?

blinder: Yes! Yes, it is definitely a thing. Carry on!

***

i can tell when i have been wearing suits around blinder because there's cash in the pockets. We rarely carry cash, but the cafeteria at work takes nothing else. (i've tried both buttons and shiny rocks, to no avail.)

So blinder usually remembers this, and tries to make sure i remember pocket money. (we share a bank account, it's just he remembers more than i do.)

I also found in my pockets today: a sparkly pen, a packet of stomach medicine (i wasn't feeling well last time i wore this suit, and blinder knew it), and a sparkly rock.

It's nice to have someone around who understands you.

today is hearth day.

It's the day after thanksgiving, the day to celebrate home and hearth and NOT the busy madness of cooking and company.

No fuss, no bother, no shopping.

We stayed home except for a nice walk together. Leftovers and peace and quiet.

Happy Hearthday.

thank you for past us being smart enough to run the dishwasher. And clear off the table. There's nothing like not waking up to a mess to make us appreciate the holidays more.

Thank you for the pies coming out all right in spite of the little adventure in making them.

thanks that i had the good sense NOT to call my mum, and instead called Sonja-mum, who spent ten minutes just explaining to me how proud of me she is, how brave i am, how much she likes Blinder, and how important it is that i do what's right for me now instead of staying forced into the role that my family doesn't want me to step out of.

The tears weren't from guilt or shame for a change but just pure joy, which is a nice holiday change and one i'm sticking with.

Thanks that it was rain this year instead of snow. That was a little tough to take last year, it was nice not to have to think winter when we were trying to think harvest.

Thanks that pancho made the gravy and not me. Good gravy is a blessing not to be sneered at. Thanks also that he knew how to prepare squash, because i sure didn't.

Thanks that nobody minded my falling asleep curled up on a pillow on the couch. One minute i was there, then i was out.

Thanks for the rest of the evening, spent knitting on the couch watching movies with blinder, and playing WoW with people we like.

All in all, an uneventful, comfy thanksgiving, with no major upsets or wildness to mar the occasion. Down-home goodness done right.

Thanks.

That which i am thankful for (a severely abbreviated list.)

We sit down for thanks this year, "in the grace of the amateur, for whom so many blessings flow."

We are thankful for our families, who are good and loving and very far away. (In some cases, distance makes for peaceful holidays, and this year is one of them.)

We are thankful for Her Majesty the Kitten. Her Majesty (Ceridwen by name, but we mostly just call her kitten or babycat) woke me this morning with a snuggle and then demanded that i get out of bed and pay attention to her. The life of a courtier is tough, no doubt about it. All those compliments and the running about.

Thankfulness is a weird concept, and i will leave it to others to give the obligatory lecture this year about being thankful everyday and zen and the art of toilet paper and all that stuff. No, i'm gonna focus on a very specific kind this year: the family.

I'm thankful that my family loves one another and that we won't be celebrating it with them. Yes, i feel guilty saying it, but space is what we need and space is what we're having. I'm thankful that my brother finally got his GED and that his baby is healthy, strong, and as big as any 3 normal children. I'm thankful that my brother was blessed with a sense of humour to make up the common sense that he didn't acquire till adulthood, or at least that his sense of humour made the years before that somewhat more tolerable. Tolerable for him, and also for us.

I'm thankful that i didn't start any major projects this year that could have derailed as i started sorting out the complicated shrapnel of my years in the family. I'm thankful that blinder understands all of this, or we'd have problems.

I'm thankful that i got through a year without major incident or event, and that those of you who did have those are mostly all right.

I'm thankful that the kitten hasn't figured out how to change the channel yet. It really unnerves me when she watches TV. Every so often she does something so strange that it reaffirms my vegetarianism, like when she demands to be picked up for a hug. So when she gets bored with what's on tv and yells at us, i find that weird.

i'm thankful that the new meds are making me finally get some sleep at night. Four hours is not enough. (side effect: They make me sleepy all the time. Whatever. I'll take it.) This is related to my family because they are a lot easier to take when i've actually gotten some rest.

That time changes all things, easing some and blurring others. That i finally feel free to make good choices even if they please my family. That my life is different from theirs and that they are all right with that more these days.

I'm thankful that people eventually mellow out, that feuds eventually simmer down, that as i am aging i'm discovering it not worth my while to hold a grudge. I'm infinitely grateful that i'm calming down as i get older, and while i'm less likely to say what i think immediately, that this is at least slightly more often because of tact and less often for fear of jail time.

Talk to me. What are you thankful for that you never expected to be?

One day the teacup dragon found a box of raisins on the counter. She happily remembered games of snap-dragon at the holidays. What she forgot was that those raisins had been placed in a dish of burning brandy. These raisins had been placed in a cardboard box. To her her credit, she did move it to the stove before setting it alight, although that didn't really serve to mollify the cook except in retrospect, two days later when she reflected that she'd been awfully hard on a little dragon who couldn't be expected to remember such things.

In the meantime, the dragon was banished to the button-box to think about her deeds. The dragon did think about them, and was very sorry for having made the cook upset. Her tears made little splashes among the buttons. (of course they didn't close the box. They only meant to give her a time-out, not to imprison her entirely.)

Nothing would have come of this, of course, had Emily not been hunting for a button for her doll's new dress. Her mother promised that as soon as Emily remembered to pick out buttons, the dress would be finished, and today, Emily remembered.

The dragon, banished to the button-box, had just chosen a particularly pretty glass button, placed it carefully on a pile of dull black buttons for contrast, and settled down under a pile of mother-of-pearl ones to look at it from a distance. Emily had no idea, and saw the shining glass button sitting right there. Of course she chose it- it WAS a particularly nice button. This was not the dragon's day.

The dragon looked sadly after the vanishing Emily, and in vain searched the box for another little glass button. There were none. (That button wouldn't have been there except that it fell off the sweater of a visiting school headmistress, of a strict school -which Emily was fortunately not yet sent to- and swept up later by Emily's mother and put away.) The dragon somberly kicked her pile of little black buttons, and sat down to sulk.

Dragons can't sulk long. Usually a few hundred years or so, provided nothing distracts them- and dragons distract from their sulking with notorious ease. No good historian would have been surprised to find the dragon happily curled up ten minutes later around a pair of metal cufflinks, counting buttons and putting them in little piles.

Eventually, she was allowed back out, and was given her tea in a corner of the parlour, where she was promptly forgotten about as company arrived. The dragon wistfully scooped up the last of her toast and hid behind a pillow, not wanting to see people quite yet. Dragons can be very shy on their bad days, and this one was no exception. Unfortunately, she chose exactly the wrong pillow, and a large, black-dress-clad bottom promptly deposited itself on the top side of the same pillow. The dragon let out a squeal and leapt out of the couch, only to land on the table among the tea things, head first into the sugar bowl.

*Whap!* Someone smacked her with a fan. It was the schoolmistress! The very same one as before, in the very same sweater, with the same perfect glass buttons!

"Greedy little rodent!" she screeched. The dragon, still trying to remove her dazed head from the sugar bowl, couldn't muster a reply. A little pair of hands reached out and shielded her from the beating of the fan.

"She's not a rodent!" Emily put the dragon in her pocket and ran from the room. A great deal of shouting followed. Emily hid in her closet with the dragon.

The dragon felt something cold and hard under her foot. It was... was it... it had holes in it. It was the button!

The dragon, assuming that the woman had returned for her button, saw only one way out of this. It wasn't going to be a pleasant way, but she couldn't let Emily be blamed.

  The dragon had no idea that she'd returned in the process of negotiating Emily into the new school, and had no idea that any button was missing at all. The woman was very alarmed to find the teacup dragon on the arm of the couch, holding the button out in her little front claws.

  She squealed in shock, smacking the dragon with her fan again, and the dragon fell off the couch, dropping the button in her surprise. The woman screeched. Emily, near the door (having followed the dragon downstairs again) also screeched.

"My button!" cried the woman. "It took my button, right off my sweater!"

"My dragon!" cried Emily. "You hit my dragon again!"

The dragon just scooted under the couch, away from the terrible woman and her fan.

The woman pounced on the button.

"My button!" Emily cried, this time.

"YOUR button! YOUR Dragon!" the indignant woman fussed and sputtered. "Well!"

In the end, Emily was not allowed to enter the new school, and was branded a troublemaker by the headmistress. Her mother was outraged, since she knew perfectly well where the button had come from in the first place, and Emily had explained how it went from the button box to her pocket, and the dragon had tried to return it. No one doubted the good intentions of either of them, and Emily's mother explained to the headmistress in no uncertain terms that she didn't want her daughter learning from anyone who would be so prejudiced as to doubt both her word and her daughter's. (And their dragon's, but she left that part out until the headmistress brought it up.)

Emily was delighted to hear that she would be remaining in her regular school, and bought the dragon a brand new button to celebrate, which was awarded with great pomp in a ceremony that evening, with all of the stuffed animals and Emily's two favourite dolls looking on. She made very sure that the dragon had treats and games to play for several days after, and after she explained to the cook why she wanted the treats, even cook was won over, and forgave the raisin incident freely.

Emily's mother wisely chose two buttons out of the box herself, and finished the doll's dress. Neither Emily nor the dragon wanted to be involved.

What it will have:

Quorn roasts (slice them diagonally, it looks disturbingly like turkey and tastes similar but not quite the same.)

Mashed potatoes. And/or baked potatoes. Sonjamum sent us home with homegrown taters and we can't wait to serve them.

Stuffing. Blinder has his family's stuffing recipe. It's pretty good, we use gluten-free bread.

Peas. I like peas. Not everyone does, but we'll compromise. (see note below regarding squash)

Squash. Blinder likes it. I'm not that much a fan of it, but what the hell. I at least recognise it as a food, which is more than i can say for cranberries.

Olives. And possibly pickles. You know, small garnishy things.

Milk, juice, soda, etc. Probably not wine.

Pie, mincemeat in ramekins, maybe roasted apples. Ice cream.

What it will NOT have:

Travel. We're having a quiet, peaceful home thanksgiving.

Family issues. Nope, no drama. Phone calls will be limited to five minutes and consist of a quick happy thanksgiving wish and an i love you.

Stress. We will be taking it easy the evening before, the day of, and the day after. No fuss this year.

Cranberry sauce, unless someone requests it. I hate cranberries. You can't convince me that they are a food. Nothing that tastes like that is an actual food. I'll serve it if a guest likes it, but i'm done eating things i don't like on holidays just to be polite.

Pumpkin pie. Ick. Sorry, i can't deal with it. I have never liked most custards and pumpkin custard is nauseating to me. No, sorry, no pumpkin pie.

Uncontrolled fires. We hope to have a burnination-free thanksgiving, so fires will be limited to candles and the like.

Goodness, i can't believe it's already this time of year. What happened? Where did the year go? Weren't we just here?

Wht's your favourite solitaire card game? I'm a beleagured castle kind of person, though demon (the equally unwinnable game also known as canfield) is high on my list as well.

I dunno. I'm a sucker for games with strict rules, almost no chance of winning, and where the no-cheating code makes it an honourable but almost certain defeat. What can i say? I play like a paladin. What do your card games say about you?

****

A guy was training for wilderness survival as a forest ranger. His instructor handed him a kit.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Well," said the instructor, "You've got your waterproof matches, a flare gun, some water filters, and a deck of cards."

"Cards, sir?"

"Yeah. You know. Cards. Playing cards."

"I don't understand. Why playing cards?"

"If all else fails, you just sit yourself down, start a game of solitaire, and in NO TIME FLAT you'll have somebody tappin' on your shoulder, saying, put that there red nine on the ten of spades."

i was sure i'd be able to miss catching it, when blinder wasn't feeling well the other day.

Nope. I'm on the end of the stomach flu, but i'm exhausted and i'll be staying home from work tomorrow i think.

Blinder remembered about ginger ale and so i have some ginger ale and some rice cakes

oh, and the MST3K, because there's no sense being sick without some good old Mystery Science Theater.

Yes, staying home and resting tomorrow. Then tuesday i'm home but it's planned; i have an appointment with the cardiologist in the morning.

Time for some rest; i'm off to the pillows.