Home of the Snarkmaiden

The crabapple is blooming, the lilacs are about to, the mallards are paired off, and everywhere birds are gathering nesting materials: crows, wrens, and robins alike. This morning I spotted a little brown wren in the big apple tree, and it turns out she's nesting in the bird house that Hal re-located into the side yard after the willow was taken out. I'm glad to see it's still an acceptable home.

And as I sat over my tea and shirred eggs just now, I heard that distinctive Northwest herald of bird whoopie season: the abrupt clatter of a bitsy air-compressor going off on the roof. The flicker is back, showing off the superior hardness and puissance of his...beak...by using it to batter out a rapid mating tattoo on the metal flashing of our chimney. It's always startling the first time each spring because the sound is so absolutely mechanical as to be inexplicable on the roof, and it takes me a moment to remember what the hell that noise is. But once I figure it out, I find it cheering. The season of renewal is upon us.

I'm less thrilled by the millions of minuscule baby spiders staking out their individual territories all over the house. I'm sure this is phylumist of me.

Whenever the Yoshino cherry trees really get going on the Quad, one of the inevitable consequences is photographers, but a particularly entertaining subset of these are bridal photographers, here taking advantage of the backdrop for that Perfect Memory. Now it's tricky, because the weather doesn't always cooperate, as early one morning walking to the office I spotted a poor young woman huddled in her wedding dress and parka combo in the chill mist and spitting, ominous gloom, waiting while her photographer set up his equipment and framed the shot. Or the public doesn't cooperate, by not staying away in droves, like last Sunday, when the lawn of the Quad was so full of humans it looked like there might recently have been a rock concert -- I didn't see any brides out in the largely black-clad surge of humanity, but you never know. Bridal photographers can be pig-headed, er, I mean "dedicated." Or possibly, "service-oriented."

Today, we have the wedding photographer who is framing his subject in cherry boughs. I'm sure these will be lovely photos, the happy bride surrounded by gorgeous, massed pink sprays of cherry blossom, but the rest of us are treated to the odd spectacle of Bride in a Tree. Or perhaps Onna Stick.

Oh well, at least the guy brought a ladder for her to use. When it's the boyfriend-photographer-girlfriend-subject combo, you often get the guy badgering the girl to climb the tree unaided. The Things Portrait Photographers Do, Man.

God damn it, it was just starting to get a bit light at 5:30 in the morning. Not daylight, but at least a hint of gray dawn pale around the edges so it wasn't full dark. Yes, I'm sure I'll appreciate having an extra hour of light in the evenings eventually (right now, it doesn't really help 'cos the train I can catch doesn't pull in that early), but now that the rain is lovely and warm instead of wintry mix, Shoobie wants to stay out and hunt worms in the mud when I let the dogs out for their morning pee. It's somehow all that much worse to have to wade out into the mudpit formerly known as the side yard in the pitch dark of night to retrieve the Little King of Everything.

It's been a thin year for posting. But I did manage at least an entry a month, so here are the first lines gleaned from 2013, for what little amusement or edification they may provide:

I am mildly croggled that people think anyone besides Leonard is the central character in Big Bang Theory.

I will not say anything insensitive to people with ashes on their foreheads tomorrow.

The short list of Hugo Award nominees will be coming out in a couple of weeks, on Easter weekend.

Overheard somewhere, someone making disparaging remarks about "the boys in Enterprise"... I don't think they were talking about a television show, its fans, or cast members.

him, in the other room: "...." [not quite audible]

A bit of time has passed since the first weekend in May but things have been Somewhat Hectic in my little corner of the universe, so that between the trans-hebephrenic crescendo of Spring Quarter insanity at work, a sudden and unwelcome flurry of legal filings surrounding the (let us hope) final dispensation of my parents' estate, still getting all the list mail from the upcoming Lone Star Con despite the increasing unlikelihood of my attending, and somewhat foolishly volunteering to help with administering the PayPal voting for the DUFF race, I have not posted my pictures from Corflu or indeed said boo about it.

Here's a picture of cool evening for those who are about to have a stinking hot day.

Today is a Do All The Things day.

I was going to say that I may be less active with the writing here because school starts Wednesday (Wednesday! What rational school starts classes on Wednesday?) and I'm taking another run at third year Mandarin.

Well, it's been a glorious October here in Seattle, with dry weather, clear sunny skies, and a particularly spectacular fall display around campus.

One of our junior-most faculty came into the office this morning to tell me that she had been laughing out loud on the bus to work while reading my minutes of the previous month's faculty meeting.

Along with most of the rest of the country, we've been having a chilly week.
* * *

Hmm. Really must work on generating more scintillating first lines, I think.

My Wednesday morning: cleaning up dog vomit off my comforter, arriving late to work despite having left home on time due to bus delays caused by a fire on Eastlake, and then tanking horribly during my Mandarin oral exam due to under-preparation and a major case of nerves driving every word I ever learned right out of my head, all before noon. Here's hoping the rest of the day, and weekend, improve.

And, in hopes of nicer things to come, a picture of flowers. Happy Thanksgiving, pipples.

I was going to say that I may be less active with the writing here because school starts Wednesday (Wednesday! What rational school starts classes on Wednesday?) and I'm taking another run at third year Mandarin. Which always does a number on my free time (Mandarin, I mean, not the second run at third year, which, of course, I've not done before so there's no "always" about it.) But it's hard to be less active here than I've already been, thank you very much. I think my writing brain is off again. This happens sometimes. My process and focus wander hand in hand into drawing brain or language acquisition brain or having pointless arguments on the SMOFS list brain, and the writing brain just decides to take a nap. I find myself going along through my life occasionally thinking of things that would make a start of a post or an essay or even a story but then they just bubble away into the ether before I actually set anything down.

Saturday we got together with Scott and Carl, who'd looked out for the house and cats while we went down to Mariposa. They were down for the Kent Saturday Farmers Market (Scott and Carl, that is, the house and cats already being in Kent) and stopped in to drop off the keys. After the initial chit-chat, we all went down to the market. Scott picked up yet more hot peppers from the Mexican-American family farm, even though he's already made three gallons of hot sauce this season, while I settled for heirloom tomatoes, smoked cheddar, and smoked beefstick. Oh, and macrons. A new bakery selling at the market was doing Chinese-five-spice- and green-tea-and-white-chocolate macrons. Both quite nice. And much more convenient than going to Ballard (home of the very fine Honoré, noted for scrummy macrons). We then withdrew to Airways Brewing to support our local brewpub, where our waitress explained that if Scott wanted to sell any of his hot sauce, she had two eager buyers lined up, one of whom was at the bar just then. I reckon I must try this hot sauce.

Sunday we braved the successive blustery downpours to catch the State Fair on its last day. Liked the goats, especially one very sweet kid who liked having her chin skritched, and was quite impressed with the draft horse show/demo, but we had missed the rabbits and cavies and therefore only got chickens. The young 4Hers were out in force, however, and eager to 'splain all about their various fowl, including the runner ducks, which to me look like they ought to be from China, but turn out to be from India, where they developed that odd, tall stance to be able to see over the grasses in rice fields where they are kept as pest control.

Never did manage to buy any fudge or anything on a stick. I fail at fair food.

In comments betnoir asks about a recipe for glögg -- a traditional Swedish drink in the Yuletide. As I mentioned to her, easiest is to just buy a bottle of mix from Ikea -- or Cost Plus, for that matter. But doing it yourself is about equally trivial. It's just mulled wine. Here's approximately what I learned at my mother's knee.

1 jug cheap red plonk of your choice - burgundy or port, usually
2-4 sticks cinnamon
10-20 whole cloves
5-8 whole cardomom kernels
1 cup sugar
a handful of raisins
6 blanched almonds
1/2 each thinly sliced lemon, lime, and orange

Pour the wine in a large cookpot, add the sugar, spices, raisins, citrus, and nuts and heat until steaming, stirring periodically. Heat at steam point for 5-15 minutes to let spices steep. Serve in glass mugs.

As with most other Swedish recipes I know, there are oodles of variants. Googling, I see that lots of recipes include between a 1/4 cup to a full liter of plain vodka. Our family never added vodka, but depending on how much you want to put your guests on their butts, you can add that much vodka. Lots of the recipes I see use just citrus peel rather than whole slices, but I think the slices look pretty floating in the wine, and besides It's How My Mother Did It. You can vary the amount of sugar to taste, and can either steep the spices in vodka overnight and discard the spices and just use the vodka, or make a spiced simple sugar syrup and then add the wine, vodka, and fruit at the end. I see at least one recipe including a bit of ginger. And you can play with how many or few citrus types you use.

But the basic core is this: red wine, Christmas spices, raisins, sugar, and citrus, mixed together and heated 'til steaming. The rest is endless variation to suit your tastes and larder.