Get in! Get in!

[squeequeg]

Yes! It's the "stealthmuffin crams several weeks into one post" post!

For the first time in two years, I got to go home to Indiana for Christmas. For the first time in more than that (I'm too tired to bother working it out), I got to spend several days at home instead of popping in and out like some deranged Nightcrawler in a Santa hat.

This meant that as soon as we got home, Mom put us to work. sigerson and I made hordes of gingerbread cookies and frosted nearly all of them. My 1337 fr0zt1Ng sk1llz are better than they ever were. ph33r t3h g1ng3rbr3dz0r!

I fussed over presents, played a huge game of Apples to Apples with ten other people (all family), and agreed with sal_sal, sigerson and our little cousin Myra that Mulan rocks. (She's four years old, and already loves Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. My corruption of the young is working!)

One of the best moments (aside from the one where Mom and Dad got us drunk and then asked sigerson about her research interests) was when Dad gave us our Christmas stories. He writes a Christmas story for us every year, and this year it was sweet and perfect and made us all cry. He came out and was surprised to find all four of us (sisters and Mom) sniffling -- it wasn't supposed to do that!

Cheese was made. Cities were leveled.

The New Year's gathering in the Berkshires was fantastic as always. I got to take part in an insane spur-of-the-moment Toon game run by sigerson (the intersection of Easter Bunnies and Nietszche was particularly stunning). I played The Mecha-Manolo, who is the most superfantastic of the hugely powerful cyborgs. I got to see many many wonderful people for far too little time, which is always the case at New Year's, and I made eight dozen muffins. (See above re: 1337 skI11z.)

This year's project was cheesemaking. It worked, and that in itself is amazing. I actually took no part in the cheesemaking, but did my best to dispose of much of the mozzarella that was made. Mmm...fresh whole-milk mozzarella... As I understand it, the harder cheeses will be ready for testing next year, if they haven't gone rogue and eaten Pittsfield.

Now, I write. Or revise, actually. I'm three chapters into the revision of New Novel, and I'm starting to like it a lot better. Maybe it's that one character outright admitted he was a coward, so now I'm not trying to make him be all heroic. I'll let him decide when he wants to do that. Or maybe that I finally figured out the other main character and where she's coming from. Funny how I needed to finish a draft before knowing that.

Or maybe it's that my friends' pets are making their way into my stories. cute_fuzzy_evil and ethicsgradient's cat Njord apparently runs a PigNFish stall in the novel, and cybersattva's appropriately named pug Spoo is making a guest appearance in a first draft of a new short story. He's demonically possessed, of course, but that's just to spice things up. Respective owners, do you approve?

Comments

[heatmhub.livejournal.com]

Wow. Sounds like you had a great time over the holidays: family, friends, and great food. However, I must ask, what is Apples to Apples and what is Toons?

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Apples to Apples is a very simple and fun card game. You have a hand full of cards with nouns on them: Marshmallows, Abraham Lincoln, Hot Lava, My Childhood. One person (the judge for that turn) draws a green card with an adjective on it: Charming, Dangerous, Ordinary. Each person (except the judge) submits one of their noun cards, and the judge decides which of the nouns best matches the adjective. For example, if the adjective were Dangerous and the nouns the ones above, Hot Lava would probably win. (Unless the judge had a really rough childhood or has met Giant Robot Lincoln.) First person to get a certain number of matches wins.

Toon is a role-playing game, in which each character is a cartoon character, a la Bugs Bunny. Only these tend to be weirder -- Don Iguana, The Chinchillinja, Mecha-Manolo, etc. Cartoon rules apply, and if it's funny, it works. It can be really fun.