All's Well

I'm back in Chicago after one of the best Christmases in recent memory. My mother decided to stay home this Christmas and invite the rest of the family to see us (which raised some unexplainable anger from the rest of the family), which meant that, instead of rushing off to New Jersey on Christmas morning, I got to sleep late and then help my mother cook dinner all day long, then sit down for a meal with my brother, my sister-in-law, my mother and her husband, my step brothers, and my grandparents. More or less everyone I wanted to sit and have a meal with. Which was great. We had squash ravioli for an appetizer, followed by pork loin that my mother and I stuffed with apricots, using our combined medical knowledge to realize that using a process of peristalsis would be the most effective way to work the stuffing into the center cavity of the loin. Imagine my mother and I standing around and chatting, while we feed apricots to a giant esophagus, and you have a pretty good image of what we were doing.

Yeah.

The rest of the vacation was uneventful but fun. I made it up to NYC with my brother. We saw The Life Aquatic, which was profoundly disappointing (a fantastic title, fantastic concept, tacked on to a long, winding, and incidental film that wasn't terribly funny; except for Bill Murray dancing in a wet suit...that made me giggle out loud) and wandered around for a bit. Received some bad news from a friend (her grandmother died) and then spent a great evening wandering around the Village and SoHo with her while New York gave us a night full of snow, moonlight, and an irrate cabby.

All in all, it was the best Christmas in recent memory and I can't wait to do it again.

Now I'm back. In the brilliant cold. In my city, having experienced my other cities. They're like friends, cities are. I spend a great deal of time with Chicago, and I love its character and I hate some of its quirks, but I miss my other cities and long to be back with them. So. Joy.

The absinthe is steeping with the flavoring herbs now, and is a beautiful forest green. Which it is supposed to be. In a few days, we'll see how it tastes.