Bath Day for Sylvia

This morning Hardingfele and I finished off the cassata.  It was, if I may say so in all humility, very delicious, especially since this year I commissioned Anna Banana II to make the pound cake from scratch. However, the cassata is not particularly photogenic:

Compare it to this frightening cake Richard Bonomo received in the mail.  While it looks adorable, the list of ingredients is downright terrifying:

And here is a gratuitous shot of Rich's Christmas tree.  It's kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and when Kathbert made that crack, Luxuli's husband said, "I brought it down from up north just for him," and then he laughed at her for being so contrite.  It was a "weed" tree, one of many he cut down, and he burned most of them, but he brought this one to Rich's house for us all to enjoy.  It didn't get decorated until after dinner on Christmas Day.

If I were a more paranoid person, I might suspect my plants are spying on me.  Notice how these two have grown antennae?

Phalaenopsis Orchid

Orchid Cactus

Maybe Martians are emerging from these plants, but there is an eerie coincidence (or IS it???) in that both of these plants came from the work place.  The cactus was from someone at my previous job who was clearing out his office, and the orchid was from a coworker at my current job who moved to Boston... or so she claims.  Maybe they are keeping tabs on me!

After enjoying the cassata, Hardingfele suggested we give Sylvia the Hedgehog a bath like the person on the bus had suggested.  I was lukewarm (pun intended) about this suggestion until she reminded me that we could film it and put it on the blog.  Am I ever glad she suggested it!  I think it is a very cute movie, and I hope that you enjoy it too, except for the couple seconds where Hardingfele apparently forgot she was filming and all you can see is the empty tub, not the action.  (Guess I could have cut that part, but the dialogue was still going on.)  So sit back and enjoy "Sylvia's Bath."

 

 Famout Hat

Identity Crisis

I have some fantastic news: Anna Banana II has a job!! She was laid off from her previous one in October so fortunately it hasn’t been too long of a jobless stretch for her. She will start her new position on Monday, which coincidentally is also my birthday. (Hint: I like ePlush.) Here is what I do not need for my birthday: a snuggly rosary. My mother is already making one for me. I promise to post a photo of it when she sends it. And if you want one too, let me know and we can arrange something. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind having a Snuggly Rosary side business to supplement her income, since she is currently supporting herself and four males (my dad, brother, and two nephews).

So yesterday Anna Banana II and I went to Rich’s house to celebrate (Kathbert is up north visiting Mombert), and Luxuli and her husband had sent Rich a package so he opened it as we watched. Inside were some absolutely gorgeous pears and apples (which Rich gave to us since he isn’t big on eating things that are not animal products), cookies shaped like menorahs and dreidels, chocolate coins, candied almonds, and small white taper candles. There was a guarantee from someone named “Gladys Sylvia” that we would be pleased with this gift, and a box that I dearly hoped would contain a menorah. And – it did!!! Yay! Luxuli must have been shopping the After-Chanukah sales. Even funnier, Rich’s brother had sent him a tower of boxes from the same mail-order place, and each of the twelve boxes was decorated with something from “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and contained a different treat… but there was no guarantee of pleasure from Gladys Sylvia! Rich said there must be no guarantee for the goyim. However, since Rich, Kathbert, Anna Banana II, and I all suspect we have some Jewish in our background, it makes sense that we would get the Chosen People’s Promise (of Quality).

I have perfectly logical reasons for suspecting that there is a good bit of Jewish blood on my mother’s side of the family, and she and her brothers totally set off my Jewdar. (Is the fact that I have Jewdar proof of my own Jewishness? Then again, I have pretty good gaydar, and I am 100% hetero.) However, I can understand when people look at my blonde hair, blue-gray eyes, and glow-in-the-dark pale skin and wonder how I can think there is any Semitic in me. On Christmas Day, Kathbert was saying it was hilarious that Hardingfele and I are like sisters, because she is a Russian Jew pretending to be a Norwegian, and I said, “And I’m an Irish Catholic pretending to be a Jew?” To my surprise, another person said, “I wouldn’t call you Irish Catholic!” However, it wouldn’t have come as any surprise to my besty Tiffy, since she remembers with stunned amusement how this same person argued with Antoshka about what life in Ukraine is really like. What would Antoshka know about it? He has only lived there for most of his life, while this other person has read about it.

So maybe my dad is lying to me when he said his grandparents came from the Fair Isle of Eire and couldn’t speak a word of English, only Gaelic. And I may not be a card-carrying Catholic, but that is only because they never gave me a card. I am a scapular-wearing Catholic with a sticker on my car allowing me to park at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety, and I go to Mass on Sundays – is that Catholic enough? It is true that my father “converted” to Anglicanism so that he could be both a priest and married to my mother, and you can tell how anti-Papist they are because they sent me to Catholic school, and their favorite TV station is EWTN. When I chose to officially go to Rome instead of Canterbury, they were so upset that they sent me a beautiful gold necklace with a St. Francis medal on it. (My confirmation name is Francesca because St. Francis ROCKS!!)

I have never had my Irish Catholic bona fides called into question before, but it did make me think of a fun game for my 5.86 readers: Choose an Ethnicity and Religion for Famous Hat! It’s very easy – just choose an ethnicity from Column A and a religion from Column B, put them together, and give me an identity! Don’t limit yourself to my suggestions, either; feel free to suggest your own identity for me in the comments.

Famous Hat's Identity    

Column A                                                                    Column B

Ainu                                                                             Shaker

Xhosa                                                                          Shinto

Transdniestrian                                                             Zoroastrian

Basque                                                                        Mithraist

Lichtensteinian                                                              Animist

 
Famous Hat (origin and faith unknown)

Light Bright's Ivory Bouquet

Last night Kathbert was telling Richard Bonomo and me a hilarious story about how she was tricked into going to visit a guy's family, "and they used the German silver!"  It's her story so I shouldn't tell the whole thing here, but it was far more impressive than the several times I have been tricked into going on dates.  For example, how was I supposed to know that going to "Three Penny Opera" with a man old enough to be my father who claimed to have an extra ticket because of extenuating circumstances would be construed in his mind as a date?  Or that going to the free zoo in the afternoon with a friend of a friend would somehow turn into "everyone knows we are seeing each other"?  While Ubi Caritas and I did get dangerously close to nuptials, I was actually only proposed to once, and that was clearly a joke:  my Indonesian roommate and I were sitting by the lake one evening with her Turkish friend, and he suddenly said, "What a wonderful day!  I wish it could last forever!" and turned to her and asked, "Will you marry me?"  Before she could reply, he turned to me and asked, "Will you marry me?"  (Since he is Moslem, that meant he still had two more women he could propose to.)  We were all laughing and then he said, "Here comes Mr. Icon!" and I thought to myself, That man really does know everyone!  (Mr. Icon claims a friend was visiting a big city when a homeless guy sat right next to him on the train and asked where he was from.  When he heard the answer, he said, "Really?  Then you must know Mr. Icon!")

I cannot say if there will be wedding bells in my future, although Luxuli is trying her hardest to find men for all us single ladies, but here is a true story from someone who had wedding bells in her very recent past:  Light Bright.  She told me this morning that there was ivory in the bouquets she and her bridesmaids carried, and I didn't know what to think of that so I just responded, "Oh, uh-huh," or something equally as intelligent.  Then she said that one bridesmaid had planted the ivory for her and now it was growing.  I said, "WHAT??" and she said, "You know, ivory?  It's a vine?" and I said, "IVY??  Ivory is what elephant tusks are made of!"  Sometimes I really wonder what her native language is, like last week when she said, "I am so hungry!  I am just ravished!"  When I explained what she had just said, she was embarrassed but said, "Isn't there a word that sounds like that but that means hungry?" so I thought a moment and realized she had simply combined the words "famished" and "ravenous," which sounds innocuous enough until you mean to tell your office mate that you simply must get something to eat but instead you tell her you have been violated.  I will say this:  having Light Bright as as office mate is endternally entermusing!

Famous Hat

Miraculous Sideways Icicles

Yesterday at Mass the reader announced a reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Collisions - wonder if he's related to Light Bright? - and it was that oddly controversial reading about how women should be submissive to their husbands.  Helloo, ladies, if you think we got a bad deal, read the next section about how men must love their wives like Christ loved the Church.  That's right, they have to be ready to die for us and we just have to humor their silly requests.  So WHO got the bad deal?

I was amazed to see sideways icicles on the fire escape of the old Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety school building, and I couldn't help wondering about this miracle:  do the laws of physics not apply to OLPS?  Here, for reference, are your basic vertical icicles hanging from the eaves of my roof and the roof of the building across the way.

Ready?  Here are the sideways icicles!  I regret to inform you that there is nothing supernatural about this phenomenon.  Let's see if you can figure it out like Richard Bonomo and Kathbert did.

Did you figure it out?  Yes, the fire escape was horizontal when the icicles formed, and then the weight of all that ice pulled the fire escape down.  You can see more clearly in this closer shot that, as the icicles melt and refreeze, the ends are bending straight down.

I know you are jealous, but here at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety we have a Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel so you can adore Our Lord 24/7.  Not only that, but it was just redone.  I knew they were going to redo it, so I took a "Before" shot.

They turned the chapel from the width of the room to the length, which is much lovelier except that there  are two pillars, and now they block the view of the monstrance a little bit.

So we went from a makeshift altar to this beautiful triptych, which looks oddly familiar:  the golden color, the Gothic arches...  Compare it to this photo I took (that didn't turn out too clearly, unfortunately) of the Lutheran church.  Rich, Kathbert, Cecil Markovitch, Hardingfele, Rockstar Tailor, and I were just there for the Third Day of Christmas Carol Sing, and the church was decorated beautifully so I took this picture of it.

Famous Hat

Charlie and Cashmere's Merry Tiki Christmas

Yesterday Rich made another one of his classic quotes, when discussing someone who came to town for graduate school but did not complete it:  "A lot of us came here and got degrees that we never finished." That was almost as good as the time he said of his roommate:  "He's so tired that if you put a small bomb by his head, it wouldn't even go off!"

Some people were trimming the tree yesterday, but Hardingfele and I were trimming the claws - first on the bunnies, and then on Sylvia the hedgehog.  We went to the pet store to get presents for our little darlings (she has four cats), and this is what I got for Charlie and Cashmere:

A straw tiki hut!  I didn't get anything for Sylvia because she already has everything she wants:  a towel igloo and lots of cat food.  Well, I did buy her more cat food, but nothing specifically for a Christmas present.

I sang at both churches last night and went to a party at Luxuli's house in between.  Richard Bonomo said he was going to put in a wake-up call with my guardian angel, and sure enough, this morning I woke up at 8:30 despite being at the OTHER choir director's Froot Soop party until after 2:30 am.  We had a lovely dinner at Rich's house, but one place we had set was empty, in front of Aquinas the Computer:  A-Fooze was going to virtually join us via Skype, but we couldn't get a hold of her, so she was either out having fun or in bed.  Hope you had a Merry Christmas, A-Fooze!

Here is a video of Charlie and Cashmere discovering their Christmas present this morning:

Famous Hat

A White Oxford Christmas

You may have heard about the unusually heavy snowfall in England this year.  A-Fooze was there to take pictures of it.

Garden of A-Fooze's house

In front of A-Fooze's house

Head of the River Pub by the Thames River

Christ Church College gardens

Merton College on right

Merton College, another view

Berries by Merton College

(This picture makes me think of Palm Tree Fan's photos)

Berries and stained glass window

Radcliffe Camera (yes, that is the building's name)

View from the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin: All Souls College

View from the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin: Christ Church College in the background

View from the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin: Merton College in the background

In front of the Sheldonian

Tree lit up for Christmas

Tom Tower, Christ Church College

Oxford on Sunday

Radcliffe Camera

Frozen gargoyles!

Thanks, A-Fooze, for all the great photos!  She took some awesome panoramic shots as well, but until I can figure out how to convince this blog not to post them sideways, they will have to wait.  These pictures should be enough to get us all in the mood for a white Christmas. 

Famous Hat

Merry Christmas Cactus Montage

Here is an Advent/Christmas montage for you of my Christmas cacti.  I don't know any Christmas songs about cacti so the closest I could come up with is "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming."  You may be wondering why you get two posts in one day.  Here are the two reasons:

1.  My blogging may be somewhat sporadic over the next few days.
2.  I tried to upload this on Sunday night but it didn't work so I'm trying it again.  (Update - it didn't work again on Wednesday night but for some reason did on Thursday at work.)

And yet another Light Bright story:  I got a call from a faculty member's secretary saying I had sent an empty interdepartmental envelope to her.  I was concerned, because the last thing I had sent her was important, but it was several weeks ago.  Fortunately Light Bright fessed up that she had sent the empty envelope; she had addressed it and meant to put something in it but forgot and then just tossed it in the mail.

Famous Hat