29 November 2003

Thanksgiving generally: everyone was more or less kind and patient with everyone else, everyone had more or less enough good food to eat, and everyone who had planned to be here was here safely. My mother did make a blood sacrifice to the knife gods, and I wound up with a whopping headache for no reason at all, but it was a good Thanksgiving.

And we've got a few lasagna leftovers, and we had salad and dessert enough for Friday dinner, so all I had to do is make the soup. And we still have some odds and ends of dessert and a tiny bit of lefse left. Not to mention large quantities of soup, the which we will be feeding to Andrew and his new girlfriend around noon today.

Yesterday Ceej helped Dad and Mark move my piano into the music room, and it looks like it belongs there. After lunch, Onie and the folks and the grands and Mark and I went downtown to the Eighth Floor Auditorium to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was all right, but not as good as some years have been. The gingerbread, too, was all right but not as good as some years have been. I feared that they weren't going to have gingerbread, now that they're calling themselves Marshall Fields. I feared that they would switch the treats around on me, and then I'd have to bring my own gingerbread when we take Robin. But there it was. Five red-hots instead of the traditional two, so Mark got a jackpot. (Mrissas Don't Eat Red-Hots.)

We came home from that and I made the aforementioned soup, and then we watched "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," so that the older set could see what details the Eighth Floor had just sketched in.

And I think this is my favorite line in The Whim of the Dragon:
Matthew looked as if he were going to object; Patrick said, "How do you know they're the Lords of the Dead?"
"I came upon two of them in the kitchen," said Prospero.

Well, sure; naturally. I finished The Whim of the Dragon and am very, very happy with the ending. (Hannah: it's the kind of YA ending we were talking about, the good kind, not the bad kind. Go read.) I've started Delia Sherman's The Porcelain Dove, but I'm sure I won't finish it for a good while. Too much to do today! Seeing of people, going of places, baking of cookies.

I dreamed I had two scenes left on The Mark of the Sea Serpent and had only at that point realized why the names Legolas and Gimli sounded familiar and why I shouldn't use them for characters. What an odd dream. I have no intentions of using those names for characters, and I have barely a chapter written of that particular book. Ah well.

I'm going to go eat breakfast and bake things with my family members, since I hear at least one of them rattling around downstairs. Have a good remainder of the weekend.