The Christmas presents have been opened! I got the cream Lamy Safari with benitoite crystal blue ink, a sage leuchtturm1917, a converter (which I successfully filled without making a huge inky mess for the first time!), some kitten pajamas (a pink top, a purple top, and polar bear set), as well as 20$.
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Finally home. Power was restored early this morning, and we packed up and drove home from the hotel at around 9am. We are both ill and immediately crawled into bed and fell asleep until 5:30pm.
We are now sitting here eating pie instead of dinner, our holiday plans are hopelessly scrambled, and I have no idea how we’re going to sleep later.
With that said, I couldn’t be happier with my present whereabouts and company. Sometimes just being home with your loved ones is enough.
Happy holidays, everyone.
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Visiting the little man for the remainder of my holiday break. The guest room is still being converted from the study, but soon I’ll have my own space to jam out in. Having some little snacks, a late night taste of good coffee in my French press, and then going to maybe break in my new journal.
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For Christmas lunch, there was just me and my mum. We started out with a prawn cocktail, then had seconds, as prawns don’t keep.
We decided to skip the main course (ham and turkey salad) and have that for tea. Then we pigged out on pavlova. Yum.
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I’ve never heard of pavlova, let alone tried it, so I had to look it up. Rabbit hole proved deeper than expected, with the century-long dispute between Australia and New Zealand over the dessert’s origin, as well as the more modern one-ups-man-ship with PavZilla and PavKong.
I find the crisp and crunchy outer shell with the soft, moist marshmallow-like centre very interesting. This is in contrast to other meringue deserts common in the US, like the lemon meringue and key lime pies in which the meringue is usually solid throughout. Thanks for sharing; will definitely be something I’ll be on the watch for.
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Had a very bad start to my day but thanks to my favorite meow meow @sophia i’ve been feeling much better since I get to call them! Happy Holidays my lovelies! I hope today has been very comfy for you all!
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Really? You’re missing out big time. Pavlova is to die for. It’s very popular in Australia and New Zealand, as you discovered.
I hadn’t heard of Pavzilla and Pavkong, so looked them up. Pavzilla held the record for the world’s biggest pavlova at 45 m long until beaten by Pavkong at 64 m long in 2005. Both were in New Zealand.
The pavlova meringue base is notoriously difficult to make, hence commercial pavlovas have become very popular. We used to buy ours from the local cake shop, then from Pavlova Pantry until the local one closed down. Nowadays, the local supermarkets have a pavlova price-cutting war before Christmas. The one in the photo is 24 cm in diameter and cost AU$5.40. You just add whipped cream and fruit to your liking. The one in the photo has strawberries, red grapes and kiwi fruit for the red and green Christmas theme. I bought a second one for New Year and that will probably have passionfruit, mango and banana.
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The little crumb let me pick out two little containers of sparkly sand slime from his huge stash and I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with it.
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I’ve played the soundtrack to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West so many times, and my father before me, that the vinyl is actually grey.
Only this weekend did I finally see the motion picture from start to finish.
What an amazing cinematographic experience! I was on the edge of the sofa for almost three hours.
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A few times I’ve had the opportunity to become deeply familiar with the score/soundtrack of a game/movie before enjoying the art that the music was made for, and every time it’s a fascinating experience.
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The annual New Yorker puzzle issue just arrived, which always fills me with glee! There’s something delightfully old-school about getting a physical artifact all stuffed with puzzles in the mail. Yes, I suppose I could just subscribe to Games magazine or something, but then it would be less special, and I really enjoy how New Yorker-y it gets - like I just flipped through and there’s a bagel-themed puzzle.
EDIT: so when you solve the bagel puzzle, it gives you the caption for a cartoon where one bagel is being psychoanalyzed by another one. Like I said, it’s very New Yorker-y.
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I finally had a whole day to just do whatever I wanted ALL DAY. I did not have a single responsibility. Not one. I never even put on pants. I bought books recommended by folks here. I futzed around with my WIP. I watched an episode of a TV show while the sun was up. I generally did not do a single useful thing. It was grand.
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My favourite book is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke. On @AmandaB’s recommendation thread ( Need book/TV recommendations for completed series ), @zarf mentioned Piranesi, Susanna Clarke’s second book, which I didn’t know existed.
I walked into the library today and it was there.
I read the first chapter and I am shaking my head in flabbergasted bewilderment. In a very good way.
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I had a nice dopamine rush programming a new section of a big game today. I’m trying to break the ice by just throwing together the rooms and people first.
It was just so fun to hit “play” and see the character pop out of a train bathroom and see random murder suspects; it’s fun to have inform just create a new world out of nothing. Just a few lines of code and you can make just about anything, it’s nice.
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Did some drawing with my younger brother.
He turned on a guinea pig drawing tutorial after declaring my first guinea pig to be “really squished flat” and the latter two “obeast.”
In the picture of the big capybara and the little one, he declared that they were done in a “kawaii capybara style” which was incredibly funny to me.
He also attempted to recreate one of my drawings and got bored colouring midway through, but it’s quite cute:
And he coloured in and “added some terrain” here:
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I did think it’s capybara! Good job! Not that many people around the world know what they are? Somehow, I always associate them with hot spring! 
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The lil man placed his sketchbook front and centre on the kitchen table to show off his latest sketch of “capybaras having a relaxing spa day” over lunch today which was very cute. He loves to draw, mostly kittens and capybaras and guinea pigs, (spiders are still a bit tricky for him, all those legs!) and when I draw occasionally he’ll come sit by me to watch me digitally paint. He’s still attempting to draw people, and has proclaimed “hands are really hard” which is pretty much universally relatable to artists.
Animals are easier for him, which I find amusing, since it was the reverse for me when I was younger. He also knows the importance of referencing, and often spends time searching up images of animals online, or asking me to draw “an example please” and then carefully studying mine to recreate. Occasionally we do life studies from the bird feeder, but we get less visitors to the feeders in winter.
He discovered some of my old sketchbooks and insisted on keeping one like a “real artist like sister” which is adorable. We have bath crayons you use to temporarily draw on tiles or walls and the house is decorated in little doodles- of flowers and paw prints and kittens and groundhogs and pigeons and all sorts of silly messages like “wow, one of your animals got up for a late night walk and left all these paw prints!” and “I love you!” and “the sun was beautiful today” and it’s kind of a bohemian disaster of interior decorating, but he loves it. An unforeseen side effect of this is that he’s in love with graffiti, and shouts “THERE’S ART!” with absolute delight when we run across any- tagged names, murals, little quick doodles from local high schoolers mucking around.
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