An Update — 2012/12/19

Not too much worth writing home about, but here's a bit.

A Night at the Cinema.  Tuesday of last week I went to the Cabot Street Cinema to see the 2011 movie "Wuthering Heights." I've never read the book, but I knew that it had to do with the doomed romance of Cathy and Heathcliff. What a shock the movie was! It was well made, but the central characters were awful people. (BTW, for those of you familiar with the book, the movie only covers the first generation. It stops with Heathcliff's gaining ownership of Wuthering Heights, and does not show the subsequent lives of his and Cathy's and Hindley's children.) The movie clearly depicts Hindley's brutality, Heathcliff's violence and Cathy's bad treatment of Heathcliff as well as her husband, Edgar. They're all a thoroughly unlikable lot. It is the Lintons' great misfortune to have come into contact with any of them, much worse for them that Edgar marries Cathy and Isabella marries Heathcliff. I found the brutality, the semi-squalid condition of the Earnshaw house, and the bleakness of the countryside quite unappealing, however true to the novel they may have been.


Christmas.  My brother and I are invited to our aunt's for Christmas dinner. That should be pleasant. She says that this year she will not cook a turkey — which probably makes this the first Christmas of my life when turkey was not Christmas dinner, although I can't be absolutely sure of the first three or four years of my life. I suppose I could get a bit of turkey somewhere and have it for supper and pretend it was the real dinner, with the banquet merely lunch — as if there were some cosmic importance to my keeping the sequence of turkey dinners at Christmas unbroken. But nah. I'm getting a little bit flexible in my old age, and if it will be lamb or what have you for Christmas dinner, that's okay — as long as it isn't bean sprouts and tofu. And I'm not going to buy a turkey and cook it on Sunday or Wednesday: too much leftovers.

I've been thinking a bit about what I will have, expecting my brother to be here from Saturday night (when we'll go to a party) through New Year's Day. Today I bought a small chicken, which will probably be Sunday dinner and possibly yield enough leftovers for one lunch. I've been thinking of doing my shrimp thing for Christmas eve. I also have to cook meatloaves for the soup kitchen that day. I could possibly make an extra one for us to have. It would furnish at least two dinners. Maybe I could have a roast of beef — or pot roast or braised beef — for Wednesday (with leftovers one or two days). Maybe salmon on Friday, or shrimp if we didn't have it on Monday. The usual steak and baked potato on Saturday? It would be fun to celebrate New Year's Eve with lobster. If I can find a duck anywhere, that would be good for New Year's Day. That leaves Sunday — restaurant perhaps. I'm sure we'll get by somehow.

I've sent off the gifts to my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, and I know basically what I'll be getting for my brother. Yikes! I haven't sent cards to my friends in Rothenburg. Now they'll never get there before Christmas.

It will be a busy time at the church, with me helping out here and there.

I still haven't put the candles in the windows. Maybe I will as soon as I finish this post. I've also got a few other decorations to display.


Other Stuff.  The car door handle has been repaired.

We had a prayer service this evening for the victims and mourners from the school shooting in Connecticut.

I posted on my music blog about the concerts I recently attended. Before the one at HMA I had dinner at the Scollay Square — got the same waiter as last time. Dang!