It’s been a relaxing and productive week so far – there are plenty of things that I’m procrastinating about (Christmas tree, decorations, clearing the dining room table off) but there are plenty of things I’ve got done.
It’s been a vacation week for me, and I’ve spent it making tea, reading books, reorganizing things, keeping up with online news and blogs, listening to NPR, shopping for the few items I have to get for Xmess each year.
Right now, I’ve got a turkey breast in the oven in the big roasting pan, and when we pull it out, we’re making latkes from the same recipe that we used a couple of years ago – Shirley Edelman‘s. I stuffed knobs of butter and bits of chiffonaded basil under the turkey skin, and stuffed a pierced whole lemon in the cavity (it’s a roast with breast and ribs attached, including the Pope’s Nose). We missed out on Hanukkah latkes this year due to timing – we normally end up at David’s brother’s house, but they were having scheduling problems and couldn’t actually do it during Hanukkah, so when we got there to give the kids their gift(cards), my sister-in-law served us some delicious turkey instead. We wanted some delicious turkey of our own, and wanted latkes too.
Earlier in the week, I re-read Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) and was enjoying the many very prescient things Neal Stephenson wrote about a dystopic future America – mostly to do with the Metaverse and how similar it was to Second Life, or how slavishly SL has copied conventions and jargon from the book, even down to the potential surnames Residents can take. Then just now, I ran across this little item: representatives of the Lakota Indian Nation have declared their treaties with the United States of America void, and announced that they were forming a new sovereign nation. Although at least one newsman thinks it’s just Russell Means using the news media to get his message out, it made me blink for a second and think of burbclaves and franchulates.
Later on, we went to Barnes and Noble one evening and picked up some new things to read, so I ended up getting Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1), another Stephenson book. It’s very dense and rather heavy going, and is set in a couple of different time periods in the late 1600s-early 1700s. I had previously read Cryptonomicon which was set in at the time of WWII and also at some “modern” date slightly in the future. Some of the same family names crop up in Quicksilver, which came out after Cryptonomicon, so Stephenson is going for that kind of family saga spanning many generations. And there’s one character who seems to remain unchanged for decades who’s got the same name as a similar character in the previous book, so I suppose we’re supposed to believe that he’s immortal. It’s a pretty convenient and time-worn plot device, but Stephenson doesn’t wear it out – this character doesn’t appear often, but when he does, he’s doing something to move things or people or the plot along.
I’m a fast reader, but this is not fast-read stuff. There are a lot of references to real-life people and events, which mostly seem accurate enough (although I caught one character saying “okay” in about 1684, woops). It’s enjoyable and not boring, but after several hundred pages and only half the book read, you do start to wonder when Stephenson’s going to get on with it and get all the principal characters together for the denouement. I’ve reached a point where two completely new characters take center stage, and apparently all three books in the cycle are divided, so that it’s more like 6 books than three.
UPDATE:
Last night’s turkey and latkes were delicious. The meat came out flavorful and moist, and the latkes were a pretty amusing mixed bag of tasty alien-looking blobs.
Today I have a few little odds and ends to wrap up, and that’s the end of my vacation week. Next week, we get through Christmas Eve, and I have a slightly different work schedule around the holiday, and then it’s back to the grind. Oh joy.