where have I been?

I dunno. Not doing too much. We had good holidays. Thanksgiving was a small event. Richard and Tommy came over. We ate a lot. Most of it was good, but the turkey got overcooked (dry!) and my gravy kinda sucked (bland!) but the sweet potatoes and potato and turnip gratin and stuffing were good and the rolls were as fluffy as I have ever gotten them.
The semester seemed endless, but it finally was over. Grading took forever, mostly because of all the students I had who just would not finish up. Finally I gave out something like 15 Incompletes and came home.
Christmas… I do love Christmas decorations. 2 live trees again, plus the aluminum tree, which I still haven’t completely taken down. 8 for Christmas dinner. The number of people we were expecting kept fluctuating—up to 15, down to 6, back up to 8—so we cooked for about 30, as usual. We had a GOOSE. Goose rocks because it is self-basting. All you have to do is keep removing the fat from it. We ended up with 2 tubs of goosefat. Wow. But we also had a turkey, and country ham and honey ham, and Marti’s bing cherry jelly, and Aunt Frances’ scalloped pineapple, and Catherine’s brandied peaches, and 2 kinds of stuffing (1 with sausage) and 2 kind of sweet potatoes (1 was a savory gratin), and cranberry relish, and oysters, and I don’t even remember what else. Dinner landed on the table about 2 hours later than we predicted. We always have a marathon Christmas—Christmas Eve dinner at Dick and Marti’s, then Christmas brunch at Wade and Andrea’s, then dinner at our house.
Betsy got a gingerbread house (ok, it’s rawhide, not gingerbread) for Christmas.





Went to Baltimore for Aunt Frances’ 100th birthday party. She’s still the sharpest person in the room. Saw a bunch of cousins and second cousins I haven’t seen in forever.
Went to Liz and Jimmy T’s New Year’s Eve party. We had people over on New Year’s Day… everyone seemed low key and hungry.
And then we went to St Augustine for a few days…not long enough. Never long enough.

And now… school is back in full swing and I am supposed to be grading and finishing an article I have to get out today—some of the papers from the conference I went to in Sept are supposed to be published together in American Nineteenth-Century History. I don’t know much about the journal but it is indexed in sociological abstracts so that’s cool.
I have some sort of cold...nasty.
Amy visited last weekend. This pic is from her October/November visit. Soon we will have Amy in VA for good. That’s a cheerful thought so I’ll stop here…