people! i ain't people!

[walkingshadow]

when last i managed to update about life in general, gjstruthseeker was on her way into town: and she got here! and she stayed for a few days, during which we stayed up until five a.m. and knocked out all the SGA we hadn't seen together (excepting, still, "grace under pressure" and "the tower") plus various sad and bizarre and adorable items from the CVs of david hewlett and joe flanigan (in re: canadian cinema: o.O . . . O.o) and for the millionth time she tried to get me to articulate what it is i love about lt. col. john sheppard; she did not emerge victorious. more on that much later. *waves hand*

family came into town after that, my two cousins with their families, and we had tea for my dad's birthday last sunday with what felt and sounded like fourteen small children bouncing around the house, but was in reality only six. cake and coffee is delicious, but not sustenance, so i crashed after all the company except cousin m. had left, while we were getting down chanukkah decorations and setting up our menorahs (we have seven or eight, most handmade, and in our house everyone present gets to light one). good times! averted the small crisis with hydration and some protein, and then we got down to the serious business of scarfing down sweet-potato latkes and playing dreidel for pistachio nuts.

special to isilya: i have not forgotten about recipes for you! curried sweet-potato latkes are at the top of the list.

i had a dentist appointment on monday (or maybe tuesday? something). the receptionist called the day before to remind me, which was a damn good thing, as i'd had no clue. unfortunately i must have misheard her over the phone, because i showed up an hour early to what turned out *not* to be a 9:50 appointment after all. *facepalm* however! this wasn't even close to as bad as the two—two!—times i showed up an hour early to my wretched 8:30 a.m. anthro of religion class. so i ended up sitting with my book (always bring a book to doctor's appointments) in the bagel shop at the other end of the plaza and had a bagel and coffee (good bagels; lousy waitstaff) before, you know, a dental cleaning. so awesome. everything looks good, still cavity-free, blah blah blah have you ever considered bleaching your teethcakes.

randomly: the dog had some kind of skin irritation on his back, which the vet duly shaved and treated him for, and then they put him in one of those lampshade collars for the next two weeks so he couldn't worry at the patch. he's pathetic in it: he keeps knocking into things and trying to fit through small spaces, and i know i shouldn't think it's ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS, but i DO.

in general this past week was characterized by the successive lighting of more and more candles, the playing of several games of dreidel (note: dreidel is an amazingly boring game), and the eating of more and more delicious fried food. chanukkah says, "they tried to kill us, they didn't succeed, let's eat!" and "fried food: it's not just delicious, IT'S THE LAW." with various company (including cousin m., my visiting cousin l. and her two daughters, and malelia_honu) in attendance on different nights, there have been three different kinds of latkes, salmon fritters, southwestern eggrolls, and—for the coup de grace this afternoon—sufganiyot, aka doughnuts with powdered sugar. and now we are putting away the electric wok and never speaking of this again until next year. after thanksgiving, the cookie-making FRENZY my mother got caught up in making gifts for colleagues, my father's birthday, and the holiday that oil built, we're calling uncle. it's going to be all whole grains, big green salads, and steamed things for us for a while. also i'm going to whip out my map and compass and try to find my way back to a regular routine at the gym. *scans horizon*

last night we had cheese and crackers and shrimp cocktail, and three of us (my mother, cousin m., and i) polished off two bottles of champagne. if it's true that whatever you're doing at midnight determines what you're going to be doing for the rest of the year, i was frantically posting last-minute john sheppard recs to rec50 with a three-glass buzz on; i don't know if that bodes well or ill.

SPEAKING of rec50, my john sheppard recs are all done, and you can find my table with links to all 46 of them here (or check out the john sheppard tag at the community here). i'm signed on for rodney for round two. things that make me cry are web pages with no self-referential url, authors who go by two or more names, and smart quotes. also fake lj-cuts (see: the part where i like to click on the link to a page, not its cut-tag, meaning i'm clicking on the WRONG THING if your lj-cut is really external) and target="_blank"—because i'm perfectly capable of opening a link in a new tab myself, kthx.

there have been, like, fourteen million stories posted on the internets, and i have fifty pages of holiday-challenge fic recs saved for sorting through later, encompassing yuletide, sga_santa, undermistletoe, shackinup_sesa, jingle bells, batman smells, ds_seekritsanta, DWNOGA, and go_exchange. the only yuletide fic i've read so far is istanbul (not constantinople), a singin' in the rain story which i recommend here without reservation. it's don and cosmo on the vaudeville circuit, and it's perfect! so well-tuned to the times and to them.

gjstruthseeker was at home for a while, then up in lakeland securing housing to go with her shiny new job, but she's here again now. she came in for the tail end of brunch at cousin m.'s today (featuring bagels and lox, blintzes, and MIMOSAS). right now she's sleeping on my bed and has been since ten p.m., when she said she wasn't falling asleep, she wasn't—maybe she would take a nap. *pets her deluded little head*