A Holiday Wish

May the Manifold Horrors of the Season Elude You and Yours Now and in the New Year!

i'm hoping da boss closes the office early today (2 would be nicely nicely) so i can get some last-minute christmas shopping done and then get home to bake the last of the cookies tonight. scAmtraking to NJ tomorrow noonish. last night i made a double batch of peanut butter cookies (only one, since mom's baking some at home) and made up the dough for lebkuchen. also experimented with my recipe for Hungarian butter cookies in a real Hungarian kinda way--decreasing the sugar and adding a shitload of hot paprika. it's the first of my experimenting with savory cookies, something i've had in mind for a while now. the next batch will be cheese cookies, if i can get to it tonight. still thinking about coffee meringues, macaroons, and banana smooshes... i'm just going to have to take some baking home with me and finish at mom's place.

just got an email from the boss's executive assistant to the effect that all of next week has been designated "casual dress"; i'm wondering if that means i can dress up as somebody who works from home. i miss working naked.

woohoo! another notice that everyone can leave at 1 p.m. today! i'm taking take that to mean Halifax time. seeya!

Revised Christmas Carols

So for years now I've been singing an alternate version to the last verse of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, really just to please the kids:

"Then all the reindeer killed him
Purely out of jealousy
And Santa, without headlights,
Drove into a red... wood... tree!"

So last night I was humming Good King Whatsisname (brief aside: used to hate the song, rozebud and I used to laugh at it, sang it in Cheese Lords and still hated it, came upon a truly lovely arrangement by Alfred Deller, sang it with my caroling group and now really like it) and an alternate last verse kinda just came to me in one swell foop. For them as doesn't know the song at all (other than "Good King Whatsisname" and "cru-well") here's the complete lyric:

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cru-el
When a poor man came in sight, gath'ring winter fu-u-el.

'Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know'st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?'
'Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fou-oun-tain.'

'Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither.
Thou and I will see him dine when we bear them thither.'
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together,
Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter wea-ea-ther.

'Sire the night is darker now and the wind blows stronger.
Fails my heart, I know not how: I can go no longer.'
'Mark my footsteps, good my page; tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze the blood less co-old-ly.'

Original: In the master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted.
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christians [we carolers sing 'good friends'] be ye sure, wealth or rank possessing:
Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find bleh-ess-ing.

New: In the master's steps he trod to the peasant's hovel.
He turned out a cheeky sod--wouldn't even grovel.
Mark this, Christians, 'tis no doubt, no need to be hasty:
Good King Wenceslas lucked out: peasant soup is ta-ya-sty!