A day not like all days

Started cooking yesterday a little before eight, with family and friends due at nine.  Made a big platter of bacon and two mounds of sausage, regular and high-test.  Lots of coffee and tea.  Lore's Tim, the engineer chef,  baked a large pan of coffee cake, exquisite.

We noshed and opened gifts till one.  Gay took pictures of the tree before and after, which I'll post after she gets up.

I made a respectable haul.  Two fountain pens, a workhorse Lamy Safari, nicely garish lime green, with a 1.5 mm. italic nib -- and a verrry nice Pelikan 200 Italic.  Both of them wrote fine right out of the box, the Safari with a Lamy cartridge and the Pelikan with slippery Levenger Amethyst ink.

I think my first Pelikan Italic was also my first expensive pen, back in the sixties, about $25 then.  Just under a hundred now in the no-frills version with the "I" gold-plated steel nib.

Interesting teas.  Two of them are from (I think) the only active tea plantation in the United States, the Charleston Tea Plantation.  Governor Gray and Plantation Peach.  Also an intriguing box with Teavana's "Balance and Harmony" collection of four oddities.  "Body + Mind TM" is typical – Monkey Picked Oolong with Mao Feng white tea and Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearl.  I hope the monkeys were paid a union wage.

Lore made us a lovely ceramic berry dish, an aerated  box that keeps strawberries cool and fresh in the fridge.  Gay and I have berries with yogurt every morning, so that will see a lot of use.

Of the making of books there is, of course, no end.  Elmore Leonard's short story collection FIRE IN THE HOLE, Terry Bisson's autobiographical novel ANY DAY NOW, the cookbooks CULINARY TEA, THE SCIENCE OF GOOD COOKING and A FEAST OF ICE AND FIRE (recipes from A GAME OF THRONES).  The Hadley Richardson bio (Hemingway's first wife) PARIS WITHOUT END.  The optimistic BRAIN POWER, subtitled "Improve Your Mind as You Age") to which Hemingway might add "Isn't it pretty to think so?"  P.D. Smith's massive CITY ("A Guidebook to the Modern Age"), which I asked for, thinking it would help my futuristic imaginings.

Sister-in-law Barbara gave us her hand-bound annual collection of "The Straight Dope," the ultimate bathroom book! 

For the kitchen I got a potato ricer and an improbable spatula shaped like R2D2.

DVD's of the complete series THE WIRE.  CD's of both seasons' soundtracks of TREME, Guy Clark's DUBLIN BLUES, Ry Cooder's PULL UP SOME DUST AND SIT DOWN, and from Capitol Steps, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (FOR PRESIDENT).

And instead of a partridge, a miniature remote-control helicopter from ThinkGeek.

Good Christmas.  I prepared a 16-pound turkey and put it in the oven, and then relaxed in the tub for awhile, reading.  Then sort of cooked until dinner.  Served nine, ending rationally with low-carbohydrate ice cream.  Who says we're not health-conscious?

Long day but fun.  Now to deal with left-overs.

Joe