...Its Feas Were White as Snow

Gainesville

Thanks for the lamb advice, Sandy! That's exactly what I was going to try, were I not to hear from you and could find a boneless lamb leg. Alas, Albertsons was the only place open (and it was a madhouse-- no carts in or near the store, so one had to run around the parking lot to find one) and the only lamb they had were shanks and monstrous whole lamb legs. I lucked on a smallish (2 rib) rib-eye roast. It was nicely packaged, with the backbone part cut off and tied to the roast. The lines were so impossible to get out that I opted for a short one that was cash only; good thing I'd just come back from traveling so had the nearly $100 on me, and then some. (Let me clarify, this was for the week's shopping, not just the roast!)

The roast was lovely-- parts were medium, for Bill's taste, parts nearly raw, for mine. The cat loved it all. I've got the leftovers divided into the sliceable hunks, and the chunkable (rare) parts to use in a stir fry later in the week. Had cauli-rice fried with browned onions-- Bill had to ask what it was, so successful was the disguise! I found it a bit mushy, but it worked well as a carb substitute. Also had green peas, sliced cukes & onion (made last night before I realized they would NOT go well with kraut), and a very nice Albertson's artisinal bread, crusty stuff with Kalamata olives baked into it, that was still warm when I bought it. Not too bad for a last minute feast. Of course, a meal like this is fairly easy to throw together, but perfectly dreadful to clean up after. I did it all, though.

I second the call for Marty to post her recipes. Plus, Sandy, you MUST post the orange and fennel thing. I have a lot of oranges I need to use in a hurry, and we both love fennel. (I'm assuming this is fennel the veg and not the seed, which I do not love.)

Two "emergencies" forced this to be a FL-intensive day. First, I thought I smelled something off when I came in to get coffee, but found nothing. When I sat down to eat breakfast (grits, of course) it was worse. I'd been meaning to check the Yukon Golds (yes, the very ones we bought when you were here, Sandy), as I thought I'd use them for mashed potatoes and finally get rid of them. Too late. WAY too late. The (luckily airtight) bag was about half liquid! Is there ANYTHING that smells worse than liquified rotten potatoes this side of a decaying corpse? Bleeeaaahhh!!! I had to immediately take out the big garbage bag I'd dropped them into, then disinfect the indoor garbage can, then clean out and disinfect the whole produce caddy thing beside the door to the TV room. I had perfectly fresh and new apples and oranges in there. I'm not sure whether they have permanently picked up the foul reek, or if it's just my having olfactory hallucinations-- the stench seemed to follow me wherever I went for hours.

Then late this afternoon, as I was about to start the roast, Bill asked me where the Tax Forms were-- time to do that little chore. I had no idea. He's been doing the taxes since we got married, so I have not paid any attention, except for my own W-2 and interest statements, since then. He swears he saw me pick them up off the coffee table in a stash-and-dash prior to Sandy and Mom's visit. I did no such stash-and-dash from the coffee table. A bit from the library desk, a bit from the study, and I knew exactly where those boxes were. Spent an hour going through the boxes, knowing I wasn't going to find anything, but knowing that dealing with this horrible paper clutter was long overdue. I left piles of it on the desk and on the puzzle table to force myself to start doing some 15 minute stints on it. We never did find the forms, but it was no biggie-- we file the simple form, so Bill just downloaded it from the net. We had everything else we need, and we're all ready to go. As soon as I write the check.

[goes, writes check] Good, now that's done.

The trip went well. The rental car was comfortable, our GPS (nicknamed The Bitch because she is such a pain when you stop for gas or otherwise deviate from her pre-programmed route) worked perfectly and delivered us right to the entrance to the hotel right about 6:00 pm.

The hotel was a trip unto itself. I'd been there before, but not to stay. What a psychedelic experience! We were both dazzled by the ever-changing vistas in every direction. We had a wondrous room (for practically nothing, conference-rate) that was oddly shaped, but featured a huge angled wall of glass with a great view of the city-- Mom, you'd have loved it. We never tired of gawking at things every time we went anywhere.

The conference itself was fun. I'd registered Bill as a guest, and he attended quite a few programs on his own, and enjoyed them. A HUGE conference, just under 600 sessions. Everything I went to was enjoyable-- one on baseball in particular: papers on Wrigley Field as a religious place, Billy Martin and the 1952 World Series, and the history of women's baseball/softball -- all perfectly delightful! Another on movies (chick flicks) almost equally so. And (oh yes) a couple on comics too.

Mine went well enough, considering. 8:00 AM is not the most wonderful time slot either for speaker or audience. The AV set-up was a disaster-- I knew it was going to be just a video monitor, but had no idea it would be so... small. Most of my stuff was lost. If I'd only realized, I could have tailored the slides so they'd have made the points legibly. It was good being with the other people talking about the Davidson Collection, as it gave what I said some more context. (And what a treat that no one on the panel was talking about pornography, unlike the UF thing.) It was a small audience in a small room, maybe a dozen attendees, and 3-4 of them were the UF clack. Still, it was quite a lively discussion afterwards, and to my astonishment, one of the people there turned out to be the editor of THE scholarly comics journal, and the kind of person they already name awards after: John Lent. I'm so glad I didn't know before hand that's who he was, or I'd have been a basket case.

As it was, not one of my finer performances. Rita and Tof just read their papers, no visuals, so they could stand at the podium. Cathlena had a PowerPoint, but she just TALKED about it (lucky her, to be able to do that) and stood beside the monitor, poking at her laptop as needed. Alas, the cable was not long enough to reach from the podium to the monitor, so I was forced to read my paper sitting down. This was not, shall we say, optimal. I bulled my way through it, nonetheless. I managed. And of course, during the question period, I was fine. I really do KNOW this stuff, which is a nice feeling.

This will have to be continued. Didn't expect this to run so long.