BGB tonight. With Brian.

Hooray!!!

Now we just need Steve, Steve-O and the rest of the old gang back. :-)

Last night proved to be a lovely evening. Brian came to town yesterday and Shane & I did lunch with him at Baker Street. After work we went over to John & Petti's for Guppy Comfort Chicken and a generally lovely evening. Its always nice to see John & Petti, and their house just gets more and more gorgeous every time I'm there. These lucky people with room to entertain. Boo hiss.

Tonight we're heading to Appleton to meet up with Megan and Mitch. They're in town from Pittsburgh and visiting his parents in Green Bay, so we're going to dinner with them. Its always nice to see friends from far away with little or no travel time. :-)

In other news, I need to come up with a New Year's Resolution for 2010. Normally I have all this figured out well ahead of time, but I've got nothin' right now. Hmmmm.

And yet again, I maintain that gearing up for a short work week is like flying from Madison to Milwaukee. You get packed, drive to the airport, get through ticketing and security, board the plane, taxi around for a while and listen to the flight attendant speeches...all for a 16 minute flight.

Someone should make motivation vitamins. I'd buy them.

Its been years, and I mean years since the last time I was this hungover.

Woof

Its 9pm and I'm just now starting to feel human again. Note to self - no dinner plus wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine = mammoth hangover.

I heard a fascinating story on The Writer's Almanac this afternoon, which is piped in to Wisconsin Public Radio every week day at 1:00. He talks about the date in literary history and reads a short poem. Today he was talking about a story by Evelyn Waugh called Bella Fleace Gave a Party. I had never heard of it before.

The story is about an old woman in her 80s named Bella Fleace. She lives outside of town (in Ireland, I think) in a huge old 18th Century mansion. The place is essentially crumbling around her, and she has very little contact with the rest of the community around her. At one point her cousin comes to visit from England. He is the heir to everything and basically comes to scope out the goods. He spends a couple of days going through the old house and becomes particularly fascinated by a set of rare first edition books. After he leaves, Bella decides to spite him and sell the books.

She takes the money from the sale and decides to fix up the house a bit and throw a huge party. She sits down and writes out the invitations, hires servants and caterers. She has a dress maker in Dublin make her a "magnificent gown of crimson satin" and gets out her best jewelry.

On the day of the ball she wakes up early and starts thinking of all the things she needs to do. Candles to be lit, silverware to be polished, etc. The house looks perfect in the candle light, and at 8:00 she descends the stairs only to discover that not a single person has attended her party. She waits. No one is there. She has the butler bring her her supper of quail and champagne and tells the band to go home, as there must have been some big, disappointing mistake. Suddenly guests start arriving. Two ladies and their husbands that Bella had intentionally not invited. She tells them with great formality that she hadn't expected them and to please forgive her for not being able to entertain them. She sits down on the sofa and says "I don't quite know what's happening...they came uninvited, those two...and nobody else." She dies the next day.

Her cousin from England, the heir, arrives and once again begins going through her things. Among the things he finds are, in her desk, stamped, addressed but un-sent, the invitations to her party.

I find that completely fascinating, and as such have added it to my Amazon wishlist. :-) Something about all the past grandeur this woman must have recalled, an era when formality meant something entirely more formal than the world she was living in.

An incredibly busy weekend. And can I just say how nice it was to be so busy that for about 24 hours I didn't really think about work at all? Wow.

Friday afternoon the fireplace servicemen were an hour and a half late, only to tell me that there's nothing wrong with it. "Why does it smell like its leaking gas?" I ask. No real answer. Nice. As such, Shane & I got a late start down to Madison with Lucy. We had dinner at Hooters and then rushed over to Trader Joe's for wine and sundries for this week. We got out of there at 9:00 on the dot and decided to stop at Plan B for a beverage on our way home. Of course we ran into a bunch of people, including Beth & Randy, John & Paul, as well as Heller and his cohorts. While we were there the DJ started and they played the Charlie Brown Christmas on all the video screens. Love it! A good time was had by all, and we ended up getting home around 2:15. Ugh.

Saturday morning we got up and headed out to Ken & Beth's for the annual Cookie Baking Extravaganza. Mark & Rhonda were already there, and of course I made my standard snowman cupcakes. Ken made corn chowder and again, a good time was had by all. We headed home to get ready and then off to Brad & Jason's Christmas party at Baker Street. LOTS of people there. Upon walking in the door I was greeted with a scream and a big hug from Chrissy...Marshfield Brad's friend. I haven't seen her since we broke up over 5 years ago. Wow. I can't believe she remembered me! Steve & Gene were there, and Ken & Beth & Lucy, Mark & Rhonda and others met us there, followed later by Tom, Rhonda, Deater, Laura, Sarah and many more. Over the course of the evening Brent, whom we'd met before at the Chef's Dinner, made his intentions clear by buying me a shot. And then taking my tie off at the bar and unbuttoning my shirt...which, of course, Shane's boss noticed, to which of course he commented to Shane "Ummm...do you know the guy at the bar with Kristopher, or should you be worried?" LOL The band was great, many drinks were consumed, and it turned out to be a looooooong night. Getting to bed at 3:30 should be something of my youthful past.

Needless to say, 8:00 Sunday morning came quite early. I played for church, rehearsed the choir, and then we went home to finish the trim out in the sunroom. We also stopped over to Brian & Jeff's Holiday open house, wherein we ran into Patti Norton. I went to high school with both of her kids, one of whom is now in London. Craziness. Turns out the house they live in was built by the same architect who's other buildings I've been swooning over for years. Lucky people. We ended up finishing the night out in the sunroom getting things ready for Holidays On Ice tomorrow night. Which brings us to our plans for tonight. Clean. Clean. Clean.

A wildly busy weekend indeed. Thursday I had an unexpected root canal in the morning, which was annoying to say the least. At least I love my dentist. :-) Thursday evening I had the first Monteverdi concert, which was attended by Ken, Beth, Shane, Rhonda, Mark and many others. Other than the BAT that kept screeching during the performance, everything went well.

Friday I took the day off and did some cleaning/organizing around the house. Shane and I hosted his boss' brother-in-law James for dinner. I decided to try Dave Lieberman's recipe for Meatloaf with red pepper sauce, roasted red potatoes and saute'd green beans. Not bad, not great. Ken & Beth stopped over after their work Christmas parties and we ended up opening a bottle of wine that Bradley bought me back in 2002 when I was living on Knickerbocker. Woah. It actually wasn't that bad. Who knew?

Saturday morning Shane's parents, Chad and Devon all came to town. I made lunch and we installed a garage door opener for Shane, hung the canoes as well as the picnic table from the rafters in the garage. That evening we had another concert out at St. Maximillian and the BGB Christmas party afterwards, which was attended by Shane's parents as well as the Olsons. Love them!

Sunday morning I played for church, then to visit Shane's parents at the hotel before they headed out of town, and then home to get ready for the last concert. It went quite well, and was attended by my parents, Shane and my grandparents, as well as Jody & Robin. After the concert Shane & I noticed that the little antique store down the street was open, so we stopped in looking for my "new-old" Christmas ornament for this year. We got to talking with the guy that owns the place, and in the process schooled him about aluminum Christmas trees. Turns out he's Rhonda's old smoking buddy. Small world. We also got to talking about letterpress printing and may end up running his sales receipts for him at the Fallout Press. That evening was spent at home relaxing. Finally.

And now, for the Christmas Kitsch. First, I give you the cardboard fireplace:


Straight out of the 1950s, with the original box, constructed of the same material as the fireplace itself.

As well as the two new ornaments:



Aren't they lovely? I'm loving the pink squiggles.

And last but not least, the 1960s Aluminum Christmas Tree:


Made by Aluminum Specialties of Manitowoc, WI...the company that developed the original aluminum Christmas tree in 1958.

Well folks, it doesn't get much kitschy-er than that! And I love it.