Pushing my way into the holiday season

It seems that the weather is always news here – this week it snowed a lot, and yesterday and today have been supercold. This morning it was around -40°C/F (Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same at -40°) with the wind chill. Jeff decided to go running anyway, but was fully decked out in winter gear including the goggles that my brother got him for his birthday, and the Road Noise speaker vest that he got last Christmas. He looks a little bit like an alien, but that's okay.

Work has continued to be very busy, and both yesterday and today I have had to spend a good amount of time working. However, this Friday we leave for a five-day trip to Calgary where we will be celebrating an early Christmas with Jeff's siblings and their families. I do not plan to do any work during that time, and have warned all my students (undergraduates, honours students, graduate students) that I am on vacation during that time and won't respond to them. So as busy as things are, there is a very lovely light at the end of an increasingly short tunnel.

Despite being busy, I have managed a few fun things in the past week. First, my local library branch had a workshop on Wednesday night teaching how to arm-knit a scarf. I heard about arm knitting several months ago, and was intrigued by it then, so when I found out that this workshop was happening, it was free, and it was at a convenient time and location, there was no way I could not do it even if I was busy. It was lots of fun, and in less than two hours I have learned the technique and made a giant scarf. It's too big to actually wear, so I will probably undo it and make a smaller version.

On Saturday, we hosted our annual American Thanksgiving potluck. Jeff made a turkey, and I made a squash lasagna using this recipe. We had a slightly smaller group then we have had the past two years, but it was still a reasonable crowd with nine guests. The lasagna turned out to be really good, and was definitely better for hosting than the pumpkin ravioli or pumpkin gnocchi that we made in the two past years. Those have to be cooked right before you eat them, and involve lots of active kitchen time, whereas a lasagna can sit by itself in the oven and then sit on the counter for a while if it needs to before being eaten. I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that we substituted butternut squash for the kabocha squash (easier to find, and comes precut into cubes at Costco), and used a combination of Jarlsberg and mozzarella for the cheese (Safeway didn't have Gruyere), and made the squash purée a day ahead of time to spread out the work a bit. Oh, also we used fresh lasagna noodles instead of dried, and omitted the garlic. Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly, and I highly recommend trying it as it was delicious and everyone said so.

Today we got a Christmas tree, though we won't start decorating it until tomorrow. It is in a stand in the living room thawing out, and smells wonderfully Christmasy. Also, I just finished filling twelve of the twenty-four days in our wooden advent calendar with little things for Jeff, and later tonight he will fill the other twelve days with little things for me. Besides that, I also ordered a regular paper advent calendar complete with woodland animals living in buildings in a town, which we will also use and can bring with us when we are out of town. I am so ready for this horribly busy season to be over, and the holiday season to begin :-)