Holidays are here at last

Catherine is showing off her nice iPhone X photos

The holidays are here, and as usual I’m stressing out to get all of my end-of-year blog content written before we leave on our Christmas trip and generate yet more content to blog about. I also managed to secure the contract to run this year’s family Christmas Quiz, which I don’t think I’ve been allowed to do since I was about five years old and asked questions like “name the the first book on the shelf in my bedroom”. So the pressure is on not to blow it this time.

Latkes!

These Christmassy and/or Hanukkahy photos (the ones with the nice focus) come from Catherine and AJ’s holiday celebratory gathering, during which Randi cooked latkes, we all made gingerbread cookies of varying degrees of crispness and whatever college football [sic] game was on in the background became infinitely more interesting when the pitch (do they call it a pitch?) started to fall apart. Play then stopped so that a harried operations dude could ‘fix it’ (by scattering coal dust?) and the TV commentators, lacking anything else to talk about, began to commentate earnestly on this repair job instead. “This guy’s doing amazingly. Look at that concentration under pressure. Oh… oh… we have his name!”

And once that was all over we watched The Room (worst film ever made) in preparation for seeing The Disaster Artist (retelling of how the worst film ever made was made) this week, which was amazing and very funny. It’s probably still funny without seeing The Room first, I guess, but I’m not sure why anyone would let that opportunity go by.

The incredibly meat-like Impossible Burger

In the last few weeks Randi and I also saw Voyeur (a documentary about journalist Gay Talese and a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades: it’s honestly a bit of a toss-up about which one has bigger problems) at a Dinner & Docs event. I also made a quick two-day trip to Palo Alto during which I was excited to try the Impossible Burger. It is a really impressive attempt to re-create a meat burger from genetically engineered plants, and it was totally delicious.

I do fear it moves us a step closer to the nightmare future where the next generation, able to enjoy all of the pleasures of eating meat without any of the downsides, smugly update their morality and then charge their parents and grandparents with meat-related crimes over bitter family dinners. I can see it all now. You hear that, next generation? I preempted your outrage.

At the 2017 Groupon Holiday Party

Last weekend we also partied at the Groupon holiday party at which T-Pain did not appear (I was indifferent about that, but the party was nice), played satisfying games of Dixit with Jason and Carrie (i.e. games I happened to do well in) and watched The Third Man in preparation for our trip to Vienna. This film taught me that everything in Vienna happens at a jaunty angle, and that if you want to go home again the British army is happy to buy you a plane ticket and drive you to the airport (#travelhacking). Finally, tonight we saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi with Toggolyn before we leave tomorrow. It seemed a bit long to me, but maybe that’s because my mind is already drifting to our travels, which start tomorrow. Tomorrow!

Merry Chrismukkah!

Janet Thorogood, Hazel Boss, Kristina Francisco, Susanna Märak-Freeman, Catherine Tarsney, Beth Dubowe-Lawrence, Jason Bd, Sri Venu Paturi, Helen Hudspith, Josh Bernick, Randi Lawrence, Amanda Schalk liked this post.