Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Merry Christmas to my readers who celebrate it, whether as a religious holiday or as cultural-inertia tradition; and to the rest of you I simply wish a really, really nice day.

I'm up, I'm fully conscious, I'm noticing the time, I'm noticing that my mother never did clarify what time "breakfast" meant in yesterday's email, and I'm guessing that whatever time she meant, I've missed it. To be bluntly honest and hope Mom isn't reading this, I wasn't looking forward to that as much as I'm looking forward to the gathering in Rockville later. There are reasons (beyond mere "family obligations/expectations") for me to want to make it to each, and with more than a day of warning and a time to aim for, I'd have tried harder, but I expect to be more comfortable in the environment where I don't feel like I have to put on a special costume just to be allowed in. There's more to it than that, but anything else I decide to mention publically, I'll talk about some other day. The clothing issue tops the list.

Last night I was asked what adorable thing Perrine had done to spark yesterday's "oh teh cuteness" entry. But she wasn't even doing anything especially cute -- that was what got me about it: all she was doing was moving like a cat. She was maneuvering across my folded-up tent to reach a gap between some boxes. I saw that whole-body "curious"-look (intent, but not actually hunting anything yet) and watched her picking her way across obstacles, and that was enough. All she was doing was ... being a cat, and my heart went all melty like that. I'm hopeless. *sigh*

But she really is a beautiful, adorable cat, even without the particular enchantment she seems to have cast over me.

I didn't make it to church last night, but I did eventually recover enough spoons to make it (late, of course *sigh*) to Breno's Christmas Eve dinner, where there were yummy food, yummy desserts, some yummy people, and later, yummy music. It was a nice group of people to hang out with, and reminded me that I really need to start having a social life again. (I'll put off the downer of examining why someone with so many friends sees so little of them for a later; I want to focus on the upbeat for now.) I stayed longer than I meant to -- probably longer than I should have -- but you see, musical instruments came out. There was noodling. There was showing off. There was singing. There was jamming. There were rapid Google searches for chords and lyrics. There was a lot of trying to keep up in unfamiliar genres with too jazz-like chord structures for me to follow reliably. There was the moment when I thought I was finally getting better at following the other guitarist (who could kick my ass all the way down the fretboard and back again, by the way -- classical training, a really good ear, and very sure hands) and it turned out that he was following me -- each of us was trying to decorate what the other was playing, and we sort of spiralled into a groove we could lock on that neither of us had planned, and we didn't realize how it had happened until silmaril asked how on Earth we'd wound up in that particular key. There was bossa nova, Scottish, Irish, Andean, classic rock, GnR, Buffet, ... oh yeah, and some Christmas music, too (including "Riu Riu Chiu", after Googling the lyrics). And at one point we paused to read the first several verses of John 1 aloud. I recited John 1:1 in Greek, then we took turns reading verses in English, and afterwards we got to hear how it sounds in Turkish. Then we played more music.

I left the party aware that I'd been up longer than I should have been, but also feeling like my batteries had been recharged.

So even if the rest of today were to suck (which is extremely unlikely, by the way), I shall have already had a merry Christmas. And now I've slept and should get moving towards Rockville for the rest of it.