201!

Because I didn't notice that Christmas Eve's post was number 200 on this blog, we will celebrate the 201st!

***

Alas, the unavailability of internet connectivity in Roseburg foiled my attempt to post daily for a month, and December 25 and 26 remain sadly blank. I thought about cheating with Blogger's handy little "backdating" feature, but no, I won't cheat. I'll try to post twice on a couple of days before the end of the year, just so I have 31 posts this month, but it just won't be the same.

Still, this Holidailies experience has been good for me. I haven't improved much at planning my posts ahead of time, but I have instead improved my ability to quell the frenzied protestations of my inner critic, to let myself just write something and post it without agonizing about what my friend's friends might think if they ever saw my blog. That doesn't come naturally to me, so any bit of practice is good.

***

We're back home in Seattle now. I was so relieved that our drive down was on a dry evening last week, and then it rained almost nonstop while we were there. There was a low spot in the road to my grandparents' house that was underwater most of the time...we began wondering whether we'd get stranded in Roseburg, if the rain kept up. But then our luck held! --today's drive home was almost totally dry, too. Score!

***

My mother cooked a 15-pound prime rib roast for Christmas dinner this year. Fifteen pounds is, what, the size of two babies? Or more? I mean, sorry to make such a macabre comparison, but in grasping for a comparison that was the first one that came to mind--"My niece hardly weighs more than that!"

Even stranger, she used three pounds of salt in the cooking of the enormous slab of meat. Fortunately for all of us, the salt is used as a paste that covers the meat entirely, making the final product incredibly soft and juicy and not salty at all, as the salt forms a crust around the roast. Impressive when it's cracked off and discarded in two enormous pieces, too.

Happy post-holidays! I hope you have something new that's as nifty as my new socks made of alpaca wool. Mmmmm, alpaca wool. Glaghlaghlaghlaghlaghl.