In other news, I'm feeling pretty relaxed. I handed in grades on time yesterday, and then mostly goofed off, doing some minor e-mail catchup while watching tv until dinner time. Lisette was in town visiting her family for the holidays, and she came by for dinner, which was mostly successful. The tomato soup from a can with added oregano and pepper was yummy, especially topped with gruyere toasts. The mixed green salad with avocado and cherry tomatoes and a balsamic vinaigrette was healthy and tasty. The pasta with chicken was sadly something of a disaster -- couldn't taste the garlic, the sun-dried tomatoes were too smoky-flavored, skim milk doesn't make much of a sauce, even with a generous amount of butter, and the chicken breast was much too dry. Yuck. But we redeemed ourselves with the final cheese-and-fruit course of peppered pears with blue cheese and fried sage, super-duper-extra-yum. It was, of course, lovely talking to Lisette through all of this, despite the pasta-chicken fiasco. She's doing some bold and scary things in the business world, and I admire her for it; that kind of financial risk would scare the heck out of me.
Today, I've done very little -- mostly e-mail and tv. In the next two days, I'll be working on getting caught up on the two arts organizations (DesiLit and SLF); I'd like to find some more help for both of them, so they're less dependent on my time and energy for moving forward with projects and raising funds. Expect to see more from me along those lines in the next few weeks. I'm hoping to have them both in a stable place by the end of January, when the next semester starts.
Of course, I'm also hoping to revise a good chunk of my novel in January, but I am not making myself crazy with it this time. I swear. :-)