I'm back.

As always, Thanksgiving break is just a bit too short. Just as I've relaxed, it's time to come back home. (And I guess this was a pretty hard semester after all; seeing a friend of the family, she commented that I looked "pale" and asked if I was tired. I don't know - I'm always very fair-skinned, even mid-summer, and I think sometimes what people interpret as "pale" is just my natural complexion but I do think I was kind of tired.)

(Though I will admit to surreptitiously pinching my cheeks to try to raise a little pinkness - I didn't have quick access to my makeup bag to put on more blush - after that comment was made)

I didn't get to see my brother and sister-in-law after all. A couple weeks ago, my brother had what was most likely H1N1. He was just barely getting over it when my sister-in-law got sick this week, and our general consensus was (a) she should not travel as she did not feel well and also might be contagious and (b) my brother needed to stay with her to look after her, get her tea, make sure she had food, etc.

But that's OK. I will see them at Christmas.

But it was good anyway. (And probably good I made the effort to travel to be with my parents, since my brother and sister in law couldn't be there). I didn't do a whole lot - helped some with the cooking, hung around and knitted, Saturday helped put up the outdoor Christmas lights.

Pretty much all my Christmas shopping is done - I do need to make a small gift (I'm going to do a couple of dishcloths) for a family friend, and I do need to figure something else out for another family friend, but other than that, I'm done, and did it entirely through mail order and the small shops in my downtown.

And I'm glad. I did the "Black Friday" thing once, many years ago, and that was enough to tell me that, despite whatever "deals" may be on offer, it is not worth the cost of my good will and Christmas spirit to cram into a store with dozens to hundreds of other people, some of whom will resort to underhanded techniques to get what they want. (And generally, the "big popular" gifts are not the sort of things the people in my life like or want). I'm sure some people enjoy that type of shopping - the thrill of the chase - but it's not for me, as crowd-averse as I am.

I did enjoy, while coming back, looking at all the Christmas lights that were already out. I particularly like it when small towns put up the bells or wreaths or other shapes outlined in lights on their lampposts.

I also read "Mauve" (the story of William Perkin's discovery of the first true artificial dye). I had started it a couple years ago and not got very far, but I read it through this time. It's interesting to think how much something that seems comparatively small - a different sort of dye - led to all manner of changes (stains for tissues, some medical applications in chemotherapy, other colors, the changes in the fashion industry...)

I'm also plowing my way through "The Whiskey Rebels" and really enjoying it - it's very suspenseful (it's told in an alternating-narrator format - there are two separate stories that have some figures in common, and so the chapters alternate between being narrated from the POV of Ethan Saunders, a former (now discredited) Continental Army spy, and Joan Maycott, a young woman and would-be author who has moved into the unsettled "west" (Pennsylvania west of Pittsburg) with her husband. It is leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion, a period of American history that I could tell you the date of, and perhaps the main idea (tax revolt against taxes on fermented product), but very little else - but I am learning. (I think the author, David Liss, was pretty diligent at trying to get the history right).

And so far, it passes three of my "tests" for historical novels:

a. No explicit sex scenes, please. (Oh, it's alluded to. Apparently Saunders made a bit of his living by being, if not exactly a gigolo, a sad-case that women would take pity on...and he would, ahem, perform certain services for them. And of course Joan and Andrew are married. And there is even a male couple (and yes, it is made clear that they are a couple, not just two guys "batching it" until/unless one of them finds a wife) in the frontier group that help them after they've been defrauded...but no heaving bosoms or throbbing organs, much to my relief)

b. Nothing that seems glaringly anachronistic or a badly-done way of setting the time period. (I remember years ago, putting down a novel after one of the female characters declared near the beginning, "It IS 1888, after all!" in a rather non-sequitur sort of situation)

c. (This is probably the hardest to explain or put one's finger on why it works) it transports the reader to another place, it furnishes a sort of escape from the here and now.

I'm about 1/3 through but the rest promises to be good. (And I also have Liss' earlier novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, which I bought not too long after it came out in paperback, having read a favorable review, but never got around to reading. I think I will do that, now, after finishing this book)

I also did do some knitting (pictures to come later). The Neverending Scarf of Neverendingness got finished (and blocked!) and I finished the Angee socks - both projects I had had going for months. And I started a pair of fingerless mitts and the "traffic stoppin' boot socks" - though I think for me to actually stop traffic in them, I'd probably have to build a time machine, go back to 1905 or so, and wear a skirt sufficiently short to show off my ankles.





Oh, and one last thing: NO advertising your blog on my blog if it has NOTHING to do with what I am writing about! (I had to track a spam comment down on a 2+ year old post. What benefit that brings the spammer, to post on an old archived post no one reads, I don't know, but that irritates me) I've had to delete three spam comments (I realize that's very few by everyone's standards) but it annoys me - I never get any "bennies" from anyone for the blog - I don't run ads, I don't accept free products - so why should someone be able to shill their site on mine?

If it continues I shall have to go to comment moderation, as much as I hate that. And I have a new little warning that should be there right above the comment form. If you happen to go to comment.