Tag: holidays
Merry Christmas
It is okay to say merry Christmas still because Christmas is twelve days, not one.
The blog has fallen into neglect (again) since I’ve spent so much of my time on the publication and promotion of Rags and Muffin, a novel I strongly recommend you consider purchasing for your post-Christmas relaxation reading. But I’m now looking to get back into my regular projects since the promotion is, for good or ill, now largely on autopilot. I am working on a planetary romance, but I think I may be able to crank out a collection of Rags and Muffin short stories before I’m done with that one. Stay tuned.
Christmas was a good time for our family. The magical girls and I traveled up to visit my parents, so the little magical girl had four grandparents to dote on her. She also got to meet her cousins for the first time. She’s a very little baby who recently started the stranger-anxiety phase, so I was worried about how that would go, but she warmed up to them with surprising ease. She adored her older cousin, who’s five, though she merely tolerated the younger one, who is about her age, and she occasionally cried when he touched her. She doesn’t like being touched by other babies.
My wife is currently planning the baby’s first birthday party with a Filipino enthusiasm for social gatherings. I worry that the baby is going to cry the whole time with so many strange people visiting our house. Although she was unusually calm for the first several months of her life, she’s reached the point where every little thing that happens to her is high drama. So the birthday is coming at an innoportune time in her emotional development. But so it goes, I guess.
Merry Third Day of Christmas
Image by Yumikuamku.
Merry Second Day of Christmas
Merry Christmas
I can only pop in for a moment. Today is the day the wife and I are celebrating Christmas since she has to work tomorrow. We spent much of the day making Christmas dinner. It was actually kind of nice, it being just the two of us, because we’re still newlyweds and we thought of this as a trial run at cooking a large meal. Not having guests meant it didn’t matter if we screwed up.
We made a ham with a bourbon molasses glaze, mashed potatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and a pavlova. This is my third experiment with hollandaise sauce … and the first time I’ve made one that came out well, which might tell you something about my cooking skills. On the whole, it was a success, so maybe when we are able to have guests over, we’ll be ready for prime time.
Holy Saturday
God is dead.
I’m Catholic, in case that wasn’t obvious, and we’re now in the midst of the Easter Triduum. The fifty days of Easter begin tonight with the Vigil.
Last year, in Deus ex Magical Girl fashion, we celebrated Easter with the egg-obsessed Shugo Chara. This year, I intend to keep that tradition alive by celebrating with the pseudo-Christian magical girl story Saint Tail, which I think I’m finally ready to review, just in time for Easter. Stay tuned.
Happy Independence Day from Urbanopolis
Roffles Lowell, the official illustrator of Jake and the Dynamo, sends us this delightful image of Magical Girl Grease Pencil Marionette cosplaying as the Statue of Liberty to remind us that imagination is freedom … whatever that means.
I doubt it if mankind’s last refuge, the megacity of Urbanopolis, has a Statue of Liberty. Instead of some colossus welcoming visitors to its harbor, it more likely has some kind of warning. Like a big sign saying, “Screw with humanity and we’ll kill you. We’re serious.”
In fact, while poking around the Internet, I think I found the city’s official flag:
I suppose, in addition to warning away mankind’s uncountable enemies, a statue in the harbor could potentially serve as a beacon to human survivors. Instead of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” it would probably say something like, “Get in the city if you want to live.”
It might be a statue of the Terminator.
Happy White Day
Art taken from the Anime Art Museum.
We can’t go full weeb unless we mention White Day. Japan has retooled the Christian holiday of St. Valentine’s Day into a day on which women give chocolate to men instead of the other way around. In 1978, Japan’s National Confectionary Industry Association created White Day as a day for men to reciprocate.
It is a tradition that you’re supposed to give three times as much on White Day as you got on Valentine’s Day. So be sure to do something nice for your magical girl today.
I might have a story about Jake giving candy to Dana … but I’m doing my taxes instead.
So, anyway, happy White Day. This holiday, I should note, is not only celebrated in Japan, but also in South Korea, though their tradition is different. Instead of having boys give girls candy, they lock students in a school and make them fight monsters and kill one another.