Celebrations
Nov. 11th, 2018 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI've had a really full few weeks, but mostly full of cool things.
ghoti_mhic_uait made a Canadian Thanksgiving roast dinner the day after we got back from Sweden, and the food was incredibly delicious and I got to play Lego with Andreas, who is getting more ambitious at both building and creating stories.
jack's parents came to visit for a weekend, and it was ever so lovely to see them. We did lots of sitting around drinking tea and talking, and had Sunday lunch with my parents; the two sets of machetonim hadn't had much chance to spend time together aside from big events like our wedding.
jack hosted a Halloween party, not on the day itself since everybody was busy then, and it went exceptionally well. We had a decent crowd of people, about 20 I think which is impressive for a random Monday evening. And they came from a range of different social circles which mixed together really well. There were loads of great costumes; we and our OSOs and their children all dressed up as Harry Potter characters since the children are super into HP at the moment. Also Andreas got to put up the spooky decorations which is the thing he's most excited about at Halloween.
Last week was my mother's birthday, which happened to coincide with Cambridge Limmud. Again, all four of us and the children went, and we all had a really brilliant time. I'll try to write up some of the talks properly later on. Anyway my poet brother decided to give Mum a present consisting of inviting all our siblings and parents to a Friday night dinner. Since he's never done anything like that before I half expected a big announcement, but actually it was just a family dinner. It's just about possible to get me andjack to North London from Cambridge, and my other two sibs to North London from Brighton, in time for a meal, though it's a bit rushed. It was really lovely though, the sort of random fun discussions we always used to have over the dinner table when we were kids.
cjwatson's birthday is close to my mother's. We went to the Harry Potter studios with the children. It's not something I would have chosen to do for its own sake, but it was surprisingly interesting, learning about how films do special effects when they have a near-unlimited budget. Really cool mixture of animatronics and CGI, and things like the design of all the branded HP-verse items down to random toys and book covers. I was interested in all the tricks they use to make Hagrid look like a giant, including an animatronic head for his 'size double', a much bigger actor. They have an absolutely astonishing detailed scale model of Hogwarts, the size of a large hall.
This weekend we went to Operation Survival, a museum-based puzzle hunt game similar to the one we played last year. Thanksceb for pointing it out to us! We were able to take Judith, who was excited about the game, even though it's pitched at adults. The game this year wasn't very puzzly; it was mostly about finding things in the various museums, rather than solving anything. But the hunting was great fun and it felt really nice that every member of the team was able to contribute different strengths, my hyperlexia and finding key info in museum labels quickly, fivemack's strategic cleverness, Judith's powers of observation, and ghoti_mhic_uait's planning and navigating.
Also, it's exactly four years since we got together withghoti_mhic_uait and cjwatson, so we've been celebrating anniversaries. ghoti_mhic_uait took me to Navadhanya, a moderately fancy Indian restaurant we were both excited about. We had a tasting menu for £50 a head, without drinks, and they were able to do one veggie and one omni. The thing that made it more exciting to me than some of the fancy European style food I've had is that they were going for complexity and contrast in flavours a lot more. Lots of tiny dots of really interesting chutneys. I think my favourite was a bhaji-like fritter with rose yoghurt, with interesting vegetables and chutneys. I had paneer with tamarind where Ghoti had monkfish with smoked aubergine, and I was a bit sad to miss the smoked aubergine, but then they gave me a whole stuffed smoked aubergine opposite the chicken course, so I was more than content. Service was generally good except that they took nearly an hour to bring the bill; leaving people some space at the end of the meal is nice, but we didn't really want to be sitting around until 11 pm. I'm planning to go back there for a treat.
cjwatson and I celebrated with afternoon tea at Browns, which was really quite disappointing; the veggie sandwiches were boring, cheese and tomato and cream cheese and cucumber, and the scones were tiny and a bit dry, and there was no tea selection, just English Breakfast or a couple of herbal tisanes. But it was really nice to spend some extended time together, and look back on four years of being ridiculously coupley.
So yes, it's been a complete social whirl since I got back from Sweden, and I haven't even got started on any of the after-the-holidays stuff. Lots of really fun occasions, though. Today I had a whole day at home for the first time in a month, except that I have caught a rotten cold so I spent most of it just feeling sorry for myself.
ghoti_mhic_uait made a Canadian Thanksgiving roast dinner the day after we got back from Sweden, and the food was incredibly delicious and I got to play Lego with Andreas, who is getting more ambitious at both building and creating stories. jack's parents came to visit for a weekend, and it was ever so lovely to see them. We did lots of sitting around drinking tea and talking, and had Sunday lunch with my parents; the two sets of machetonim hadn't had much chance to spend time together aside from big events like our wedding. jack hosted a Halloween party, not on the day itself since everybody was busy then, and it went exceptionally well. We had a decent crowd of people, about 20 I think which is impressive for a random Monday evening. And they came from a range of different social circles which mixed together really well. There were loads of great costumes; we and our OSOs and their children all dressed up as Harry Potter characters since the children are super into HP at the moment. Also Andreas got to put up the spooky decorations which is the thing he's most excited about at Halloween. Last week was my mother's birthday, which happened to coincide with Cambridge Limmud. Again, all four of us and the children went, and we all had a really brilliant time. I'll try to write up some of the talks properly later on. Anyway my poet brother decided to give Mum a present consisting of inviting all our siblings and parents to a Friday night dinner. Since he's never done anything like that before I half expected a big announcement, but actually it was just a family dinner. It's just about possible to get me and
jack to North London from Cambridge, and my other two sibs to North London from Brighton, in time for a meal, though it's a bit rushed. It was really lovely though, the sort of random fun discussions we always used to have over the dinner table when we were kids. cjwatson's birthday is close to my mother's. We went to the Harry Potter studios with the children. It's not something I would have chosen to do for its own sake, but it was surprisingly interesting, learning about how films do special effects when they have a near-unlimited budget. Really cool mixture of animatronics and CGI, and things like the design of all the branded HP-verse items down to random toys and book covers. I was interested in all the tricks they use to make Hagrid look like a giant, including an animatronic head for his 'size double', a much bigger actor. They have an absolutely astonishing detailed scale model of Hogwarts, the size of a large hall. This weekend we went to Operation Survival, a museum-based puzzle hunt game similar to the one we played last year. Thanks
ceb for pointing it out to us! We were able to take Judith, who was excited about the game, even though it's pitched at adults. The game this year wasn't very puzzly; it was mostly about finding things in the various museums, rather than solving anything. But the hunting was great fun and it felt really nice that every member of the team was able to contribute different strengths, my hyperlexia and finding key info in museum labels quickly, fivemack's strategic cleverness, Judith's powers of observation, and ghoti_mhic_uait's planning and navigating. Also, it's exactly four years since we got together with
ghoti_mhic_uait and cjwatson, so we've been celebrating anniversaries. ghoti_mhic_uait took me to Navadhanya, a moderately fancy Indian restaurant we were both excited about. We had a tasting menu for £50 a head, without drinks, and they were able to do one veggie and one omni. The thing that made it more exciting to me than some of the fancy European style food I've had is that they were going for complexity and contrast in flavours a lot more. Lots of tiny dots of really interesting chutneys. I think my favourite was a bhaji-like fritter with rose yoghurt, with interesting vegetables and chutneys. I had paneer with tamarind where Ghoti had monkfish with smoked aubergine, and I was a bit sad to miss the smoked aubergine, but then they gave me a whole stuffed smoked aubergine opposite the chicken course, so I was more than content. Service was generally good except that they took nearly an hour to bring the bill; leaving people some space at the end of the meal is nice, but we didn't really want to be sitting around until 11 pm. I'm planning to go back there for a treat. cjwatson and I celebrated with afternoon tea at Browns, which was really quite disappointing; the veggie sandwiches were boring, cheese and tomato and cream cheese and cucumber, and the scones were tiny and a bit dry, and there was no tea selection, just English Breakfast or a couple of herbal tisanes. But it was really nice to spend some extended time together, and look back on four years of being ridiculously coupley.So yes, it's been a complete social whirl since I got back from Sweden, and I haven't even got started on any of the after-the-holidays stuff. Lots of really fun occasions, though. Today I had a whole day at home for the first time in a month, except that I have caught a rotten cold so I spent most of it just feeling sorry for myself.
