The Lyorn's Den

From 2011 (or earlier) to 2018, R__, Gwydion, Ceridwen and I used to find a Saturday or Sunday in Advent to bake christmas cookies ("Plätzchen") at R__'s house with the large kitchen opening to a larger informal dining room. We each made between one and six sorts of cookies, and then shared them. It was fun, but it was strenous, too.

But then, 2019, I was sick. 2020 and 2021 there was Covid-19. Since 2022 R___ has houseguests who like to cook for everyone, so the kitchen has kind of become their space. Plus, after Covid we we all had gotten out of practice at managing our social schedules.

Today Ceridwen and I did the baking at my place. (We are back to coordinating two persons' schedules, maybe next year we'll manage three?). I made two types of macaroons, as I still had frozen egg whites from the previous year (when I had big plans, but found that my bad shoulder blocked implementation), and my standard "gold coins", undecorated small cookies with vanilla, brown sugar and honey. Ceridwen did two types of shortcrust pastry cookies: one with marzipan mixed in the dough, the other with vanilla. We started the day with a breakfast at 10 a.m. and worked until 8 p.m., then drank a whisky, shared and packed our cookies, and called it a night.

Despite doing only three recipes and sitting down a lot, I'm still exhausted and in pain. This is getting really old. But I haz cookies!

I might post the recipes later, or not. I'm wary of making promises.

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Also: Started reading Kameron Hurley's "Infidel". (Have not read "God's War".) Not sure if I like it. World is weird in an interesting way (also, it seems, crapsack), writing is good, but for me, it's a bit too close to the Eight Deadly Words so far. For now, wanting to know what happens next keeps me reading.

Hanging out with flederkatz: I had to go to the phone store (not one of my favourite things) to clear up some confusion, and flederkatz had offered to accompany me as she's a lot better at this. (Worked in a phone store for years and got it a reputation as the best in town.) So we met in town this morning, had coffee, the phone issue was resolved, and we spent the next hours with some shopping, admiring cats, having more coffee, and talking about stories we had written or planned to write. I had happened on a strange fragment on my hard drive the day before yesterday, and we tried to figure out where is was supposed to be going.

Thunderstorms, especially when I'm safe and dry: In the morning the weather had been mild and muggy, it turned to hot and muggy and then hotter and not-so-muggy. When I bicycled home it was too hot to be fun. I had a shower and noticed that the sky was turning steel blue. Distant grumbling could be heard, and after half an hour more a very nice thunderstorm broke loose. Sheets of rain, clouds of rain when the wind hit the sheets, stuff on my balcony blowing parallel to the floor, the green ditches around the houses flooding. I watched it for a while, very content with it being outside and me being inside, and then, as it had cooled down a bit, made tea.

Tea: More precisely, my favourite afternoon tea, an Assam Hattialli SFTGFOP 1. It's mild for an Assam, and if I drink it after moderately tiring day, it makes me most pleasantly awake, calm and optimistic. It was hard to get in southern Germany last winter, because (I've been told) tea comes in via Bremen in the North, and the northern tea retailers get first dips. But I brought some from Lübeck in March, and as I ration it out a bit, I'm fine for now. Also, it stays special that way.

I read a bit, cuddled the cat, had dinner, and am now looking forward to the rest of the evening. And tomorrow is Sunday.