An Original Christmas Carol, By Me - So, before I get to how my week has been, on Friday I got a call from Rae (my Laurel, Tonwen). Now, for those of you just joining us, I've committed to an "Apprenticeship" which is best described as a Self-Study Graduate Work, with my "Laurel" being like my "Faculty Advisor" as I work on my grad studies. Really, that's how I picture what I'm committed to doing in research and historical artistic recreation. So, anyway....

Rae called me Friday to ask for a favor, but with the caveat, "I know you're busy and you're certainly allowed to say that you don't have time...." She wanted to commission an original song for her Secret Santa at work. The lady's name is Carol, and she was really named for "Christmas Carol." So, Rae wanted to give her an original Christmas Carol written just for her. I said I'd be happy to, and asked Rae to send me ideas and hints to work from, so the idea could percolate in my brain as I drove around. I do some of my best lyric composition while driving alone.

Rae wanted to see the song more from the religious faith side of things, rather than the seasonal secular holiday version -- a Carol instead of a Song, as she put it.

And recently, I've been looking at lawn decorations in a new way. I've been surprised at how I've never noticed the difference between the "American Secular Holiday" versus the "Christian Celebration" especially when it comes to decorating your home or your lawn. This year, I really noticed the houses with snowmen, reindeer, and penguins seem to be the new popular item. Now, I'm not saying I have any problem with snowmen, reindeer, or penguins -- in fact, I'm a HUGE fan of the Coca-cola Polar Bears every Christmas. Those are my favorite commercials, and friends and family have bought me Polar bear decorations in the past because I think they're so cute. [Don't take that as any hint -- I don't need any more.]

But this year was the first year I really noticed the huge gap between a Nativity scene and a Penguin on your lawn.

So, with these things in mind, and the commission request, here's what I wrote:
http://www.catellen.com/eilidhswann/carols_carol.html

There's a full set of lyrics plus two recordings -- a short one (my original, first recording) of just the first verse and chorus, and a longer recording of the entire song. The recordings are WAV files, and later I plan to work on a more elaborate recording and possibly MP3 files, but for now, I hope you enjoy these quick versions of me just singing into a little computer microphone.

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Week Before Christmas - Now, everything else. Friday night at the synagogue was really quite fun. Cross-town traffic on a Friday night was *hideous* but I was only about 10+ minutes late. They'd already lit the candles at every table, but I got there in time for the prayers. Then we had the prayers for bread and wine, and we dug into a lovely dinner together [lentil soup, salad, orange chicken, potatoes, roasted veggies]. When I snuck in a little late, I just picked a table at random to join for the meal, and it turned out I picked the table with the Rabbi and his wife, two friends I met in my Hebrew language classes this past summer (and one of their daughters), and two new friends I met over dinner. The gal next to me turned out to be quite humorous, quizzing me on what I did for a living, for my hobbies, why was I in Hebrew class this summer, why was I at the synagogue for dinner, how I got into medieval music -- the whole gambit. She really cracked me up, and we ended up swapping phone numbers. She and her fiance are making arrangements with the Rabbi for their upcoming wedding ceremony, and they both happen to be musicians, and are new to this synagogue. I look forward to chatting with her more.

The rabbi's wife was a real hoot, and I enjoyed chatting with her immensely. She's got some very strong opinions and made some unusual personal choices in life (like not changing her name when she married the rabbi, and she wears a kippah (or yarmulke) when she's in synagogue (which is traditionally considered the man's head covering). I look forward with chatting with her further, since she's quite a spit-fire. Of course, I'm now even more impressed with the Rabbi, that she is his wife. He's even cooler in my opinion now, than I already thought he was. *grin* She reminds me a lot of the women I'm closest to in my family -- she'd fit in well with my sister, my Mom, and me. *even bigger grin*

After the dinner, they did the longer after-meal blessing, which I've only witnessed once before, at last year's Sukkot dinner at my friend Matt's friend Josh's house. Josh thought it was amazing I knew the after-meal blessing (called the Birkat Hamazon) but I was surprised he thought I knew what was going on. The prayer book Josh used at Sukkot had the transliteration (or "how to pronounce Hebrew with English letters") and I can follow along with good singers. *shrug* So it was nice to hear again how the Birkat Hamazon goes, after a year-plus since the last time I'd heard it. Sometimes I'm amazed at how many tunes and songs, prayers and melodies my Jewish friends know! That's a lot of music to memorize!

Then I went to the Friday service for the first time ever, and I definitely am starting to see the difference between Conservative and Reform Jewish services now. The Friday night service at this synagogue is more Reform -- the Rabbi led the service, playing his guitar, and there was more personal instruction on "this is when we stand, this is when we sit, would someone read the next section?" from the copied handout for the service. The Saturday service (which I've attended once on a regular weekend, and twice for High Holy Days last year) is much more traditional and Conservative, with almost no explanatory commentary and very little English or Transliteration in the Siddur (the prayer services order and book). In fact, the lack of transliteration in the Siddur was one reason I thought "Gee, maybe some day I should learn how to read Hebrew."

But I recognized many friends from Hebrew class and the few services I've attended, and I enjoyed the Friday night worship service very much. We had coffee and dessert and socializing afterwards, and then I headed on home.

Demo and Party - Saturday morning I went over to the Archery range, where we were holding a demo of sorts. It wasn't your typical demo audience, so it was a bit unusual. But I did take my camera, and my Great Wheel, and got some spinning done. I worked on some alpaca fiber on the Great Wheel, which is a departure from the wool I usually spin on that wheel. I also very consciously worked on making a more narrow, thin yarn on the Great Wheel this time. Most of my wheel-spun wool has been very thick, bulky yarn. I really like the finished yarn I got at this demo, and I'll probably continue the experiment further at home.

Afterwards, I dropped off some of the equipment, quickly changed clothes, and headed up to a friend's place for her 21st birthday party. Many of us have known Leonarda on the fencing field since she was 14, so it was very cool to be there for her big 21st. And so, of course, I used that as an excuse to buy her a nice bottle of port and some rich chocolate.

We were greeted at the door with, "Internet friend? School? Dancing? SCA? Family?" since her party was a real blend of all the different things she does in life. I hung out with the SCA parents in the very loud living room, while we watched gaggles of small boys run around doing what small boys do. *grin* I've never spent a lot of time with Laertes and Sarina, but I really enjoyed chatting with them quite a bit. They're expecting their first child very soon. Kate and Andres were there, with Josh and Noah. Bryson's son (Bryson) was running around with the boys too. And later Tezar and Colwyn showed up with their little Nicholai in tow. Both Nicholai and Noah have been adopted from abroad, and my friends Darren and Janice are currently in process to adopt from abroad too. I'm so thrilled to see so many fantastic families amongst my friends, that I really just sat there with a grin on my face for hours.

I also enjoyed meeting several of Leonarda's "internet friends," one of whom I really clicked with and hope to see around some more. She (Alice) and I composed silly conversation lines to exchange text messages with Teffan, who was bored in Minnesota and being ridiculous with me on text messages for several hours.

Sushi, Dessert, and Looms - Sunday I slept in until noon (ah, blessed sleep!) and then did some random shopping for a while. By late afternoon, I met up with Kim (Amya) and we went for dinner. We stuffed ourselves silly on sushi (ah, sushi), and then on the spur of the moment took the dessert I'd bought earlier over to Adrienne's, to have her help us eat it. We had geeky string-love moments together, ooo'ing and aah'ing over knitted patterns, fiber, and yarn, and went into a sugar coma together over a custard pastry confection from Katella Deli.

I've given non-wool fibers to Adrienne (because she's allergic to wool) as spinning gifts in the past, and we keep the basket of spinning out in the living room, for those times when I forget my spinning and want to play with hers. This time I spun some of the Bombyx Top (that's Silk, pure 100% silky-silk) and Oh! My! Goodness! I so have to buy some of this for myself! This stuff is AMAZING! I cannot believe I bought her two whole skeins of this fiber, and I'd never spun it myself. Wow. Wow. Swoon and Wow.

Tearing ourselves away from the silk and the devoured dessert crumbs, Kim and I went back to her place so I could see her brand new first ever Christmas tree of her very own. I'd helped her decorate her tree by unloading some of my excessive Christmas decorations on her, because she didn't have any of her own. It was really lovely (and the pictures came out really cute) and we had a great time at her cute little apartment.

Best of all, we had fun being geeky about all her looms. She's got this gigantic 4-harness with a beautiful brocade project on it right now, and her new "it folds up all small and cute" 8-harness just waiting to take it's place in the corner. I'm sorely tempted to save the money to buy the 4-harness off her, since she plans to sell it. But no need to rush the decision. One, I have to pay back some other money first (yes, Hi Mom), and she's still weaving a large project on it anyway. But it's very VERY tempting....

Arts and Laundry - Arts and Sciences was on Monday, and the theme was holiday foods. Meala made little wafer cookies and spiced cider, Grace made a meat and fruit pie, and I brought my laundry and did it in the background all evening. *grin* We had a great time eating dinner together and pouring over all of Meala's cookbooks. Some of them were specifically historic recipes and techniques. One was an amazing "time line" encyclopedia of food-related topics and information. Several others were just a wealth of information. All in all, I think I want to sit around with a cup of coffee and some good cookbooks for light reading some evening!

Mom's Birthday - My Mom's birthday falls one-week before Christmas. Any of you who have birthdays in your friends and family (or your own) near Christmas know the balancing act you have to walk to keep from doubling-up on gifts. But this year I knew *exactly* what I wanted to do for her birthday, separate from any family Christmas celebration. I picked up one of those digital picture frames, and all morning loaded it with photos of her, her husband, her kids, his kids, and all the grand-babies. I took photos from her photos websites, mine, her emails, my sister's emails, and from my photo collections that aren't even loaded online yet. I got nearly 150 pictures on the frame and it seemed like a decent first collection of shots. Then I took some of the photos from the whole project and "made wrapping paper" from lots of photos, by just making a few slides in Powerpoint of 9-pictures per slide and printing 8 pages (well, 2 copies of 4 pages) on 8.5"x11" paper, trimming the white space, and taping all the pages together into sheets of wrapping paper. She *loved* the custom photo wrapping paper, and insisted on keeping it neat and untorn, too. And she loved the frame. Yay! I did good! *grin, giggle*

Social Practice - It's been raining here (yay!) on and off all week, and so our normal sword fighting practice for Wednesday evening was cancelled, for the muddy grass in the park. Instead, we scheduled "social practice" at the nearby IHOP, where normally we descend at 10pm and this time we arrived at 8pm. A dozen of us all came out for dinner, games, "More String, Better" and general happy good mayhem with one another. I was able to finally give Shoshana a Chanukiah of her own to take with her to college (since that's why I was taking photos of Chanukah lights for her this year, because she didn't have one). I found one shaped like a "tree of life" and found some candles that were very brightly colored and artsy. Yay.

Coming Up - Let's see: Hair appointment tonight, and maybe some more time recording songs at home and updating my bardic pages. Oh, and I should probably double-check registering my compositions with BMI, since I'm part of that composers' guild. Definitely I'm behind on processing photos, so that's on the task list. Practicing and research for Bard of Caid competition. Dinner party at our house tomorrow night. Saturday my roomie flies home for Christmas, and I take her to the airport. Sunday, a day at the museum with friends to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in San Diego. I have both Monday and Tuesday off work (no holiday pay, oh well). I'm planning to see my friend True & his son RJ in the morning, spend Christmas with family at my sister's house, and probably see Alan & Theresa, Jeff & Adrienne in the evening.

Yup, that about sums things up again!

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Shava, for such a wonderful long-distance relationship we've been able to continue to grow and expand with one another. I'm thankful to have you and Giles in my life.