yonmei

11:43 pm: Frost sparkles
I am in a better mood now than I was three hours ago, and I can't altogether say why. I went out to autopope's eyrie to collect the offered e-book reader he is lending my dad for him to try out to see if it works for him as a means of reading in bed. (At minimum, I think he should be able to read anything on Project Gutenberg on this rare device, and that covers a vast deal of my dad's preferred reading-for-fun as well as his reading-for-work.) If this works put, my brother and sister and I could buy him one, or something similar.

autopope gave me a copy of Halting State, which looks fab: yay for Christmas Day reading!

There was a hard frost early this morning - possibly even a light snowfall - which had melted into rain and slush by sunset, and after sunset, froze. The pavements on the way over were full of frosty stars. I walked there and back thinking about the limitations of photography. I can see those tiny bright fierce diamonds glinting in the light from the streetlamps, glittery against the dark pavement. But no camera could photograph this: it exists only in the human eye perceiving it.

I managed to take a photograph yesterday (Friday) of the light pouring round the steeple of the church facing the west side of Princes Street Gardens, from the terrace on the east side. The sun was just behind the steeple for a few minutes, and the sunlight illuminated the haar so that you could see it much more distinctly than the houses behind it: and the camera could see it too.

But not these frosty sparkles in the pavement, which exist only because my eye receives the light sharply reflected from them, and the light is at the right angle and of only sufficient intensity and so forth and so on...

Still. I'm feeling good. And sleepy at last, yay.


Plans for Christmas:

Tomorrow, I'm working in the Forest. (Tomorrow night, I should be able to bake fruit cakes: the starter is yeasting now, and the dried fruit is soaking in tea. Yay.)

Christmas Eve, at noon, I'm meeting a friend in a coffee shop to give my best advice on how to proceed against a homophobic laird. This should be fun. In the morning, I plan to make mince pies.

Memo to self: Must nap that afternoon. Must must must.

Christmas Eve in the evening: going to friends for mince pies, wine, other nibbles, and to midnight Mass at Old St Pauls. Probably going back after for more wine and nibbles: then home. Sleep.

Christmas Day: breakfast with other friends, long-planned and traditional.

Walk over to my parents for tea: may be able to go via the Forest, which will be open from four. But am not counting on it.

Parents for tea, terminating at 9:30pm when I get to catch the last bus home. Will make scones and pack them: may make cake: have bought hummus and a horseradish dip.

Christmas Day in the evening: writing flashfiction till I fall asleep or finish.

Tags: christmas, nonphotos, weather