The Thing That Goes Doink

If I leave the "fuck" out of that quote it loses its punch. Anyway today is Christmas Eve and for those on my F-list who are celebrating tonight, please be safe. :)

Last night I watched the end of Slayers Try while my husband made pies. Yes, pies as in more than one. One chocolate pecan pie and one deep dish apple pie with crystallized ginger. Anyway, I've reached the conclusion that Slayers Try one long detour in the Slayers-verse that really doesn't move the plot along and really doesn't do much as far as character development goes. It hammers home a couple of points though:

1) Lina is absolutely terrified of her older sister Luna - and probably with good reason.

2) Xelloss lives to cause trouble, and love and kindness is actually quite a good weapon against him.

3) Lina is also very much aware of the fact that the minute that she stops being useful to Xelloss he has absolutely no qualms about killing her, but she doesn't care because as long as they're mutually beneficial to each other, she has nothing really to worry about. Besides, she does has the ultimate weapon to use against him - Amelia the ultimate genki girl.

I also watched the first episode of Slayers Revolution, which was a little jarring as I had just watched the first three seasons in English and switched to Japanese. I do prefer the Japanese cast to the English cast, but I had gotten used to them (except for Xelloss - what the hell were the casting directors thinking hiring David Moo for him?!). As it stands Funimation only has the first two episodes of Revolution up on Hulu, so it's much more prudent to watch it in Japanese.

Today I made an apple crisp for dessert to take to my mother's place tomorrow, all while listening to White Christmas. I thought about putting in the DVD, but I wasn't really watching it and it's more on for background noise. My husband has sighed and rolled his eyes several times when I quote or sing along with the movie, because yes, I've seen it that many times. I should probably start trying to figure out what the hell I'm wearing tonight, as tonight is the Christmas Eve celebration with my husband's family.

I don't know if I've ever gone over the Christmas routine, but for those of you who are new, here's the run down.

My husband's family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve with the big family dinner and games. There usually family pictures as well - which means I should probably remember to bring my tripod and charge up my camera battery. We don't have to be over there until 5, and I'm also swinging by my sister's place (the one I'm more or less estranged from) in order to pick up a few things from my dad and I'm debating if I should take his present. I'm not entirely sure if I want to go over tomorrow, so I may just take it and be done with it.

Christmas Day is when my family celebrates. Christmas morning my husband and I will open our gifts to each other, and then go over to my in-law's house for breakfast and presents. Once we're done there, we'll probably spend a couple of hours getting gifts put away and then head over to my mom's house and we'll do presents and then dinner - this time my brother and grandparents will be there. Things are pretty chill - hang out and play games and enjoy each other's company.

At any rate I think I'm just gonna chill out the rest of this afternoon.

So I randomly decided that I wanted fresh baked cinnamon rolls this morning. There's nothing wrong with that, I like to bake/cook. And I was determined to do this by scratch. No tube cinnamon rolls for me!

The process started at a little after seven last night, because the recipe I found online is for overnight cinnamon rolls. Make them up the night before so all you have to do is proof and then bake them the following morning. The recipe I found came from Food Network's site, from one of their top "celebrity" chefs. And by "celebrity" chef I mean Alton Brown who decided to go to culinary school after coming up with an idea to make a cooking show modeled after Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty Python (which is a winning combination in my book!). However Brown is notorious for his use of appliances, like a stand mixer with a dough hook.

My apartment kitchen is large by apartment standards, but too small to properly house a stand mixer. So.

I was kneading dough for about ten minutes last night to get the dough to the proper consistency. And then spending two hours waiting for it to rise. Then spending half an hour rolling out the dough and then putting the filling in and cutting the rolls to put into the pan. It was about ten when all was said and done. The rolls were covered and stuck in the fridge until I pulled my butt out of bed this morning to proof the rolls in the oven. Proofing actually went pretty well, considering all I had to do was put a cookie sheet with boiling water under the rolls in the oven. After about half an hour they were ready to bake, and thirty minutes after that, I had freshly baked cinnamon rolls. Which smell fantastic. The cream cheese frosting was also made this morning while the cinnamon rolls cooled.

By the way, all this was done while watching Bond movies on Bravo. And the 30 Second Bunnies James Bond medley. (As a result, "The decoder weighs ten kilos. Make love to me James!" is currently stuck in my head. >_o) 

Anyway, I have the Mazda now, I just need to get one of the title holder's to sign off on it.  I left her a voice mail so hopefully she'll call me back within the next fifteen days - or else I have to pay a fee.