hoc tempore

Hanukkah is over already, but it's still Advent and B. is lighting her candles and has decorated the Christmas tree, underneath which cats perch and occasionally munch on the artificial needles. She's also playing the Roches' Christmas carol CD while doing the dishes after dinner. (I cook. She does the dishes.) So it's the season.

It also means it was the season for the book discussion group's annual Reading and Eating Meeting, last Saturday afternoon. This wilted, rather like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. There were only 6 of us there: us, the hostesses, and half the world's supply of authorized Elves. Nobody else was up to going, I guess. I brought along some home-cooked chopped chicken in an apple cider sauce I'd found in Raley's deli department, which was a big hit among the few who got to eat it; and when E. pulled out Always Coming Home to read from, I kicked myself that I'd forgotten to bring along one of Le Guin's late poetry collections to read from that, so I borrowed the book and read "The Third Child's Story" in its place. People claim that ACH is a utopia, but it isn't, and this piece is the clearest proof that not everyone is happy there.

Couldn't stay too long, as I had to get to work: to a concert whose review should be up tomorrow. Meantime, more in the season, the previous weekend I'd gotten to a choral concert titled "An English Christmas". It's sometimes hard to review these collections of numerous short pieces, but the review came out all right.