Cold Weather Comforts

There's something incredibly comforting about homemade meals, familiar woods, and family. Having gone without my family for so long, it still strikes me sometimes how nice it is to be able to jump in a car and just go home. Of course, that home isn't the one I grew up in - but it is still the place that holds my old journals, my high school albums, and the detritus of the many lives I've already lived. Here's some of what I've been doing this weekend:

First, I've made unhealthy and glorious things.

Preparations for mac 'n cheese: (1) cut up insane amounts of cheese. 

(2) Create a cream-based sauce, and add more cheese to it.

(3) Forget that you're about to eat eight pounds' worth of cheese.

Holiday balls made from pages from Dante's Inferno. Surely it's okay to mix a fiery epic about the circles of hell with N'Sync's "Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday"?

Second, I've finally gone running and communed with some woods. I've had the opportunity, lately, to teach the work of some of my favorite tree huggers: specifically Emerson and Thoreau. As I ran through these woods by the Chesapeake, I kept hearing these words:

 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." 

- Thoreau (= awesome)

I've also been watching the 2010 movie version of Macbeth (again) and trying to figure out how to make the play more fun and intelligible. This is what happened when I broke out my felt tip:

Those are some high quality stick men in tartan.

I'm Writing To: "Lay Me Down", by The Oh Hello's