first frost and snow spectacular

it's really incredible. it's been snowing outside for the last several hours at least, but the sun is shining like it's the middle of july or something. i've never seen anything like it before. wow. it's almost like being in one of those artsy chinese movies where people fly and shit. really cool.

i've really gotta work on remembering to write in this thing when i'm _not_ feeling melancholy.

thursday i woke up and found that it had frosted the night before. winter is coming, folks, and quickly. and that means: snowboarding! whooohoo! i can't wait. one of these days here pretty soon i'm going to have to kidnap enno and get him to tell me which boots i need to buy, then i'll be all set (henri gave me a board last year; it's not much to look at, but it seems like it should be adequate).

friday night we were invited to a housewarming party by two of our semester project students. i, of course, felt like a complete social retard for most of the time, but eventually did meet a fair number of really neat people. initiating a conversation in a non-native tongue, in an environment where there's enough noise to effectively obfuscate what someone would be trying to tell you in your native language, is not easy, let me tell you. but i did get to talk with one guy (vincent, from around paris, if i remember correctly) who was really cool about the whole thing, and complimented me on my accent, but later had to teach me how to pronounce my own name correctly (in french), which was amusing, to say the least. according to them, i learn quickly, but i'm not sure how drunk they were. overall, it was a really enjoyable evening, even despite the awkward moments when i was standing in the middle of the room by myself, not sure which if any conversation i should try to interrupt and barge into.

sean mentioned that he knows a place in geneva to get a decent classical guitar for ~160 francs, and offered to pick one up for me sometime. i'm rather tempted to take him up on it. we'll see what happens.

okay, and then, as always, there's the shitty part of the story, but i'm trying really hard to make it into a positive learning experience. now, i haven't really been interested in drinking since the embarrassing incident when peter was here, and occasionally people give me funny looks for turning down drinks, but this time i thought i would be clever, and avoid having to explain why i didn't want to drink by offering to drive. sounds simple, right? can't go wrong... well, it seemed to work great, right up until we all got strapped into nikolaus's car, and i proceded to back up straight into what i swear was an invisible pole. i still can't believe i could have been so stupid. the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful; we dropped off jim and enno at their respective apartments, and then back to nikolaus's apartment. he was really cool about it, but nothing could really change the fact that i felt shit because of it. i suppose in the big picture, he's right, and it's not that bad (it hit the corner of the bumper, and caused a stress crack about 4 inches long, which isn't really noticible unless you're actually looking straight at it). he told me not to worry about it, and mentioned that if anything i had already made up for it the time when i fixed the latch on his hatchback when he had broken it and couldn't get it open. he said it's an old car and he plans on running it into the ground rather than attempting to sell it, so he doesn't care much. i hope he still feels the same way now that he's not inebriated anymore.

anyway, here's where the lesson comes in. i'm trying to remind myself of great uncle chet's wise words from one of his many stories: "learn to be a good receiver." (this next part may well border on a relapse to religious dogma---if it gets too bad, please shoot me.) of course, he was right; when someone offers me grace, or any other gift, for that matter, i should accept it with gratitude, rather than pandering on about how unworthy i think i am. it's harder than it sounds... but i'm trying.

yesterday was shopping day extrordinaire. tonight we're gonna do the cooking thing, at enno's place this time, and he said he invited a couple of girls as well. he had a boat race yesterday somewhere far away, and so i offered to pick up the stuff we need. sounds like we're going to try to do chili in sourdough cannonballs with spanish rice and cornbread. also, christiane (one of the secretaries at work) gave me about a quarter of the big pumpkin that they had used for decoration at the "celebrate the new building" party on tuesday, so i want to try doing a test run of a pumpkin pie (from scratch) before we do this whole thanksgiving disaster. (did i mention that before? markus's girlfriend christine suggested we should do something for thanksgiving. i kinda think it will be a big joke, but hopefully a fun at the same time, as well.

so, i bought lots and lots of food, and went to three different stores looking for a pie plate. did finally find one, and it's even real pyrex, but it's the one with the extra raised dimpled rim around it; i usually prefer the ones with a flat rim that the crust can sit on. eh, after what i went through to find this one, i'll deal. [grin]

also on the list was a food mill, which i was afraid would be prohibitively expensive. but guess what! i actually found one at the thrift store! craaazzzy. and what's even more crazy is that i bought several other things with it (a candle holder, a shelf organizer thingy, a candy thermometer) and when i got to the counter, the guy looks at my pile of stuff, and asks for for 3 francs. wow. now the mill is old, and made of aluminum, but i had been trying to guess what it might be worth, and was expecting to pay between 10 and 15 francs for it. moral of the story: when buying cooking equipment at a thrift store, try to time it so you get checked out by the man who looks like he has no clue what the stuff you're buying is used for. works like a charm.

then it came time to actually try to make the pumpkin puree. and i learned another lesson: "collecting five different recipes and averaging them does not always produce the best results." janessa's instructions said bake the chunks at 400 in a dish with half and inch of water in the bottom for ~20 minutes. the other recipes i found referenced instructions that said bake at 325 for one hour, and then reduce to 300 for another two hours. so what did i do? i put it in at 325, with some water... when i went to turn down the heat after an hour, they looked _awfully_ soft, so i took them out---and suddenly, it dawns on me that the longer time was probably to dry cook them, and it wasn't just that they forgot the water, or that the water was a special trick that would make it work better. [rolls eyes] having little other choice, i peeled them and put them through the food mill. miraculously, it seems to still have worked alright, though i wonder if i might have lost some of the flavor by waterlogging them. incidentally, using this particular food mill was a little awkward, and i'm slightly less excited about it now than when i first found it, but hey, for about a buck fifty, it's hard to complain, and it did [eventually] get the job done. although it was a royal pain in the ass to clean, but i imagine even a brand spanking new one would have had the same problem. (did you know? mashed pumpkin = stringy nightmare.)

so i ended up with more puree than i expected, but it might be because of the extra water. i'll try to remember to report back on how the finished product turns out when we try to make it tonight.