And this year Christmas was celebrated with my parents, my husbands, and
nineweaving. There was the traditional roast beef and the annually variable traditional plum pudding—mostly dates, figs, apricots, and cherries, still crucially brandy-flammable—plus a crystallized ginger cake decorated with white-and-dark-chocolate snowmen, contributed by Nine. For the first time in three years, I could drink my family's incendiary eggnog, which I had missed. I had never heard of Cabin B-13 (1948–49), but my mother correctly suspected that I would enjoy the complete radio scripts by John Dickson Carr collected as The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries from the Casebook of Cabin B-13 (2020); I had not known that Sofia Samatar had written a memoir, either, but
rushthatspeaks was equally right that I would want to read The White Mosque (2022) as soon as I found out.
spatch and I were the joint recipients of winter socks, calendars, and most importantly an electric blanket. I am also enjoying this CD of Justin Hopper, Sharron Kraus and Belbury Poly's Chanctonbury Rings (2019). Merrily, the contractors did not wake us this morning. The new moon held the dark of the old in its arms. We lit the last night's candle for hope.

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