Getting in the Holiday Spirit

Last week was filled with many firsts that signal the beginning of my holiday season. The first snow fall--it actually stuck, until the sun came out. I started production of our christmas card-although it has been in the works for a few weeks. I listened to christmas music by choice-I was assaulted in Target a week earlier. The sending of our second annual Christmas Cookies and Creature Comforts party's evite. The subsequent mixing and freezing of cookie dough for said party. The discussion of gifts for my mom with my sister.

And attended my first holiday play of the season.

I paid for the pleasure of attending this play, because my good friend Rawson stars in this oh-so-lovely piece. Have you ever read Capote? If not you should. He has a beautiful, poetic, descriptive prose. I was interested to see how Tim Gregory would do adapting two of Capote's auto-biographical short stories into plays. He did it with ease. The literary quality of the play is expressed by long discriptive monologues by the lead, my friend Rawson. He does a lovely job capturing our attention and expressing the emotions of his charecter (a 7-8 year old Alabama boy called Buddy). Rawson is supported by two other actors, Peggy Roeder and Mike Trehy.
There are two acts, the first a Thanksgiving story and the second, Christmas.
The structure of the play si roughly short scenes sandwiched by monologues. Monologues by Buddy that set up the scene, where we are and the emotional context, and then the other actors come in to bring the story to life. All three actors are solid in the roles they play, but it is really the relationship between Rawson and Peggy that makes this work special. Peggy play's Buddy's older spinster aunt, who is like a child herself.
There is no way to capture the beauty of their friendship here, you must see the play, or if you can't do that, at least go find the story and read it.

I was most excited to go see this play with my friend Shannon, shown here with Rawson. Even though I just saw her last week, it is never enough, never going to be like when we saw eachother almost every day. Oh well, we have a great time when we do get together, and that night was no exception. She and Rawson hadn't seen eachother in months and so it was an especially happy reunion for them, as you can tell. We went out for a drink and rehashed good times. Remembering funny events may not be quite as good as the first time...well, unless you have a video, then it's even funnier. Which if you go back a few monthes to our time at Lion in Winter together, you will experience for yourself.

To top of my week of holiday joy I have pie.

My best pie, structually--check out that height!--, to date. The recipe is from Cooks Illustrated, but was not followed to the 'T.' I changed the recipe by nixing the top crust and subbing an oatmeal topping. yum. Although this cranberries on the bottom cran-apple pie looks pretty, I like the flavor of thoroughly mixing the cranberries with the apples better. So next time I will keep the crust recipe and the method of pre-cooking the apples and crans separately, but I will mis them together before topping with oatmeal.
Tomorrow I go Thanksgiving shopping, grocery shopping that is, so tonight I will dream of all the things that go into making a delicious Thanksgiving.