The same idea occurred spontaneously both to me and to David: let's put lizards on the Christmas card this year! What could be more Christmasy? So I made myself a stencil (the white lizard above) and got a stack of paper scraps ...
... and I cut out sixty little paper lizards, which David matched up. Here they are: an army of Christmas lizards waiting to be glued to the blank cards. Go, lizards! Spread holiday greetings and Floridian cheer!
Before the party on Christmas Eve, one thing after another went wrong, starting with some rotten cucumbers.
A bottle of good wine shattered in spectacular fashion. Fortunately it happened in the garage and not on any carpets.
I had an ambitious baking plan that involved lots of cookies from my favorite Christmas cookbook, like these elegant Swiss meringues.
They turned out looking ... different from the photo. Maybe if our guests had been flies, we could have served them at the party.
A whole string of cookie disasters followed. Some were burned, some refused to cook at all, and some overflowed and turned into one giant blob that had to be cut apart into pieces.
Somehow, though -- almost entirely through Temporary Librarian's efforts -- we managed to set out a beautiful table at the party, and we even had enough cookies to pass this platter around on Christmas Day.
It's wonderful to be back in Bloomington, where it's wintry and beautiful.
All the Christmas decorations are up in my parents' house. I love seeing my grandparents' reindeer sleigh ...
... and the stockings hung on the mantel.
... and piles of presents under the tree.
And most of us ended the day sitting around the Christmas tree ...
... playing with our new toys and reading our new books.
This morning we're in Huntsville, Alabama, which is almost exactly halfway between Tallahassee and Bloomington.
It's a huge center for space research. Last night, when we were a little lost looking for our hotel, the entire city seemed to consist of endless rows of giant spacecrafts. At night they are lit up with an eerie greenish light.
All the grading is finished. The semester is finally over! Now it's time for us to start packing and getting ready for our trip back to Bloomington.
I opened the front door one day this week to find this creature sunning itself on our doorstep. For a few days, while we had unusually warm and sunny weather, it stayed stretched out on the brick doorstep until we came out, and then it would disappear into a hole under the door. David and I were so excited.
We thought we might have our own household snake, like the ones you see in wall paintings from Pompeii. These snakes were associated with the household gods, and they represented a protective force that watched over the family: the genius loci, or guardian spirit of the place. We were delighted to think that we might have a creature like that living on our doorstep! But then we discovered that it wasn't a snake at all, but something much more amazing and bizarre.
Our doorstep guardian is a legless lizard! An Eastern Glass Lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis), to be exact, one of Florida's native lizards (photo from this blog). They are shorter than snakes, and their heads are a different shape. Because they evolved into their current shape more recently than snakes, they have more lizard-like features, like movable eyelids and external ear openings, which you can actually see if you look closely at David's picture. 
I can't imagine a more perfect genius loci for our townhouse in Tallahassee! 
I'm getting close to the deadline for turning in the draft of my dissertation, so I've been spending a lot of time at my desk lately. So, inspired by this post, I thought I would show you what it looks like now. I still haven't put all the shelves in the bookcases, but I did manage to put up this poster. I find that it provides some perspective during dissertation panic.
I also spend a lot of time looking at these dancing nymphs, hoping that they will give me some insight into nymphs in the Argonautica. 
And I always keep this icon of the prophet Elijah on my desk. I got it at a monastery I visited when I was studying in Greece, and it reminds me of the mountainous Greek landscape.
Today I realized that, when I'm contemplating Apollonius, I look just like Elijah. I even have my own raven, a former Halloween decoration that accidentally got stored in the perfect place.
Maybe a still small voice will tell me what to write next.
I've been decorating the apartment in the bright Florida colors of this fruit bowl, which includes tangerines and some delicious locally-grown Meyer lemons.
We may not have any of our pictures on the wall yet, but at least we can look at some cheerful flowers. (Hidden picture search: can you see David in this photo?)
We left a very large ornament collection in the kind and understanding care of Temporary Librarian, because we didn't trust the movers with it. So we didn't get a Christmas tree this year. Instead, we have this tall green narcissus, which has just started to bloom.
You need some kind of tree with ornaments, though, so I decorated this one with ribbon and random pieces of paper cut out from a magazine. I thought about covering the whole room in paper chains too, but I restrained myself. 
This year, my New Year's resolution is really going to change my life. I love notecards and stationery, which is why I have this pile of them, but I never get around to writing anyone. That is going to change, however, because this year I've resolved to write a note to someone every day. I was so excited about it that I started last week. By November 29, 2008, I'll have written 365 notes! Start checking your mailbox.
