I've been messing around with this blog for a good few years, but lately I'm just done with all social networking - tumblr deleted, LJ inactive, Facebook only used to keep up with a handful of British friends and for the fine art page I follow - and I think I'm finally ready to use this thing.
This is actually part of a bigger trend that's been pretty steady all year of breaking away from internet crap, fandom crap, and so on. While I still enjoy anime and video games that have plots, I just can't make myself care as much as I used to. And I've been more and more interested in work, reading, history, food, culture... that kind of thing. Adult stuff, basically. I am actually maturing and finding genuine enjoyment in deeper, more important things. Not to say that's all I like - far from it - but it's quickly becoming all I love.
Anime and video games are fun for enjoyment, and a lot of the concepts (and ergo the characters) are very precious to me, but they don't really consume me the way they used to. Funny thing is, I've noticed basically the same thing happening with most of my friends and family too, at the exact same time as me. My best friend, who is better at procrastinating than I am, told me out of the blue today that she's staying away from the internet because it makes her less productive. Heh, maybe it's cause of me.
I've also been a lot more interested in history than I used to be, especially Ancient Greece. Books are kind of the name of my game (I'm keeping a list, people) and I'm really interested in Alexander the Great lately, as well as Arthurian Legend and the 100 years' war, but in general I'm thinking about books, history and food now instead of fandom, fanart, roleplay, etc.
I always used to look at the super hardore 30+ year old fans who'd been in it from the beginning and I would wonder if I was going to be the same way, and pour all of my attentions and effort into fandom for the rest of my life. Honestly, I'm incredibly relieved that I'm not that type. Indulgent fun is one thing, but I am so, so much more than the shows I enjoy.
My schedule has been off pretty bad because one of my husbands has had insomnia and I've been staying up with him, but tonight I'm preparing for a New Year's Eve dinner party that, if all goes well, will be quite an achievement. Five courses - soup; salad; main course; dessert; cake and champagne at midnight. The soup is a mix of a Texan custom that my other husband won't stop talking about of eating kale and black-eyed peas as a prosperity charm (cash and coins) on New Year's and an Italian kale soup recipe I love, along with some fresh-baked Italian bread; the salad is more of a light appetizer; the main course is chicken thighs with port and mushroom sauce and green bean casserole; dessert is pumpkin pie from scratch; and then at midnight, a torta di cioccolata e aranciata with orange 7-minute frosting and sparkling cider to bring in the New Year!
I spent tonight making the pumpkin pies - whole-wheat pie crust from scratch - and candying the orange peels for the torta (and also getting the orange syrup for the 7-minute frosting). Our friend Paul, who's staying the night for dinner tomorrow, brought me the port to make the sauce, and a bottle of something called cupcake wine which is kind of a sharp red, along with a bag of truffles. Tonight was mostly a wine/apple/chocolate party tbqh.
I'm going to be uploading the recipes pretty slowly, because let's face it, that's a lot of dishes. Besides, I don't think I'm going to be cooking anything quite this big again for a while. It's kind of a shame I wasn't blogging through Christmas and New Year's - a 6lb chicken and a 19lb turkey, respectively - but I'll have plenty of restaurants to blog about in the meantime, I'm sure.
--
Salvatore
