And soon I will be alone. . .

At last Christmas approaches. Advent is long past, and the days of proper Yuletide are upon us. The snow is melting, because it's actually winter now, so things are warming up: weather goods look down upon a white Christmas with scorn. One more final, Old Norse: perhaps the most difficult, in that the most can go wrong, the most can be forgotten, but also the easiest in the relative amount of work involved-one can only go over the paradigms so many times before the brain is no longer being helped.

So I'm working on my novel, in between studying, which is a grand relief and pleasure at the same time as being a whole new kind of stresser on the brain. I am, at least, thankful that fiction writing requires no footnotes, or citations. When I steal from people, I don't actually have to mention it. A lovely thing. I'm going back through the Lord of the Rings again, as well. I think this is number five? Or possibly the sixth time through. But there's always something new to learn. I've started to realize the last time, and further this time, the ways that he improves upon his sources. I got a little teary eyed this time when Frodo accepts the ring at the Council of Elrond, and Elrond himself praises his glory: Frodo will sit, for his courage alone, among the best elves of old, the storied heroes and even their forebears. It's the classic Vita scene of saintly nobility and reward, but with a thousand times better set-up and written than any writer of hagiography could have managed. It's an interesting aspect of Tolkien: when C.S. Lewis' Christianity comes out in force, it's annoying and distracting; but when Tolkien's Christianity comes out it fits so perfectly, so flawlessly, so much better than any truly didactic or allegorical author could manage. All the sensibilities of the religion make some much more sense in his world than in they ever could in the real one-which, I suppose, is the point.

Everyone leaves on the sixteenth. And then two weeks of sweet, sweet freedom. Solitude. I'm so excited about it, it makes me fidgety just thinking about it. Barbara and Bahb will be around for some good company, when I need it (I already promised the former some games of chess, which will be a delightfully nerdy and Icelandic Christmas celebration), but for the most part it will be all novel writing and thesis translations and cleaning this greasetrap of an apartment. I will be losing my workout partner, but maybe I can convince her to send me disparaging emails about my midsection to keep me motivated. Maybe I will even stop spending money for awhile, deprived of James the Enabler, and catch up with where my bank account ought to be.

A few pictures, of ice, that it might come again.