and so the retail christmas season . . . begins

[kindkit]

1) I had a pretty good Thanksgiving, in the sense of having a day off and eating lots of chicken and mashed potatoes.

2) I survived Black Friday and then had Saturday and today off, making up for last weekend's non-weekend. I had to come out of my usual workplace hidey-hole for a few hours on Friday to help customers, but it wasn't too bad. There was a weird moment about halfway through the day of realizing that, while we at the store have been preparing for Black Friday for weeks, this is actually the beginning of the Christmas retail season and not the end. There's still a month of escalating madness to go.



3) The pumpkin roll I brought to work cracked badly upon unrolling, filling, and re-rolling, but people liked it anyway. And the bread was an unexpected hit. Apparently all those baking books that tell you people are hungry for good bread with some substance are right. (I made Paul Hollywood's eight-strand plaited loaf again. I used his recipe but refrigerated the dough overnight to give it some flavor. So it wasn't a loaf with the serious heft of, say, a seeded rye, but still worlds away from weird fluffy insubstantial supermarket bread).

4) The first two seasons of Hannibal were on sale cheap on Black Friday, so I'm now prepared for the post-Christmas Hannibal watchalong that halotolerant and I are planning. (I haven't seen the show yet, so no spoilers please!)

5) I've been living off of Thanksgiving leftovers, although because I cooked a chicken and not a turkey, I'm coming to the end of those except for the chicken bones. But I have done a bit of baking. Yesterday I made mini apple pies, which seem to have turned out okay despite some difficulties. I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's pastry recipe, forgetting that while it makes a very flaky pastry, I have to add at least twice the amount of liquid she calls for to get a dough that doesn't just crumble to pieces as you roll it. So I had to add more liquid at an awkward stage, and then I still didn't add enough to in the bottom crust (I added more afterwards to the dough for the top crust) so that it wouldn't roll out thinly. Also I cleverly decided to save some work by chopping the apples in the food processor--the result was of course grated apples. But the pies are edible if imperfect, and the pastry still came out ridiculously flaky despite everything--the top crust looks almost like puff pastry!

Also yesterday I started some dough for a supposedly-Scottish oatmeal bread with allspice, nutmeg, and raisins. I seldom bake sweet, spiced, fruit-filled breads because they're not very versatile, but I felt like a change. The loaf should be ready for the oven in about an hour.

6) I finally watched Age of Ultron and enjoyed it quite a lot, unlike almost everyone else apparently. I grant that there are a lot of plot details that don't make sense, but I expect a certain level of nonsense from action movies. What I didn't expect, but liked, was the sense of fallibility and melancholy throughout.

7) I've been reading Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins book series, which are paranormal-ish mysteries starring a young female Anglican priest who ends up becoming the diocesan Deliverance minister, aka exorcist. There is much about them I don't like, starting with the premise that there is pure inhuman evil loose in the world and that Christianity is the main or possibly only force holding it at bay; this is an obviously, deeply, inevitably conservative worldview despite Watkins' supposed liberalism. The second book featured Satanists operating behind a new age front, which only just kept itself out of pure right-wing evangelical fantasy territory by including some token good new agers. The first book, meanwhile, managed to be homophobic despite the protagonist worrying at length that she was being homophobic and trying not to be; to be fair, this book was published in 1998, which in terms of queer representation is a loooong time ago, so maybe the more recent books are better.

In short, the books annoy the crap out of me, and yet I keep reading them because there's enough interesting stuff and appealing characters to hook me.

I wish I could find a mystery series I loved as much, or even approximately as much, as I loved Dalziel and Pascoe. Unfortunately there just aren't many writers like Reginald Hill.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

Oh my gosh, Hannibal, I am excited for you. It's so pretty! (This is not a spoiler - you can probably tell from the outside of the box.)

UGH RETAIL CHRISTMAS OMG AND WE DON'T EVEN HAVE THANKSGIVING. Ugh, ugh, the tourists are coming. THE TOURISTS ARE COMING and none of them packed their medications.

I like bits of Age of Ultron - I love the Vision storyline, and Paul Bettany is fantastic, though I miss snarky JARVIS.

[kindkit]

Do you get a lot of foreign tourists or is it mostly people from other parts of Australia? A medication crisis doesn't sound like fun to deal with either way, but it must be especially difficult when it's a foreign prescription and the drug may not have the same name in Australia or may not be available. (We get a surprising number of foreign tourists where I live, but from my store they only want movies and books and similar non-life-essential things.)

No more JARVIS is a sad thing, though I'm happy for Paul Bettany that more of him than his voice gets to be in a movie. Even if he is under ten tons of make-up. I think part of the reason I liked Age of Ultron is that I'm not super-invested in MCU, so I don't notice as much if, say, characters undergo personality transplants from one movie to the next. When I get fannish I get picky, so sometimes it's more enjoyable not to be especially fannish about a particular thing. I do read MCU fic, but like I said, I don't have a ton of feelings tied up in it.

I'm not unspoiled for Hannibal--in particular I'm spoiled for the ending--but just trying to avoid further spoilers. "Pretty" is definitely not a spoiler, and lots of people say it's pretty so I'm looking forward to that. I already know I find Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal very visually appealing--more so than when he was in Rejseholdet 15 years ago. Apparently these days if they're under 40 they don't (usually) do much for me!

[st_aurafina]

We do get foreign tourists - there are fancy rocks and coastline nearby - but it's the local tourists who are the hardest work if they forget medication. If you're international, the only way to get prescription medication is to get a doctor to write a prescription and I quite like puzzling out what they need and getting them an appointment etc. But I'm able to supply domestic tourists with an emergency amount of essential medication as long as they can produce a prescription in the next week, which makes things long winded because often I'm starting with "What do you need?" and the answer is "The blue tablet, I don't know what it's called or what it does." It's scary. There's a lot of blue tablets.

I can usually help them out, but doing all of that negotiation, while trying not to kill them with the wrong medication (googling where their regular pharmacy is, and calling the pharmacy to confirm it, and getting contact details for their doctor so they can organise a prescription) - it gets tiring and nervewracking. I know not everyone is able to organise their stuff, but I do get really excited when a tourist pulls out a medication chart or a list of what they take. It takes a load off my shoulders.

I think the international tourists have to be a bit more organised - it's easier to jump in your car and take off for the weekend and not pack your meds.

[kindkit]

That would be a scary responsibility. And also tedious and frustrating, dealing with people who can't be bothered to remember (or write down) things that are essential to their health! I mean, I get annoyed when people want, "You know, that movie? The one that just came out, about the cop," and that's extremely trivial in comparison.

[st_aurafina]

Well, some of it's part of having the ability to do those things - not everyone has the capacity to keep track of their medication, and I can usually chase down the information that I need. Some people are needlessly horrible about the time it takes to do this, though, especially in the middle of the Christmas rush. I'm sure you've seen similar behaviour. I can imagine the entire holiday depends on you identifying the correct cop movie. I'm sure you're the reason Christmas is going to be ruined now.

But that's why we have wine. /classic pharmacist addiction.

[kindkit]

If someone can't keep track for whatever reason, that's different, of course. But they should be patient and polite while you try to find out for them!

I suppose anyone who's worked in retail for a while has seen every kind of bad customer behavior imaginable. We had someone--an adult--deliberately piss on our floor once. Another time we found a used syringe hidden in a tote bag for sale.