A few photos from tonight are in this album now.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Lay It Down."

18 February 2011. Up this morning with that feeling of disorientation, but I dreamed that someone was singing “The Lord will light my candle so…,” which helped make getting out of bed not quite as daunting. Ate breakfast with Lisa; we sat and talked about Worldliness, the book she’s reading right now. Beth decided to cancel L629 reading group this morning, so I got to have a nice long quiet time before I left for campus. 

IU hosted a “Preparing Future Faculty” conference today, and I went to two of the talks, one at eleven about preparing for the job market and one at two about creating a record of research, teaching, and service. The conference was in the IMU Solarium, an attachment at the back of the IMU, a big nondescript room that opens off the alumni hall. The talks were actually reassuring: it was good to have some clearer ideas about what to expect when going on the job market and about what to do in the meantime (part of the reassurance might also have been the realization that grad school takes a lot of time, and I have several years before I have to worry about this for real!). 

Between the talks I met Mary for lunch at the Sample Gates. The noon was clear with an intense sun and a strong northwest wind. Despite the sun it was actually rather chilly, but no one seemed to mind; a holiday mood pervaded downtown. We walked down to Bloomington Bagel Company and had bagels with smoked salmon cream cheese—delicious. 

After the second talk I drove to the Hs’ house. Lisa and Anne were playing Monopoly, of course. Amy came home from shopping at about four. Lisa and I stayed, hanging out, chatting with Rich and Amy until about five. Love them. At about five Lisa left to babysit for the As; I went outside to play basketball with Anne on the driveway, while Jane pedaled circles around us in her wee plastic car and Breeze loped through the line of spruce trees at the edge of the lawn. 

Anne and I were being silly, passing the ball back and forth, shooting, dribbling, doing all of it absolutely terribly—but the sun dazzled down on us, the fresh wind stirred up the smell of the muddy grass, and Jane giggled and babbled to herself while her car clattered around on the concrete. Expanse of blue sky. I went home at about six when they went to Maggie’s basketball game. At home Laura was on the phone. I wrote a letter to Tara. 

At about seven Lindsay and Peter burst in, laden with groceries, and set to work in the kitchen to cook a fancy meal for us. Lindsay made a Mediterranean salad, while Peter cooked enormous pieces of chicken in a butter-and-wine sauce in a wok on the stove. The luminous full moon glowed through the open kitchen window (though it was really too chilly to have the window open). The smells: butter, fresh parsley, mushrooms, white wine, all cooking together with the chicken; feta, tomatoes, balsamic vinaigrette in the salad; spinach-and-artichoke cheese dip that Lindsay set on the table for Laura and me to eat, piping hot from the oven with a crunchy crust on top; red wine in glasses; sweet basmati rice steaming. 

We had a sumptuous meal, talked nonsense, and afterward sat around talking for quite awhile. Eventually we cleaned up the kitchen, and Peter and Lindsay went upstairs to watch Lost. Laura and I put on The Devil Wears Prada downstairs, but she was playing checkers on her phone, and I was writing e-mails. Lisa came home. 

When the other two finished their episode, they bounced back downstairs, and we embarked upon round two, a monumental banana split. This creation took shape in a big glass baking dish: scoops of fancy vanilla ice cream, crumbled Girl Scout samoas, chocolate chips, bananas (of course), hot chocolate fudge, and whipped cream. We set the epic masterpiece down on the dining room table, whipped out spoons, and devoured it in short order between the five of us. Now everyone has gone to bed, except for Lindsday and Peter, who are trying to finish Lost tonight.

Now Playing: The Decemberists, "The King Is Dead," "Down By the Water."

Hooray for flowers in winter! More pictures here.

"... the Christian should always be conscious that he or she lives before the face of God. There should always be a sense of awe in the life of the believer; a sense of living where we are always visible, always understood through and through, and - amazingly - always loved by the Holy One.

    "This sense of awe produces a special quality in our obedience; it gives it direction (we are not to be men-pleasers, but God-honouring); it gives it integrity (our obedience is tested by a more discerning eye than those of our fellow-sinners); it is an obedience suffused with humility in which self-projection has given way to devotion to the Lord."

Sinclair B Ferguson, Let's Study Philippians (Philippians 2:12-18)

We studied this during small group tonight. Also consider the truth that we are God's children, adopted by Him, named by Him, belonging to Him.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Run In the Night (Psalm 27)".

Apparently on quite a British history kick these past two weeks: Watched King's Speech with Cindy last Tuesday night and The Queen with her tonight. King's Speech was really well done (despite the language), if only for the beautiful moments where the speech is being read while the second movement of Beethoven's 7th fills the background. A powerful evocation of what it might have been like to be on the edge of World War II? Although Cindy and I both wondered what it must be like for the Queen (or other people who lived through those times) to watch films made about them.

Today I got to talk to Philip and Laura on the phone! Hooray for random crazy sibling fun times! And this past weekend I got to talk to my parents and Stephen, Nicole, and Katie W., so good times. Also this past weekend I went to the opera with Mary, Scott, and Eric. It was Mary and Scott's idea, not mine, but the operas were by Puccini, so the music was gorgeous.

Big day! Admitted to IU's MFA program!

(If I finish, I'll be about as overqualified an English prof as you can get....)

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique".

I've been reading Tulsa people's blogs. Somehow no one handed the memo to Indiana that we were supposed to get lots of snow and have a week off, too! We just had ice, ice, ice, and then a little bit of snow on top to hide the ice so that when unsuspecting pedestrians (like me) were trying to get to class, they would be constantly in danger of falling and dying on hidden slippery spots. And it took a decent fifteen to twenty minutes of hacking at my car to get the ice off--and that was after it had been sitting in the sun all morning!

Enough complaining. The result of our one day off was an evening of eating omelets and watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with the girls and Peter.

To finish the week off well, Mary, Scott, Eric, Mallory, and I had a lovely little soiree last night, during which we ate beef stroganoff and read poetry in lots of different languages. Mary does Italian, so she brought some Petrarchan sonnets; Scott translated some 16th-century French poetry; Eric contributed Pablo Neruda in Spanish and the first chapter of the Gospel of John in Maya, and Mallory read an Oscar Wilde story. And of course we had some Beowulf, too. Yes, yes, we're ridiculous, but what can I say? It was fun.

Now Playing: The dishwasher downstairs.

You know you're in grad school when your afternoon's reading begins like this: "It is easy to see that hypermedia applications are always explicit acts of remediation: they import earlier media into a digital space in order to critique and refashion them."

Easy? Really? Why should it be easy? What are hypermedia applications anyway? What's an act of remediation? And why is said act so explicit? Why should we care about critiquing and refashioning? Why do I feel as though my brain is exploding right now?

Now Playing: Corelli, Concerto grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 4, "Allegro."

One of the good parts of graduate school seminar discussions and (even!) parties: "A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful...." - Eliot, Middlemarch

Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack, "The Grey Havens."

First of all: White rabbits.

1 February 2011. Woke up to ice on everything this morning! Ice! This isn’t Oklahoma! But there was a nice slick sheen of ice on everything. Beth and Jason picked me up at nine, as usual, and Beth and I skittered our way to class. The sidewalks on campus weren’t too bad, really. I was so sleepy in class today that I didn’t say anything. 

After class Mary and I went to lunch at Noodle Co. on Kirkwood, which was fun. Good to hang out with her again. We pinged from topic to topic, catching up on almost every part of each other’s lives. After lunch we walked to the IMU together. I checked my e-mail and discovered that G601 had been canceled for this afternoon, so I hurried downtown and caught the noon bus home. 

It was strange to be home in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and I counted on having a long, quiet afternoon to read and practice my flute. I sat down with a cup of tea and some biscuits (proper McVittie’s biscuits, thanks to Alyson) to read, but at about half two, Lindsay came home, and Laura followed shortly thereafter, both of their offices having been shut down for the day. Not long after that, we got e-mails saying that classes had been canceled, and about an hour after that, Lisa came home—and Peter came over, of course, our “fifth housemate,” ready to be snowed in with us.

By the middle of the afternoon it had started to rain again, freezing rain mixed with ice pellets that accumulated on everything. The clouds were so low and heavy that I couldn’t see campus from my window. Rain and sleet rattled against the windows, drummed on the roof, gummed to every available surface. The pine trees across the street bent whippily, and the deciduous trees creaked and cracked in the wind. I spent the afternoon working on paper ideas for L746, in the course of which I found a fascinating article by Renee Trilling on JSTOR about Anglo-Saxon poetry. I read for L629, too, though by the time I got around to reading Middlemarch itself, I was so sleepy that I could hardly concentrate. 

Downstairs Laura had been baking blueberry muffins and listening to musical soundtracks, and when she finished cooking, Lisa made scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese in them for all of us for tea. Laura and I sat on the stairs like a pair of vultures, giggling, talking nonsense, humming songs (Laura humming songs, that is), and generally keeping Lisa company while she chopped up vegetables and whipped the eggs. The five of us sat down to eat at about half six and ate massive quantities of eggs and toast, and told ridiculous stories and talked about all sorts of absurd and inappropriate things (thanks to Peter, of course). 

Sitting around the table eating turned into sitting around the table drinking tea, which turned into sitting around the table waiting for a batch of brownies to bake, which turned into all of us settling down to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the living room. All very cozy, with the trees tipping and moaning outside. 

When the film finished, at about half ten, I washed all the dishes. Everyone hung out for awhile before Peter left to try to make his way home and the rest of us went to bed. Having said good-night to the girls, I’m listening to the end of the ROTK soundtrack. Sleepy, but I’ve got another half-hour before the dishwasher finishes its cycle—I can hear it loud and clear because my bedroom’s vent is right above that part of the kitchen. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow on top of the half-inch-deep layer of ice.

Now Playing: Antonin Dvorak, Serenade for Strings in E Major, "Scherzo: Vivace."

"And besides liberty in this world, there is the liberty of glory, called 'the liberty of the children of God' (Rom. 8:21): the liberty of our bodies from corruption, the glorious liberty in heaven, when we shall be perfectly free. For, alas! in this world we are free to fight, not free from fight. And we are free not from misery but from thraldom to misery. but then we shall be free from the encounter and the encumbrance. 'All tears shall be wiped from our eyes' (Rev. 7:17). We shall be free from all physical pain in sickness and infirmity, and free from all the remainders of sin in our souls. that is perfect liberty, perfect redemption, and perfect adoption, both of body and soul.

"And by the Spirit we have the beginnings of these in this world, too. For, what is peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost? Is it not the beginnings of heaven, a grape of the heavenly Canaan? Is not the Spirit that we have here a pledge of that inheritance? It is an earnest payment, and an earnest is a piece of the bargain. It is never taken away, but is part of the bargain. So the beginnings of grace and comfort given by the Spirit are the beginnings of that glorious liberty. The earnest assures us of that glorious liberty. For God never goes back on the bargain that he makes with his children. Grace, in some sense, is glory, as e see in the next verse (2 Cor. 3:18), because grace is the beginning of glory. It frees the soul from terror and subjection to sin. So the life of glory is begun in grace. We have the life of glory begun by the Spirit, this glorious life."

Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom

Now Playing: Pandolfi Violin Sonata, Op. 3, No. 4, "La Castella."

Last night the Cleveland Orchestra performed in the IU auditorium. They played Wagner's "Tannhauser" overture, which was enough to make anyone feel like running out and proclaiming German nationalism to the world, Bartok's second piano concerto, and Strauss's "Ein Heldenleben,"  which had some really nice moments for the woodwind section, not to mention the first-chair violin.

The Bartok was surprisingly discordant, though moments in the second movement were incredible: I've never heard so much control from an orchestra before. The strings were playing pianissimo, but it wasn't a normal pianissimo--they were so quiet that you almost couldn't hear them at all, yet when you stopped to hold your breath, there was the sound, intense, pervasive, shimmering in the air like mist hanging over a lake.

So that's been the highlight of my week so far, aside from the fact that the sun actually came out yesterday, too! But then today we were back to snow flurries and a sky so grey as to be barely distinguishable from the pavement.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack, "Gollum's Song."

Highlights from this week: On Monday cooking a hodgepodge batch of curry that included among other things a very sweet white onion, a couple of dubious potatoes, frozen peas, and tomato soup instead of tomato sauce.

Having the first Bible study of the semester at our house on Wednesday night. Lisa led the study, which was on Philippians 1:18-26, and Mary and Angie came. We burned our fingers on hot popcorn and talked about how the love of Christ controls us.

Feeling as though I might be getting an infinitesimally better grasp of Middle English in class on Thursday--and spending most of Thursday afternoon reading Middlemarch, The Transformation of Virginia, and theory with other first-years in Ballantine while it snowed outside.

Going to see Punch Brothers on Friday night with Lisa, Scott, Eric, Russell, Grant, and a couple of Lisa's friends from the Spanish program. Chris Thile and his new band were playing in Terre Haute, so we had a lively hour-and-a-half of fantastic bluegrass music, complete with a meet-the-band session afterward.

Slogging through pages and pages of Feuerbach this afternoon (well, that wasn't really a highlight technically!) and then translating bits of Layamon's Brut from Middle English tonight after eating Thai food with my lovely housemates (and Peter and Emily, Laura's friend).

So thankful that tomorrow is Sunday!

Now Playing: Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C minor, "Finale."

Yesterday Lisa and I spent the afternoon at the Hs' house. Amy left Lisa and me to play Monopoly with Anne while she ran errands for most of the afternoon. Anne was fairly subdued at first, but as the afternoon went on, she got wilder and wilder. For awhile there she was talking in about five different accents: her own, a "British" one, something that sounded Indian, something absurdly French, and even something Chinese. And when she'd grown tired of amusing herself with that, she took to making an "evil banker laugh" whenever we needed money from the bank. Between times she was a variety of animals: a frog, a dog, a cat, and maybe a pig? One couldn't ever be sure because she was giggling so hard!

About an hour-and-a-half into the game, I'd lost royally, but Grace had come home from school. She showed me maps of Britland, her personal country, and when Jane woke up from her nap, we sat on the sofa, and she "read" to me. "Reading" is a very relative word when it comes to Jane because she mostly flips through the book looking for illustrations while chirping to herself fragments of whatever conversations she happens to hear going on around her. I must confess I nearly fell asleep.

It would've been appropriate, given the weather we've been having. I rather want to turn my room into a cave and hibernate for the next four months...!

Now Playing: Indelible Grace's version of Psalm 146.

My second official day of class today! The day after our "big snow," so I woke up to a gorgeously silent, white landscape. The white vinyl siding on the townhouses across the street looks cream against the stark whiteness of the snow, the five inches of snow, to be precise. I didn't accomplish much this morning beyond reading some of Middlemarch for L629, the "Middlemarch and Methods" class. It's going to be a good class, I think, but challenging. We spent about forty-five minutes yesterday taking turns reading the first paragraph out loud and talking about it, sentence-by-sentence. Slow reading, close reading, the thing about English literature that turns everyone off but that I love.

The other girls all had class or work earlier in the day, so I was the last to leave the house, at noon. I drove to the church, parked, and walked from the church to Goodbody Hall, which is across from Ballantine. It's a decent half-hour walk in the snow, though by now most of the sidewalks are clear. The 1st Street neighborhoods are even more beautiful in the snow, the postcard-perfect houses snuggled like happy children under their hoods. Snow on every branch, every bush, every leaf and seed-coronet of last summer's flowers still standing in gardens.

Goodbody Hall is one of the older buildings on campus, one of half-a-dozen that forms a quadrangle with Sycamore Hall, where my "Medieval Neighbors" class met last term. All these buildings are difficult to navigate, thanks to a mind-boggling system of narrow hallways and crazy stairwells. Gothic on the outside, Escher-like within. Our classroom is tiny, an apology for a classroom, really.

This is my first seminar class: all 700-level classes carry a 25-page paper assignment at the end (the idea is that it's practice for writing journal articles). Imposing? Indeed. I'm not sure why I'm in the class since it's about book history in America since 1800, both fields I've completely forsworn! There's an MFA student in the class, though, and she and I are the only two odd ducks in a group of mostly Victorianists. To sum up, it may be an interesting class, and it almost certainly will eat my lunch.

After class, walked back to my car. It just so happened that as I was coming up to the church, Bob and Carmen were there, too, collecting some of Bob's tools. Carmen and I stood outside and chatted pleasantly while Bob shoveled snow from the steps. It was the first chance I'd had to talk to her properly since I've been back, and it was very good to get to see them both again.

At home, I noticed as I pulled off my boots in the entryway that Peter and Lindsay were back, as evidenced by the other sets of shoes on the tile. I went up the stairs. There weren't any lights on, and the house was dim. I paused on the landing to say hello--they were both in Lindsay's room, getting ready to watch Lost--but as soon as I appeared in her bedroom doorway, Lindsay freaked out and started to scream. Peter nearly fell off the bed with surprise:

          "Why are you screaming?!"
           Scream,
                    "Because--E-- is--here!"
           scream.

It all dissolved into fits of laughter.

I read for L629 for awhile.When Lisa came home, she, Laura, and I ate together: broccoli-artichoke-chicken casserole. Delicious. After awhile Lisa and I went upstairs to work. Lindsay and Peter came back at about half ten, which coincided conveniently with me finishing the article I was working on. Lindsay, Laura, Peter, and I sat out on the landing; Lisa eventually oozed out of her room and collapsed, exhausted, on the floor. The five of us sat around for awhile, laughing, telling ridiculous stories.

Now Playing: Andrew Peterson, "In the Night My Hope Lives On."

It was a great delight this afternoon to see Bob and Carmen married in the church in Bloomington. Pastor H officiated and did an excellent job, of course, focused on God's glory in marriage, with some humour thrown in for good measure. 

It's good to be back in Bloomington in some ways. Apparently the arctic cold front that's scheduled to overtake Oklahoma this weekend has already done its work here because Lisa and I drove back from the airport through thick flurries last night. This morning only about an inch-and-a-half had accumulated, and the sun came out, so the roads aren't bad. I've spent most of the day indoors, unpacking and cleaning. Laura made blueberry pancakes for the three of us for breakfast, which was delicious.

I do miss everyone in Stillwater, though. The time just wasn't long enough this break, it seemed, and my room here feels very big compared to the little brightly-colored corner of the house in Stillwater. I don't know what it is about travel and being in a different place, but it's so much easier to be completely conquered by fear all over again. Though I may think I rediscover bad habits in Oklahoma, there are plenty of bad habits here that seeped insidiously into my mindset the moment I recrossed the threshold.

This morning during my quiet time, I read Genesis 20-22: Abraham's repeat of his lie about Sarah being his sister because of his fear of being in a new place, and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac at God's request. Both those chapters beautifully illustrated to me that despite my habitual fears, God will be faithful to me and will provide Himself--He Himself, walking in perfect obedience, has covered those fears with perfect love.

Pastor H read John 17 as the text at Bob and Carmen's wedding, and I was struck again by Christ's prayer that the love the Father has for the Son would be in us, as He Himself is in us. The richness of that promise alone--for Christ as intercessor is granted all His requests by the Father--should be enough to answer my fears. Praying that He will make that more real to me in the days ahead as the semester begins.

Now Playing: Vivaldi, Concerto for Violin in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1.

The second week of Christmas break was exciting at the beginning. We had all the Texas cousins here for a few days, with the fun that inevitably ensues: hikes around the lake for the girls, delicious desserts, football games outside for the boys, a visit to the used bookstore, etc.

On Thursday the cousins left, and I went to Enid with the Fs to help the Bs move. We left at eight in the morning in the big white van, and I got to sit in the front seat and talk to Mr F, which was really encouraging. I've been floundering over the last semester and over break as to whether life in academia is worthwhile for a believer, but he reminded me that the intelligentsia can be among the most difficult people to reach for Christ, reminded me of the value of bringing order and beauty to the world under Christ.

Friday was hard. My grandmother, who had been moved back to Stillwater after significant improvement, went to the emergency room in the middle of the morning, unresponsive. I drove my mother there and waited for a nasty half-hour in the lobby until my father arrived, at which point he and I joined my mother in the ward. Philip, Laura, and Stephen drove over soon after. It seemed as though it took a very long time, but it really wasn't very long at all, really was peaceful, at least for her, I think. For us--not so much.

Then that evening the CY retreat started here in Stillwater. I'd promised to be a chaperon, someone over twenty-one to meet the YMCA's regulations since we were using their building to host the fifty-odd young people who had driven down from Kansas and Colorado. I spent most of the weekend there, barring Saturday afternoon when Missy stopped by for a visit. It was good to hear Pastor R's talks about justification and to spend some quality time with the highschool girls from our church, to reconnect with them.

Today has been a whirlwind of conversations with Mrs P, Anna, and Stephanie, which has been refreshing. In some ways I'd much rather listen to other people's troubles and apply the Gospel to them instead of to myself (lazy!), but these friends go beyond that: in each case we can both talk about what's going on and then apply the Gospel to each other. Thankful for them.

Photos on Facebook here.

Now Playing: The Boston Celtics vs. the Orlando Magic on Philip's laptop.

Philip and I are sitting companionably in his room right now. Sitting, I say, though it's more like perching, above a sea of open suitcase, shoes, clothes, photo frames, iPod, books, backpack, and other random wanted/unwanted pieces of junk. He's busy making a Calvin and Hobbes stencil with an exacto knife, the same knife that gave him the gash on his finger last week--which will hopefully become a scar with a good story, according to him.

Christmas day so far has been fairly pleasant. Laura and I both got up "early" this morning to make breakfast for everyone. She made crepes (vanilla-flavored with orange sauce), while I fried bacon and scrambled eggs. The eggs were actually all yolk, the remnants from yesterday's angel food cake baking experiment. The recipe Laura wanted to use for said cake required sixteen egg whites; hence the very heavy eggs that accompanied our Christmas breakfast.

After breakfast, after my dad had scrubbed the disgusting bacon-and-egg frying pan (courageous man!), we opened presents, just the six of us. My dad's exclamations at our generosity are always gratifying. Somehow opening Christmas presents is so much more fun than opening birthday presents: you don't feel as though you're on the spot, and everyone is enjoying the process together.

As usual, my dad received loads of chocolate. We always have to get creative with my mother's presents since she can't eat chocolate, but Philip solved the problem this year with tea and biscuits. There was the usual round of books (cookbooks), checks for buying new clothes, socks, CDs (for Stephen, the soundtrack guru), etc. Laura wound up with an adorable pair of rain boots, printed with raindrops--"pre-wetted," as my dad and Philip pointed out, like the jeans that are already ripped.

When the detritus of wrapping paper and ribbon had been cleared away, Philip, my mother, and I made sack lunches and drove down to OKC to visit my grandmother in the hospital. The day was overcast, another one of these winter days that looks as though it's come out of the dark end of my mother's box of old pastels--grainy, crumbling at the edges, smudged with snow flurries.

The three of us spent the day in the City until midafternoon. My grandmother was asleep at first, so Philip and I found a quiet corner, where we sat and talked about books and phoned Alyson to say hello. But at about lunchtime, she wanted us to come in, so we did. She's better today, talking more. We ate our lunches in her room while my mother fed her slices of grapefruit. We talked to her when she felt up to it or held her hand while she dozed. 

At about half two we drove home. I'm very sleepy, or was while I was trying to do my quiet time. Laura has probably already started to work on Christmas dinner downstairs.

After the whirlwind of the past few days, today and yesterday have been wonderfully quiet, giving us the chance to do the usual Christmas activities. Yesterday morning, Laura, Stephen, and I decorated the house for Christmas: not very much, but something, at least, to make it more festive. Stephen helped me hang the evergreens over the doorway into the dining room and then handed up ornaments for me to hang on the bristling plastic branches. Ornaments made faithfully for us every year by Grandma, cross-stitched or needlepointed, including the silver angel with her long, slender trumpet that always goes in the middle of the doorway.

This morning Laura and I baked gingerbread, a process that involved a lot more faffing about than was strictly necessary. We always use the Joy of Cooking recipe, but for some reason Laura has never realized that the recipe calls for (what according to her is) a gross amount of flour. That led to a lot of silliness. In the end we got the batter made and the cookies cut out, baked, cooled, and iced, all while listening to The Nutcracker. Now the house smells like cloves, cinnamon, and ginger.

And tonight: Christmas ball in Ponca City!