Some of you have requested a Yule Ball. We’re not sure that busy, increasingly overworked MBers have enough time or energy to carry one off this year. But Piggy has been relaxing at the still-open 2009 MA holiday party. We’ll move his post onto this thread to set the stage for some quiet times while the bleak Nordic weather lowers outside.
Seated on a dark red sofa with my arm draped over the backrest, I sip my mug of cider. This hall has a certain nostalgic charm to it even when it isn’t populated by smiling faces. The Vince Guaraldi playing softly on the turntable is a tad anachronistic, but I think it works.
((For reference, here is the party thread in question and the planning thread thereto. The decor is a warm gold “Victorian Christmas” kind of thing, with flickering candles and a crackling fire and all sorts of cozy, nostalgic pieces. The perfect place to relax.))
((Maybe this year we can just sip eggnog or cider and then fast-forward to the Gift Tree. That’s always the best part of our December parties, I think.))
((Well, that and arriving at the party. The arrival always seems to be rather momentous for each guest.))
I pour myself some cider and look out the window at the falling snow.
“Did you have a hard time getting here in this weather, Piggy?” I ask.
Perfectly content with relaxation, I sit on the couch while I wait for my tea to cool. It is finals week, after all. I still have a paper to write, but for now… ahh.
Coming in from the cold, I pour myself a mug of hot cocoa and slouch on a sofa next to the fireplace. It’s nice not to have to think about school for a while. I grab a shawl from a nearby chair and stir my drink with a candy cane.
I come over to the sofa to watch the fire.
“How’s the cocoa, CO?”
“It wasn’t too bad. The horse-drawn sleighs made it pretty easy to get here, even with it snowing as hard as it is,” I answer Kai. Setting my empty cider mug on a side table, I stand up and go over to the fire to give it a poke and toss another log on.
After staring at the fire for a while, I plop back down on the sofa. “Man, it’s like the H&H in here.”
((It does have the same gemütlich ambience, albeit with higher ceilings and more reverberant acoustics.))
“I agree, there’s a certain sort of ambiance that every Muserly place has. It’s a sense of knowing you’re someplace you belong.”
I notice for the first time that there’s a piano in the corner of the room, and so I lift the needle from the record, sit down on the bench and begin to improvise my own rendition of “Christmas Time Is Here”, throwing in an occasional odd phrase of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. The piano sounds as warm as the rest of the room looks.
((Doesn’t it have a nice, warm tone? Estonia doesn’t usually make uprights, but they owed us a favor…))
((The touch is wonderfully responsive, too. It reminds me a bit of a Bösendorfer 290 I once got to play.))