So that last entry was sort of a fiction: although I did start it at 5:30 yesterday when I was waiting for Rae in Beardsley, I just finished it now. When I revisited it to finish it, I was tempted to delete the first paragraph. Because my archives had reappeared, and they seemed to be working fine. Except now, after I published that, they have disappeared again (all except faithful August). And I didn't change anything, I swear. Maybe if I just let it be it will sort itself out again.

Well after Rae and I handed in our papers yesterday (it's later now but who cares), we came back to the barn. I decided that we didn't have time to go to the store, since the carollers started showing up any minute (Jenny and her bf, aw, and then Blair, who was particular glad to see me), but then I decided we should go to the store anyway, when I realized I hadn't eaten all day and there was no food in the house. So we did; I bought cider, grapes, tortillas, cheese, pita, salsa, and two small packages of sushi (just the essentials.) Rae bought some prunes. There was quite a crowd gathered when we returned - plus Melinda (left immediately), Sierra and Joe and Joanne, and Lindsey. And Rebecca came too.

We warmed up in the hallway, and dedicated a number to the moose (O Come O Come EmmmanuNelly - not my pun.) The night was right for it - chilly but not cold (no chance for snow though, unfortunately.) We hit mostly professors homes, to middling success. Struck out at the Blooms, and found lots of wives without their husbands. Our biggest success on the Northern half of the trek (aside from mistletoed Woolman, where Cathy and Maria joined us briefly and we made our one and only stab at "O Holy Night") was at the well-lit manse of the Wests. It was like something out of a film; Cecille ushered us into the plushly carpeted stairwell, to serenade dressing-robed Dan and Mama upstairs, gushed and fawned in a mild melodious twang, and offered us phenomenal Texan-made mints. In general, we did fairly well for booty - like a more disorienting version of trick-or-treating, someone said. The best was probably Susan Smythe's fresh gingerbread men while her little ones pranced around and tried to tip us (after a detour through campus and "the Cherry-tree Carol.") We didn't have time for many more houses after that, just Robert's (he made oddly out-of-place sarcastic remarks while his wife and daughters were cute and family-like on their glassed-in porch, and we sang "Rudolph" and "Silent Night"), the old folk's home with the German woman who remembered us from last year (and demanded a chorus of "O Tannenbaum"), another well-lit place where we were given juice-boxes, and Donna Jo's flamingo-infested, overgrown dwelling far down on Park. By this time it was down to four - Rebecca, Lindsey, Joe, and myself - and we had our harmonies pretty well honed, offering some of our best efforts ("O Little Town of Bethlehem" for one) to the empty streets. We had such plans for DJ's house - to sing "Dona Jona Poli," to be her happy students - but what happened instead was kind of bizarre.

We sang a rousing "Joy to the World," and though the house lights were on, nobody came to the doorbell. We heard a car pull into a (her?) driveway, and tried again with "Angels We Have Heard on High". This time a figure ran up the stairs, as if to fetch someone to come down and listen. So we started up one more - "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" or something - but about halfway through the second verse all the lights in the house went off, and we burst into confused laughter. Not wanting to end on such an uncertain note, we tried one more house, lavishly decorated, with not one but two Happy Hannuka banners hanging in the front hall and directly above it - each one spelled differently. We could see the family inside - mother giving one of her children a backrub while papa looked through the mail table in the hallway - so we figured it was a safe bet. Towards the end of our first number (cautiously secular "Winter Wonderland"), the husband peered confusedly around the glass flanking the doorway, then opened the door slowly, noticed us and muttered to himself, "oh, there is someone out there." The woman came over and explained that they had Jessye Norman on the TV, turning her up to drown us out. "Do you want anything?" she said, "or are you just going around and doing this?" So maybe that was just as bad as our previous rejection. Ran into jubilant Sam and Gerrit "Deck the" Hall on their way back from Cheng Hing dinner (we had just missed the chance to sing to them there) as we headed back.

It was Rebecca's last night here. We switched the location of our beds (these apartments are seemingly designed to create difficulty in moving furniture). Rae came up and joined us for some mulled cider (mmm - she even supplied the cinnamon sticks) and set (required too much concentration for that juncture.) That was that.

cantet nunc io chorum angelorum