I spent the afternoon mixing up a batch of persimmon cookies to send to my grandmother with her Christmas package. When I was in college, she used to send me a batch every Christmas. She hasn�t made them in years. But since a friend kindly sent me a bag of persimmon pulp she had made (the pulping of the persimmons is the most laborious part of the recipe and is what has prevented me from making this particular recipe before), I took the opportunity to return the favors of many Christmases past. I hope she enjoys them. But even if she doesn�t, I enjoyed making them and remembering childhood holidays spent in her former house in Michigan, the one with the wallpaper in the kitchen with pictures of little carts and horses and crank-topped coffee grinders. My house now smells as her did, of cinnamon and nutmeg and sweet fruit.

Just when I was preparing to wallow in a full day of domesticity, I received notification that a paper proposal I had submitted for a conference some time ago has been accepted. The conference is in late February. This paper marks a bit of a departure from my previous work in that I�ll be analyzing a film, although I�ll still be dealing primarily with music and with the gender studies issues that are my current neighborhood of operation. Part of me feels a little cheap and tawdry about this paper. I knew when I wrote it that had a good chance of being accepted on entertainment value alone � its a very sexy topic (in more ways than one) and a bit trend-pandering. I hope I�m not looking too shallow. But it�s a small conference and, I figured, a good place to try something different. Plus I think it�s going to be a lot of fun to write.

I have, however, been thrown into a full-blown panic about work as a result of the proposal�s acceptance. I was going to take the night off and try to finish up the Christmas cards, but instead I�m going to try to get some thoughts on paper for this presentation and perhaps bang out a draft of my syllabus, which I�ll need to submit for approval by the director of the course in a few weeks.

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