The most annoying of the two is an ad from Intel for the German market. It’s got obnoxiously loud music and a seizure inducing video that I guess is supposed to look “cool”, but really, it looks like Flash is about to crash again. Unless Intel is trying to make people want new computers because their old one suddenly seems to have a problem streaming this ad, I don’t see what they are going for here. When I see stuttering, choppy video playback, I don’t think “awesome processor.”

I took some liberties with the ad to show its true nature.

(I yanked 10 seconds of the ‘still’ moments and put in a more appropriate soundtrack. I’m telling you in case you don’t want to suffer through the original, which I completely understand.)

The holidays didn’t exactly help with being productive on any count either.

Being more singular in purpose does make it harder to write here, since I’ve been trying to put my attention either on learning and doing development work on iOS, or writing my book. Lately, I’ve been making a big push to finish the book, and that pretty much saps most of my energy for writing, thus the break here.

So, yes, I’m writing a novel. I started it as an erotic short story to entertain my wife over a year ago, working on it in bursts when inspiration and free time came together. Once I had it started, it began to take shape and grow into something more complicated. Right now it’s over two hundred pages and I think it’s only about two-thirds done.

While it outgrew its erotica starting point, it’s still a pretty explicit work, and in a rather untypical way. Right now, the best way to describe the book is to call it a fetish romance novel. High-brow literature it ain’t. But I’m trying to keep things grounded in the real world, and there’s some humor and intrigue as well. I’m hoping the unusual inclinations of the main character make the story interesting. It’s quite possible I’ve put the whole thing in a strange middle ground, where it’s not “hot” enough to be considered erotica (it’s not) but it’s got parts too explicit and non-vanilla to find an audience. We will see.

When I finally finish it and push out electronic editions for sale, I’ll be delighted if I sell a dozen copies to people who don’t know me personally. Even if I don’t sell any, it’s taught me a great deal about the process. After this, I may tackle a “real” novel that’ll have a broader appeal.

This novel is the singularly most self-indulgent personal project I’ve ever attempted. It’s also the longest in terms of hours and effort. It’s hard work, but it’s intensely rewarding to spend time crafting something I care about for a change.

The one thing that I found myself missing though: Starbucks’ eggnog latte.

There are Starbucks here, of course, which I never go to now. It’s hard to justify the expense when excellent coffee drinks are available everywhere for less money. But for my eggnog latte, I would easily make an exception. But they simply don’t offer the eggnog latte here, for the simple reason that there is no eggnog to be had. Anywhere.

In the U.S., you can pick up cartons of the stuff during December at every grocery store. Outside of the eggnog lattes, I’d drink eggnog with dark rum during our own holiday parties. Here in Germany I was out of luck on all counts.

With no other option, it was time to make my own. I wanted a cooked egg nog recipe, so that it could keep a little while, since I might just be the only one drinking it. Once again, the folks at Cook’s Illustrated came through with a fine recipe.

I did a half a batch as a test, and shared it with my mother-in-law. It was a hit. I then made a full batch for the next holiday gathering, making almost two liters. Nothing was left over.

I made one final batch near the end of the holiday, and saved a liter specifically to try making eggnog lattes with it. They tasted even better than the Starbucks ones. Maybe it just seemed that way because I got to drink it surrounded by family and friends instead of sitting alone in my office at work. Or maybe it was just the dark rum.

Though once we secured brown sugar as the Asian grocery, and stumbled over sweet potatoes at the supermarket (even if they were kind of small), I wasn’t worried.

Surprisingly, cranberries could be found almost everywhere. For the first time I braved making my own fresh cranberry sauce, which I should have done much sooner: easy, tasty and make-ahead even.

The only mishap was my lack of familiarity with the “fan” oven that cooks things a bit faster than I expected. The turkey was a little over-done because of it. I’ll be on top of that next year.

Here’s what was on the table:

• Roast, crispy skin turkey with gravy
• Green bean casserole
• Glazed carrots
• Corn on the cob
• Smashed potatoes
• Glazed sweet potatoes
• Stuffing
• Cranberry Sauce

Everything was hot and ready at the same time, thanks to Conny and her Mom’s assistance in the final hour. Even with eight people there were plenty of leftovers for the next day. I also relied heavily on Cook’s Illustrated for many of the recipes.

No one getting sick I consider a success. People going back for seconds is a triumph. The thing I was most thankful for was I am off the hook until next year.

But every now and then it can get interesting, like this example, where this young woman tells me she’s picked the red shoes:

Pictures like that are much more memorable for me than the pictures of kids eating pie. I’m hoping this theme will be explored further in future lessons. It would be useful to learn what “Passen diese Schuhe zu meinen Strümpfen und Straps?” means, for instance.