What's Making Me Happy This Week, 12-20-14

1) The fact that tomorrow is the solstice and from here the days start getting longer again. Northern Hemisphere SAD sufferers around the world, rejoice! We're halfway through the dark.

2) Because it's almost Christmas, I took the opportunity to re-read one of my favorite fanfics of all time, No Reservations: Narnia.  Yes, you read that right. It's Anthony Bourdain in Narnia, and it's crazy-fun. The author, Edonohana, nails Bourdain's voice. A sample:

I’d longed to visit Narnia when I was a kid, but every time the notoriously capricious entry requirements, such as the bizarre and arbitrary lifetime limit on visits, relaxed the slightest bit, it would get invaded, get conquered, get re-conquered by the original rulers, or get hit by some natural disaster. The “Hundred-Year Winter” put the kibosh on the one time my parents even considered it.

 It has Reepicheep trying to drink Bourdain under the table, and pranking him into having dinner with a group of Marshwiggles:

I live for the moments when I put something that looks and sounds disgusting into my mouth, and it turns out to be sublime. That moment doesn’t happen. The mud-potatoes taste like badly rinsed potatoes. The fermented waterweed has the texture of natto and the flavor of spoiled cabbage. Dredge-the-pond tastes exactly like it sounds. The eel stew is surprisingly tasty, with the gritty, mysterious complexity of a fine gumbo, but I wouldn’t call it sublime.

The story is in every way awesome. Go and read it.

3)  I picked up a bottle of spiced blackberry wine from Rockridge Orchards at the farmers market this morning. I tasted a sample before buying, which the proprietor kept hot, like mulled wine. Which is very much what it tasted like. Delicious. I'm debating whether to drink it with Mr. Fraser this week or save it for my next party.