Bereft

[muckefuck]

monshu also came down with something this week so I wasn't expecting any kind of fuss for Epiphany. I was totally prepared to be warming up a potato pie from Sunday and instead came home not only to baked halibut and sweet potato risotto but a tremendous nut-brown roscón de Reyes. Naturally, I found the coin, though my one official act as King was to take down the tree--ceremonially, that is, which is to say I removed the finial and extinguished the lights. Later I returned and put away the most important ornaments but lost steam before it came to wrapping all the glass baubles in tissue.

I also got to play Rex Magus at work, since the nameplates I'd ordered before New Year's came in and I made a point of delivering them personally in order to bask in everyone's delight. (Honestly, it really is the small things.) I also had something more personal to give away, my 2013 edition of Best European Fiction. I'd been talking it up to a Bosniak coworker and finally just decided to gift him with it. First, though, I had to make a push to finish the last dozen stories or so. I tackled most of them over break, but still had two unread as of Tuesday night, so I read one on the ride in (Eloy Tizón's "El mercurio de los termómetros") and the last (Ray French's "Migration") at work only moments before handing it over.

He and I both agreed what we'd really like to see is a bilingual edition, because neither of us can read all the languages represented but we could each make a serious dent. That's too specialised a market for a paperback, however, but would be easy enough to do electronically if not for the fragmented way in which foreign language rights are parcelled out. In any case, with that off my plate, I'm poised to make a final assault on the last quarter of Gösta Berling and select my next victim.