Finished it!

It's 26 pages long. I think it's pretty good (although the moment I read it over after emailing it off to both professors, I noticed 2 run-on sentences and a couple of typos in the first page - sigh.) I think maybe it's pretty good, but I'm known for my delusions of grandeur, aka rosy glasses. One professor read it already and liked it (but then, he's the kindest man in the world) - I have to wait and see what the other one (exceptional critical reader and no-bullshit lady - my idol! and also my thesis advisor) has to say about it.

We went out to Southern Season for a bottle of champagne and delicious little appetizer snacks to celebrate. We had a sun-dried tomato/artichoke/spinach dip with homemade sesame and herb crackers, some bechamel-bound crab cakes with cold corn relish, and a goat cheese mousse with duck confit. The mouse was actually boring as hell - the confit was awesome, but didn't seem to go with the mousse (which was nothing but plain young goat cheese whipped with probably plain old cream cheese) and serve with rather tough and chewy buttered baguette slices. (There was some deep red lingonberry-colored sauce drizzled sparingly around the perimeter of the plate, so I theorize that it was something fruity to complement the duck, but there wasn't enough of it to taste.) What WAS good, though, was the matchsticked veggies on top of it - I don't know if they were fennel or something else but they were crispy and clean-tasting and small.

Artichoke dip = good, but an unexpected terra-cotta color. (The artichoke flavor really came through - this was probably the big winner.) The crab cakes = interior creamy and deliciously flavored, meltingly creamy, subtle...the outside? Plain hard-fried raw-tasting flour. I wanted to scoop the insides out with a spoon. Corn relish was good - pickled-tasting and sweet at the same time, with a little bite.

And a bottle of Cava for $19, and a dingy but sweet waitress. Oh yes - and an eggnog creme brulee. Not enough crunchy topping but the custard was grand, and oh so eggnoggy.

Yay me. I'm done! (Until next semester and my dazzling array of courses taken and taught, of which...more later. I'm a tad drunk and sleepy and not sure if I need to go let out my friend's dog or not.)