December is a busy time for musicians. Choir concerts, cantatas, ballets, church services, holiday parties – these are our bread and butter. I get booked as early as September, and I already know a few gigs I’ll have next December. This year I’ve had three weeks of gigging without a single day off. Some days I’ve had two or three gigs in a day, and, oh I dunno, let’s throw in some make-up lessons for my students in between them. It’s lucrative, but it’s so so so busy. So thank the stars for Amazon Prime and the internet.
Even though all the gifts are done well in advance, Christmas always sneaks up on me because of how busy it gets. I have to do little things to recapture the excitement and energy of the Christmas season so I don’t totally become a jaded curmudgeon who’s lost all sense of wonder. Here’s my short list of little tricks that make me feel festive:
Drinking hot chocolate. I make rose cardamom hot chocolate adapted from a Max Brenner recipe that is so, so thick and creamy and decadent that you’ll never need another hot chocolate recipe ever again.
Having a real tree that we cut ourselves. Ou tree stand was to big for out tree, so we had to use blocks of wood to make up the distance between the trunk and the screws. Shout out to the Home Depot lady for that tip!
We don’t have a fireplace, so I line a bowl with aluminum foil, light the edges of some Applewood chips, and play some fireplace white noise sounds.
I listen to Stewart Goodyear’s Nutcracker arrangements, or else Duke Ellington’s.
Every year choirs ask me to perform Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. It is one of those pieces that never gets old and always gets me excited for the holidays. Every choir always brings it for Wolcum Yule!, This Little Babe, and Deo Gracias.
I recently discovered that a really good way of getting in the Christmas spirit is taking on the government and winning.
A few months ago, on September 27th around 8:20am, I parked in a residential area north of downtown. The streets have free street parking and are a 15-minute walk to my part-time job in the heart of Cincinnati. I’d been doing it for over a year without incident because I love subverting Cincinnati parking costs. Upon returning after work, my van was gone. In its stead were three temporary parking signs that had not been there when I had parked.
Of course I’d been towed to an impound lot which would not release my vehicle without me shelling out $175, and if I didn’t pay I would wrack up more daily costs for simply having a vehicle on their lot. So I paid. In order to get refunded, it was incumbent upon me to fight the tow and request a refund via fax or mail. FAX OR MAIL. Because this is bureaucracy, and bureaucracy is antiquated. To add insult to injury while finding my vehicle in the lot, there under my wiper blade was a parking ticket.
I posted about it on Facebook and asked for advice. The general consensus was that I was screwed. People said it wasn’t worth my time and energy trying to fight the city, citing similar things that had happened to them without justice. However, I was willing to fight because it was without question wrong. I was going to prove it.
I’m not gonna lie, it was hard. There were moments I thought I was never going to win, that I was stuck in endless bureaucratic bullshit and, I suspect, lies. I doubted my own account of what happened. But I did win, as you’ll read.
There was a lot to decipher from my ticket and the temporary signs. The ticket clearly indicated it’d been written on complaint. Who complained? I started by asking the sign requesters, BCI/MSD. BCI was the contracted group for the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) of Greater Cincinnati. Although nobody has admitted to calling in the complaint, my money is on BCI since their contractors were the ones on site that day. I also suspect they put up new signs when they arrived to work. The district police officer who’d ticketed me said the signs were up upon his arrival (after 1pm) and that he had photographed the signs and my vehicle as proof. He apparently would never have written me up if there were no signs up.
See, temporary signs have to be requested and approved by the police department who inspect/document signs after they go up. If signs somehow are destroyed, vandalized, or go missing the requester has to file for new signs with the department. In this case there were no records of new signs request for the location. The signs also must clearly indicate two dates – one to reflect the day the sign was placed, and another for the date the sign is in effect (which was for the day I’d parked). By all accounts but mine it appeared the signs had gone up the day before and had been there when I parked, and nothing contradicted it.
I contested the ticket electronically. The nameless, faceless judge found me guilty. This was when I felt like I’d lost and was maybe losing my mind over what had actually happened that day.
But I wasn’t done. I was not going to be gaslit and I was not going to have my money stolen for something I didn’t do. I contacted MSD and had a correspondence with a wonderful woman who went above and beyond to check with the police and the contractors about what had happened that day. The contractors arrived around 9, she informed me, and the foreman promised that the signs were up then. Another dead end. This conversation reached almost into November. I was at a loss for what to do.
Around this time I was required to pay the ticket to the Hamilton County’s Parking Violations Bureau. When I tried to contest yet again, a bureau clerk told me that in order to appeal the guilty verdict I’d have to pay a non-refundable $10 + the ticket itself. Also, by contested the ticket electronically, I’d apparently waived my rights to be seen by a judge in person. Since none of this was on the bureau website or made apparent to me before I’d acted, I threatened to involve a lawyer. To add insult to injury, my ticket cost inexplicably doubled on the day it was due. When I emailed about it, the clerk curtly quoted the correct amount. Upon checking, the amount had been corrected.
Where I parked was across the street from a building that people tended to hang out in front of in the morning and evening. On a whim a few days after paying the ticket, I asked a group hanging outside if anyone remembered temporary parking signs. By some impossible luck, a man said he remembered seeing one sign on the ground under someone’s vehicle and only remembered because he thought for sure someone would get in trouble because of it. I doubt the sign was under my vehicle since I would’ve noticed while parallel parking, and there were other vehicles behind me that either left before being towed or were towed along with me.
I still couldn’t appeal with it costing me, so I sent a message to my state representative, Thomas Massie. While he’s not my ideal politician, I’ve learned that if you make a request for help someone from the Rep’s office will usually follow up on it. While Massie’s office never emailed me back, I soon after received an email from a senior hearing officer. This person I’d never contacted with a job title I didn’t think was related to my predicament said the city had looked into my account and history and decided to refund me my ticket cost as a show of “good faith” even though the evidence was “strongly in the City of Cincinnati’s favor.”
It took over a month to get that refund. Endless voicemails and emails went unanswered as to how I could get it and when, until I finally made it clear that I would just show up and be a physical presence nobody could ignore. A couple days later, I picked up the check from a downtown office.
I also sent a refund request to the city for the tow when I got the email. Nothing happened for weeks. While checking the mail three days ago, I got one of those slips with the perforated edges that never tear perfectly. Well, it happened to be a check from the city: a refund for the whole entire tow. All my money was back.
I won. How? It was either by being an endless pain in the ass who wouldn’t stop calling and emailing everyone (I was polite for what it’s worth), my email to my representative, my threats to involve legal action over the omitted appeals information, or someone finally broke through the lies and won’t admit the truth of what happened to me.
So who put up the signs? Probably the contractors somehow, but I’ll probably never know. What I do know is that for the rest of my life I’ll photograph where I park just in case.
But back to the spirit of Christmas! Picking up the ticket refund put me in the mood. I walked out of the Hamilton County Courts building feeling like a boss. The tow refund had me giddy and excited and surprised, like a kid on Christmas. It was so satisfying to get what I wanted, which was justice and a full refund. A true Christmas miracle.
But obviously that’s a crappy way of getting Christmas jollies. So I recommend super creamy, rich, thick hot chocolate. (What a smooth segue.) Nothing says winter and Christmas like hot chocolate.
Back when I lived in Philadelphia, I’d take every opportunity to go to Max Brenner, a restaurant all about chocolate. Sweet, savory, it all had cocoa in it. I’d either get the hot chocolate and waffle fries, a cocktail and fries, or a desert and fries. That gets expensive fast, so I would occasionally opt to make the hot chocolate from Max Brenner’s Chocolate: A love Story. This recipe is an adaptation of that.
- 3½ cups whole milk (I prefer cream-line milk)
- 2 tbsps cornstarch
- 2 large egg yolks
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 tbsps dried rose buds
- 2 tsps cardamom pods, lightly crushed and opened
- ½ tsp of vanilla extract
- 7 oz Valrhona baking chocolate or other high quality chocolate, chopped (see note on Valrhona chocolate below)
- Optional: 1 tsp rose water
- Note on chocolate: I love milk chocolate but people have different chocolate preferences. My mom will be the first to tell me dark chocolate is better for me, but I say I’m pretty sure the sugar mitigates any good effects of chocolate, and she gives me a look that says that’s not the point. Anyway, I used Valrhona Lait Jivara (40% cocao) in the recipe, but feel free to get darker with their Noir Caraibe (66%). You can’t go wrong either way.
- Sprinkle the cornstarch over half a cup of milk. I do mean sprinkle, since you’ll have to fight against oobleck stuck to the bottom of the bowl. Whisk together, then whisk in the egg yolks and sugar.
- Over medium heat bring two cups of milk, the rose petals, and the cardamom pods to a boil. Reduce heat so that the milk simmers for 15 minutes, then remove from heat and let steep another 15 minutes. You can let it steep longer for a stronger rose and cardamom flavor.
- Whisk the egg custard mixture into the steeped milk. Put the milk/custard mix back on a heat source and crank up to medium. Whisking often, bring the mix to a boil, then strain through a wire sieve into a large bowl.
- Add the chocolate and vanilla extract to the strained mix and let sit for a minute or two before whisking the chocolate into the mix.
- Meanwhile, bring the last cup of milk to a boil, then slowly pour that over the chocolate mix. Whisk to combine. If it’s too creamy and thick for your tastes, add some more warmed milk. If the rose isn’t prominent enough, add the tsp of rose water.