I should be doing a full Year in Review and Resolutions Recap and Re-Resolved and all that … but I don’t have the time nor inclination just this moment (story…
I should be doing a full Year in Review and Resolutions Recap and Re-Resolved and all that … but I don’t have the time nor inclination just this moment (story of 2008 right there), and we’re turning computers off after dinner, so I’ll put that off until … well, the New Year.
Meantime, everyone have a pleasant and safe New Year’s Eve, and we’ll see you in (yikes) ’09!
If you’re going to make egg nog, make it spiked. For, y’know, safety’s sake. With one in every 20,000 eggs contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, drinking homemade eggnog can be…
If you’re going to make egg nog, make it spiked. For, y’know, safety’s sake.
With one in every 20,000 eggs contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, drinking homemade eggnog can be something of a gamble. But an experiment designed to test whether the alcohol in spiked eggnog can kill the deadly bugs suggests that, in general, few bacteria survive in a mixture containing both raw eggs and 20 percent rum and bourbon.
The experiment, which was done by Rockefeller University professor Vincent A. Fischetti at the request of National Public Radio’s Science Friday program, compared the bacteria found in homemade alcoholic eggnog with those found in store-bought nonalcoholic nog. After culturing samples of both solutions and incubating them for 24 hours at 37 degrees Celsius — body temperature — Fischetti and his colleagues found that while the store-bought product was teeming with a range of bacteria, the homemade version was completely sterile.
I always knew my mom was looking out for me during the holidays.
Sorry, no blogging the past few days, as schedules have drifted to and fro. Not a whole heck of a lot to report — the Christmas Party here was a…
Sorry, no blogging the past few days, as schedules have drifted to and fro. Not a whole heck of a lot to report — the Christmas Party here was a nice success, as was our annual jaunt up to Jim and Di’s. Plans remain nebulous, the hours long, the days short, and Henry Hudson’s crew continues to serve up their draughts …
I’m not afraid to use the words, nor “Seasons Greetings” — courtesy, respect, and pleasant wishes for others doesn’t diminish my beliefs and personal enjoyment of my own religious occasion….
I’m not afraid to use the words, nor “Seasons Greetings” — courtesy, respect, and pleasant wishes for others doesn’t diminish my beliefs and personal enjoyment of my own religious occasion. Guess my faith is strong enough …
At any rate, I hope everyone’s end-of-year jollity is jolly, and that Santa was good to you. We had a very nice, and not-overly-hectic time — Christmas Eve dinner at the Ks with extended family, Christmas morning at the Ks (with my folks in attendance), Christmas afternoon and dinner at my folks’ (with brother and family there, too), Christmas Dessert down at the Dellis, etc. Somewhere in the middle there Jackie flew out from Denver, adding to the festivities.
Lots of fun swag, too, in particularly my much-longed-for Dr. Horrible DVD, plus clothes and decor and books and other goodies.
Thanks to those who shot me IMs, perhaps wondering where I was (it’s Faerie, dagnabbit, and days flow like water here). Happy Boxing Day (apologies to those of you who use gift bags instead), and may you continue to be happy and safe.
The subject came up in conversation this evening of kitties and holiday outfits. To which I observe … ‘Nuff said. …
The subject came up in conversation this evening of kitties and holiday outfits. To which I observe …
‘Nuff said.
Dinner at Mr. Stox, with the Christmas Belles….
Dinner at Mr. Stox, with the Christmas Belles.
Despite a small snow storm on the trip to the airport — which abruptly cut off about halfway there, thank goodness, and only delayed our nicely padded trip by…
Despite a small snow storm on the trip to the airport — which abruptly cut off about halfway there, thank goodness, and only delayed our nicely padded trip by about 20 minutes — our journey to Faerie (i.e., Southern California, where we eat and drink well and, in the blink of an eye, suddenly wake up to realize it’s time to go home after seemingly no time has passed and certainly none of our plans of things to do have actually happened) was uneventful. No security problems. No delays on take-off. No blizzards. Arrived at SNA to be picked up by Jim and Ginger, got back to their house, carried luggage upstairs … and relaxed to some wine and cheese.
I slept in late this morning, until about 10 (11 Denver Time). After I was up and showered and dressed, Katherine choreographed us into singing Happy Anniversary (Flintstones/William Tell-style) to Jim and Ginger.
Nibbled on coffee cake, read some papers, chit and chatted, then Margie and I headed off to Main Place to do our Christmas Shopping, since the whole Cunning Catalogue Scheme just didn’t gel this year.
And it all worked pretty well, and between the mall and some places around it, we’re pretty much done. Yay! Just have to get things wrapped. And with all the retailers doing deep discounts, it was pretty reasonable, cost-wise.
So I do have some plans for the two weeks, aside from the inevitable running about and partying and that sort of thing.
Given that this is, after all, Faerie, I will count myself lucky if I get two or three of these done. But it’s good to have dreams.
Things have been insanely busy at work and home this week, and look to build to a crescendo … tomorrow, when we depart for Faerie. Indeed, within 24 hours…
Things have been insanely busy at work and home this week, and look to build to a crescendo … tomorrow, when we depart for Faerie. Indeed, within 24 hours we’ll be arriving there.
Since we’ll be out for two weeks over the holidays, Katherine and I shifted our karate schedule from Tuesday/Thursday to Monday/Wednesday nights. We’ll be making a point of it to practice while out in Faerie, both so that we’re limber and ready to be guests at Sean and Rob’s (my nephews) dojo and so that I’m not completely out of practice when I return in January — as I’m supposed to test at the end of the month.
Last night was the Coffee Shop Poetry Reading for the 3rd Graders. The kids all had to wear black, and the audience was instructed to click their fingers for applause (which worked very well and was less disruptive than clapping). Lots of fun, and Katherine did a faboo job performing.
(I don’t know if I mentioned that our family did the Advent Candle Lighting at church on the Second Sunday thereof, two weeks back. There’s a reading that we do, and each of us got a bit to say. Katherine also did a faboo job — what she still suffers from in a bit of a speech impediment is very overcome by (a) volume, (b) speaking slowly and carefully, and (c) putting vividness in her reading aloud. We had several people, even a week later, come up and tell us how good a job she did, and it wasn’t all just out of politeness.)
So nights have been a bit compressed.
Work the past two days has been a series of frustrations — a big project facing an embarrassing schedule delay for reasons not the fault of my group (though ever finger points) … a rather bizarrely set up financial approval for a development effort being slowed up by people who can’t seem to agree on the numbers … and a massive migration from our old, clunky intranet to a new, shiny, improved one, that was organized to require every single file that needs to be migrated over to be processed individually, a process that takes about a minute (and with about 8,000 files, that works out to over three business weeks, working full time at it, and it’s due, of course, Friday).
My cup runneth over and spilleth all over my sleeve, lap, and the carpet around me, leaving mighty stains.
Meanwhile, the only holiday triumph to date is getting the Christmas cards out (and my getting my gifts for Margie and Katherine, that are for here, bagged; others already headed out to Faerie with Jim & Ginger a few weeks back, and Margie can’t find her bag of stuff for me). We are still wading through catalogs for gift shopping, a week before The Big Day. Yikes. We may end up doing shopping on foot in actual stores while out in Faerie. Inconceivable!
Packing, mercifully, is minimal, since we have full suites of clothing and toiletries already cached out there. Mostly bringing stuff for Kitten (as she’s still of an age that clothes are outgrown between visits) and last bits of gifts and the like, all carry-on. But there’s still plenty of pre-going-away activities about the house to get done — leave the sink clean, food for the cat, this shut down, this straightened out, etc., plus what looks to be a very full working day (from home, the plan is), until Kitten arrives home from school by bus and we jump in the van (with a quick, covert hanging of stockings with care) and head to the airport.
No blizzards predicted this year, at least.
United let Dave Hill, International Man of Mystery check in early.
I have a dozen blog posts queued up to write, plus many things I plan on doing (besides sleeping) this trip. I’m taking scads of vacation time (assuming the job doesn’t drag me back in), so there should be plenty of opportunity for R&R and some of the projects I always plan for but never quite manage to get in that timeless Rip-Van-Winklesque state that is Faerie.
I am looking forward to seeing the family, and friends, and all the good holiday stuff.
And catching my breath.
This morning opened up what’s supposed to be a series of never-breaking-freezing days here in Denver until at least after we’ve headed out to Faerie for the Holidays. And, indeed,…
This morning opened up what’s supposed to be a series of never-breaking-freezing days here in Denver until at least after we’ve headed out to Faerie for the Holidays. And, indeed, the temps today never even cracked the double-digits, so far as I spotted on the thermometer.
Which made it a good day for a fire, and popcorn, and egg nog with a bit of Irish.
Tonight was the Lessons & Carols service at church, which we might have blown off if Margie and I hadn’t volunteered to do a couple of the Lessons / Readings. And since Margie is feeling a bit under the weather, Katherine and I went and I did both readings (the rather downer Genesis tale of Adam passing the buck to Eve, and Eve to the Serpent, when God catches them all aware of their nekkidnesss, and the much upper tale of the shepherds abiding in their fields, etc.).
All in all, a nice day. Should have done more with the Christmas shopping, but so be it.
Christmas Cards 99.9% done. A couple of stragglers that I came up with after the list, a few that I’m trying to get addresses for, but the vast majority…
Christmas Cards 99.9% done. A couple of stragglers that I came up with after the list, a few that I’m trying to get addresses for, but the vast majority of the cards that need to go out, they will be deposited at the post office tomorrow. Huzzah!
I do tend to obsess on the subject of Christmas cards — not enough to get them done early enough to not sweat it, mind you, but I have this internalized sense that it’s a near-inviolable social bond to reach out to family and friends at least once a year with a card. It’s not something I necessarily expect from others, but it’s something I expect from myself.
And, for all the angst and postage, it’s cheaper than therapy.
It’s a holiday classic: John Scalzi’s The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time: The Village People in Can’t Stop the Christmas Music — On Ice! (1980) Undeterred by…
It’s a holiday classic: John Scalzi’s The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time:
The Village People in Can’t Stop the Christmas Music — On Ice! (1980)
Undeterred by the miserable flop of the movie Can’t Stop the Music!, last place television network NBC aired this special, in which music group the Village People mobilize to save Christmas after Santa Claus (Paul Lynde) experiences a hernia. Thus follows several musical sequences — on ice! — where the Village People move Santa’s Workshop to Christopher Street, enlist their friends to become elves with an adapted version of their hit “In The Navy,” and draft film co-star Bruce Jenner to become the new Santa in a sequence which involves stripping the 1976 gold medal decathlon winner to his shorts, shaving and oiling his chest, and outfitting him in fur-trimmed red briefs and crimson leathers to a disco version of “Come O Ye Faithful.” Peggy Fleming, Shields and Yarnell and Lorna Luft co-star.
Interestingly, there is no reliable data regarding the ratings for this show, as the Nielsen diaries for this week were accidentally consumed by fire. Show producers estimate that one in ten Americans tuned in to at least part of the show, but more conservative estimates place the audience at no more than two or three percent, tops.
Warning – contains several coffee-explosively-blown-through-the-nose moments.
(via Kate)
The Christmas Tree….
The Christmas Tree.
Didn’t get nearly the progress made on holiday stuff that I’d have liked. I did get the Christmas Card assembly line cranked up, first draft of the Letter and…
Didn’t get nearly the progress made on holiday stuff that I’d have liked. I did get the Christmas Card assembly line cranked up, first draft of the Letter and Twelfth Night invites done, etc. Margie made a pass on all the catalogs to toss dupes and unlikelies, and has started sifting in earnest.
We spent a good chunk of Saturday at Barnes & Noble, which was having a “mention Franklin Elementary and we’ll give them a fraction of the proceeds from your purchase.” Picked up a number of books for Katherine, and a few for others.
Saturday night was the Dojo Holiday Party, which was fun (again). This year it wasn’t open to kids, so Katherine was “forced” to stay with Kendall and Tyler at home. Oh, the agony …. Margie came with this year, which was nice. Good food, drink, and gift exchange, and, as always, odd to see folks in mufti rather than their gis.
Sunday was the above-mentioned holiday work. The evening was taken up with the church Advent Party, again a fun time though the first time we’ve attended. Lots of food, crafts, singing, etc. I wore a Santa hat so as to embarrass my daughter.
This week looks to be pretty intense, work-wise, as all sorts of big reviews (operations, projects, personnel) are all due this week, both for and by me. Oh, boy!
For those of my readers who are in our neck of the woods, here’s your “In advance of getting something in a Christmas Card which may not happen until who…
For those of my readers who are in our neck of the woods, here’s your “In advance of getting something in a Christmas Card which may not happen until who knows when,” our Twelfth Night event is up on the calendar for Saturday, 17 January. Hope to see you there — er, here.
Yeah, it’s silly vamping and materialism-obsessed and probably chauvinistic … but I just think the lyrics to “Santa Baby” (Joan Javits and Philip and Tony Springer) are too fun…
Yeah, it’s silly vamping and materialism-obsessed and probably chauvinistic … but I just think the lyrics to “Santa Baby” (Joan Javits and Philip and Tony Springer) are too fun and clever.
Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree,
For me.
Been an awful good girl,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.Santa baby, a ’54 convertible too,
Light blue.
I’ll wait up for you dear,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.Think of all the fun I’ve missed,
Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed,
Next year I could be just as good,
If you’ll check off my Christmas list,Santa baby, I wanna yacht,
And really that’s not a lot,
Been an angel all year,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.Santa honey, there’s one thing I really do need,
The deed
To a platinum mine,
Santa honey, so hurry down the chimney tonight.Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with a duplex,
And checks.
Sign your ‘X’ on the line,
Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight.Come and trim my Christmas tree,
With some decorations bought at Tiffany’s,
I really do believe in you,
Let’s see if you believe in me,Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing,
A ring.
I don’t mean on the phone,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight,
Hurry down the chimney tonight,
Hurry, tonight.
I prefer the original 1953 Eartha Kitt version, personally, but YMMV, and there are a surprisingly large number of recent covers.
Fun times….
Fun times.
It occurs to me that Thanksgiving is passed without (on this blog) an acknowledgment to all the folks to whom I am thankful. Because, for all of my introverted…
It occurs to me that Thanksgiving is passed without (on this blog) an acknowledgment to all the folks to whom I am thankful. Because, for all of my introverted nature, I must fess up to being thankful to others in my life.
To my boss, who both challenges me and feeds me enough kudos to make the demn’d horrid grind worth it.
To my readers and commenters here, who provide the feedback to power the mental mills that grind out this blog (et al.). I might do it otherwise, but the egoboo (and the emotional connections, and intellectual challenge) of you, the folks reading this, make the effort here more than worthwhile.
To the friends in my geographical area, and those beyond. You keep me grounded in humanity in a way that I cannot express.
To my family, blood side and in-law side, who constantly renew my faith in the human race, and in something outside my immediate household.
To my daughter, who (for all she occasionally drives me batty) keeps me on my toes and eternally hopeful for the future.
To my wife, who makes life worth living, to a degree that most mental health professionals would consider pathological, but that I consider the test of what I am as a person. I love you, my dear.
Thanksgiving is traditionally intended to focus on giving thanks to the Deity that makes it all happen. Given the wealth in my life (most of it immaterial), if Someone Upstairs is making it happen, I owe You a beer or fifty.
Thanks, all.
With Jim & Ginger here, it was inevitable that we would set up Christmas. And that’s a good thing, mind you. We have a vast expanse of Christmas decor, stored…
With Jim & Ginger here, it was inevitable that we would set up Christmas.
And that’s a good thing, mind you. We have a vast expanse of Christmas decor, stored in boxes in the basement for the 2-3 month season. Left to our own devices, we might actually not do anything with it until days before our late-January Twelfth Night Party prep.
But with the in-laws here, and an eager daughter, we can do little but bow to the inevitable.
Well, bowing was a bit of a problem, as, in carrying a (very light) box up the stairs from the basement this morning, my mid-left back went sproing and left me hors d’combat for most of the day.
But Jim, with Ginger and Margie (and, between other play-time bouts, Katherine) filled in, and got the tree up, and decorated, and other its of house-wide accents deployed.
And, suddenly, it’s the Christmas season. Nice.
Now … all we have to do is ….
Piece of (pecan) pie.
“… it was purchased in blood.” A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him,…
“… it was purchased in blood.”
A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him, police said.
The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.
When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.
But the shoppers got some great bargains over on Aisle 7!
“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down, too … I didn’t know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back,” Overby said. […] Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.
[…] Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart’s doors in the predawn darkness. Chanting “push the doors in,” the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.
[…] “They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,” said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over.” After the throng toppled Damour, his fellow employees had to fight through the crowd to help him, police said.
Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like “savages.” “When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!'” Cribbs said. “They kept shopping.”
While some folks are blaming this on Wal-Mart (and I am certainly no Wal-Mart fan myself), I don’t see how you could have had enough security to ward off the mob in these photos, and I don’t care how low the vacuum cleaners were marked — nothing save food rioters desperate to feed their families could possibly justify this. Placing the blame on Wal-Mart is like … well, using the Twinkie Defense. “Their incredibly low prices and the commercial frenzy of all that TV advertising impaired my judgment.”
Disgusting.
Yeah, someone’s happy about the snowy weather….
Yeah, someone’s happy about the snowy weather.
Undeterred by the miserable flop of the movie Can’t Stop the Music!, last place television network NBC aired this special, in which music group the Village People mobilize to save Christmas after Santa Claus (Paul Lynde) experiences a hernia. Thus follows several musical sequences — on ice! — where the Village People move Santa’s Workshop to Christopher Street, enlist their friends to become elves with an adapted version of their hit “In The Navy,” and draft film co-star Bruce Jenner to become the new Santa in a sequence which involves stripping the 1976 gold medal decathlon winner to his shorts, shaving and oiling his chest, and outfitting him in fur-trimmed red briefs and crimson leathers to a disco version of “Come O Ye Faithful.” Peggy Fleming, Shields and Yarnell and Lorna Luft co-star.