I'm back from Christmas (with way too much stuff), but I need a day or two to organize photos and "recharge" before giving an account. I hope everyone else had a good one.

Oh, and it's my birthday. Happy Birthday to me. ;) I expect lots of presents. Don't disappoint me.

Happy Holidays!

I'm off for my parents' for the rest of the week. I hope everyone has a happy holiday, regardless of which religion, festival or sentimental feeling you celebrate. :)

As a send off, new to the Recipes section is my recipe for Gingerbread Cookies! Enjoy! Let me know what you think.

Happy Holidays!

Downtown Lights, Take Two

I posted some pictures of the lights downtown awhile back, but I wasn't really that happy with how most of them turned out (my camera becomes very sensitive to motion when I turn the flash off). I remembered to take my tripod to work today, and popped over to the park after work and took some more, and the tripod makes all the difference. Technically I think the park was closed, and a patrol car did make a slow pass while I was setting up my tripod, but I escaped without a ticket or a visit to the local jail. It was also kind of cold (about 32 degrees) and I forgot my gloves, which made handling the aluminum tripod and stainless steel camera fun, but I think the pictures turned out well anyway. I put them in the same folder as the older pictures (the old ones are the "downtown" series; the new ones are the "mall" series). The first and second pictures were taken with a 2-second exposure (my camera does up to 15-second exposures, which is fun to play with, although anything above about a 6-second exposure turns out as white unless it's in a really dark room). I wasn't that impressed with them on the small screen of the camera, so I turned the long exposure off, but in retrospect I think I like them more than the others. (The third picture is basically the same picture as the first one, minus the longer exposure.) Let me know what you think. :)

Playing Santa

I was supposed to work on Sunday, but I got a call while on the Interstate on my way in letting me know that the attorney had cancelled and I didn't need to come in, so . . . I delivered Christmas presents, instead. :) I'm afraid I don't look much like Santa, but Lane and Nick didn't seem to mind. Lane liked her presents (these were the first presents she's been allowed to open, so she was excited), but the star of the show was Nick's present. This was one of the items I ordered from the catalog company that I mentioned in a couple of previous posts (the company that messed up my order and charged me double shipping), and to be honest I didn't quite realize how big it was. It's an inflatable ball pit in the shape of a police helicopter, and it took me most of 20 minutes just to blow it up. It came with 100 plastic balls, most of which ended up all over the dining room floor (see the video). Nick loves it. He happily threw balls out of the pit for awhile, then curled up inside and napped for awhile. Lane loves it, too (she played with it more than the presents I bought her, and she and I played inside it for a bit). Scott and Lisa, on the other hand, aren't quite so thrilled . . . Like I said, I didn't realize it was quite that big, and I'm not entirely sure where they're going to put it (its current location in the middle of the front hallway isn't really practical). The basement, I guess. Until it gets a hole in it. Then it will just be 100 plastic balls scattered all over the house. Scott and Lisa are really going to love me . . .

I also had a late supper with Cris (I sort of hadn't eaten all day, which is bad for me) and we exchanged presents, too. He got me a CD of one of my favorite comics (thanks Cris!), and I got him a bo staff. A real, solid wood, 6-foot-tall bo staff. I'm curious to see how long it will be before he messages me with something like "How do you patch a hole in plaster?" or "How much do new windows cost?" I ordered it off eBay, and it actually came like this. The shipper just wrapped it in USPS envelopes and tape and sent it through the mail. I bet the postal employees who handled it were like "What the hell is that?"

I've almost been in two accidents in the last couple of weeks. I guess I was lucky because I drive a silver car. Well, it's grey, anyway. Close enough.

Sportsmanship

As a former wrestler (for 12 years) and someone who appreciates good sportsmanship, I found this story touching.

Sliding

It snowed while I was at work last night, not a lot but enough to make the streets slick, especially when combined with the remainder from the last snow storm and freezing temperatures. This new accumulation provided a perfect playground for the idiots of the city, two of whom tried to play tag with me on the way home. I'm continually astounded by the fact that, even though we live in Nebraska, which has more than its fair share of ice and snow and wind and other assorted nasty weather, a surprising number of people simply don't understand that putting a layer of ice between your tires and the pavement creates a different driving condition . . .

As I left the Interstate near my apartment and approached my street, I witnessed one incredibly brilliant person run a red light (which had vehicles with a green light). And not a "just-recently-turned-red light." This light was red for a full three seconds or more before he barreled through it, in front of cars that were beginning to enter the intersection. Then, a few minutes later, the gentleman in the car behind me, apparently growing impatient with my 35 mph speed, passed me, threw snow up on my car and traveled another few hundred feet before I saw his car start to "drift" and his brake lights come on. I had already slowed down to turn into my apartment complex, but I knew what was coming and came to a complete stop to watch him. Sure enough, his car began to slide and then he overcorrected, spun 180 degrees and killed the engine with one tire in the ditch, facing me, in my lane. I waited to see if he needed help, but luckily for him he wasn't stuck and the car was fine, and he simply pulled a U-turn and continued on his way (although I'd wager with a healthy dose of adrenaline). The fact of the matter, though, is that he was damn lucky (and so was I); if I hadn't already slowed down to turn, chances are I would have been in the space where his car ended up at the time it ended up there. It was also 1 a.m.; at 8 a.m. he would have taken three or four other cars with him as he spun through two lanes. If he'd lost it another few hundred feet up the street, he'd have had a nice little encounter with a bridge. So, if he had to lose control, he picked a good time and place for it.

But the thing is, he didn't have to lose control at all. Slow down, people! Exercise some common sense. If the roads are bad, give yourself more time to get there and don't lose your patience. Keep in mind that everyone else is experiencing the same conditions and they aren't going slow to irritate you. And quit trying to hit my car.

Fun at the Office

New in the Greymatter section, a look at office humor.

Getting Carded

I received a Christmas card from my mom today. The card looked a little odd but was very cool. It was slightly yellowed and I wondered for a moment what sort of discount, going-out-of-business store she'd found in some little corner of a town somewhere, but then I figured that she must have "inherited" it. Turns out I was right; there was a letter inside that explained that she'd found it in a box she'd inherited from my great-grandmother, who passed away a few years ago. She said to save it (like I throw away anything my mom sends me . . .), and I think she's right: this card may become an heirloom and go in a scrapbook.

Look what kind of cool cards they made 50 years ago . . .

Hearing Things

Maybe it's the acoustics in my bathroom but I've been mishearing things on the radio this week. Cris is still making fun of me for admitting that I originally thought the lyrics to Dido's "White Flag" included the line "I won't poke my eyes out and surrender." (I still think it sounds like that.) So far this week I've heard a local car dealership's advertisement for "lingerie cars" (which turned out to be "luxury cars") and Chili's holiday advertisement, which, to my ears, included the line "There's a time for eating and a time for dying," which is poetic and intriguing but not exactly suitable for selling a restaurant. I'm pretty sure they actually said "dining." I hope. Or maybe Chili's is advertising a new cannibal menu . . .

Tea Time

I bought three tins of green tea over the weekend (and managed to get home with two of them). I've already mentioned my favorite kind, but I also picked up a tin of Pink Grapefruit Green Tea, which is actually pretty good (plus it donates to breast cancer research, which is always a good cause; I also received my Breast Cancer research stamps in the mail a couple of days ago). It's cold and snowy today and I'm still at work, so I'm enjoying my grapefruit tea. Here's to your health.

Night Lights

Cris and I stopped by the Old Market on Sunday evening (in a fruitless attempt to go to a specific store). I snapped some pictures of the lights in the park while we were down there and, although I wasn't all that impressed with them, I picked out the better ones and put them in a folder. I'll probably arrange them into a page later.

This one is actually pretty good. The rest are here.

An Apple a Day

New in the Recipes section, my adventures in making a caramel apple pie. Enjoy. :)

Amazing Deals

I have a routine that I follow when I get on the computer each day (a specific order of sites that I visit). I start by refreshing Yahoo! News to see the top headlines, then move on to my eBay auctions, the two or three blogs I read, a singles site or two and an assortment of Web comics that I enjoy. Up until today I've also checked my "Amazon.com Gold Box" every day, where Amazon.com lists 10 items that they've reduced in price just for me. Today I realized that I've been checking that page every day for the last two or three months and have yet to buy anything from it. The deals just aren't that good and about 70% of the items I wouldn't want even if they were free. So I don't think I'm going to check that anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love Amazon. I order stuff from them all the time (usually I add items to my wishlist until I've accumulated enough for free shipping). I'm just not going to go to their site every day to see what color of tape measure they're offering me for a dollar off.

Also in the news, the Omaha World-Herald today ran an article on one of my favorite companies, Despair.com. Nice to see them get some publicity. Go check them out if you haven't.

Malled to Death

Cris and I popped out for supper tonight (to TGIFridays, where the food was good but the service was kind of slow; granted it was a Saturday night). TGIFridays is built into Westroads Mall, so, at Cris's behest, we did some shopping, too. Cris led the way; I tagged along. Despite this fact, Cris bought absolutely nothing and I spent $40. Ten dollars of that was for my favorite tea, which, unfortunately, I managed not to get home with (I know, all sorts of interesting grammar in that sentence . . .), but I did find some Christmas gifts, so I'm not stressing. The mall was busy (on a Saturday evening in December? No way.), and it was fun to sit in the restaurant and watch the people go by (I like watching people). Despite all that, I think I'm going to send Cris a bill for the money I spent in the mall (since it was his idea).

Later I hit Target, where I spent $3.55 on a card (the cheapest I've ever gotten out of Target). The woman at the checkout lane, reciting a phrase burned into her brain through rote repetition, asked me the same question I've been asked every time I've gone through a Target checkout lane for the last three years: "Would you like to save 10% on that by applying for a Target Visa card?" I actually laughed out loud and she gave me a funny look. I politely explained that (a) I already have a Target Visa card and (b) even if I didn't, 10% on that purchase didn't really amount to much. She was pretty quick with her comeback (sharper than your average check-out person): "Well, you know, saving 35 cents here and there adds up pretty quick."

Then I hit Borders, where I spent yet another $60, partially on gifts, but with a book or two for me thrown in (damn discount tables). Then I came home and was quite disappointed to find that the current episode of SNL had been preempted. I knew that Iowa had already declined to run the episode because the host, Al Sharpton, is a candidate for president and the Iowa affiliates didn't want to violate "equal time" laws. I was not aware, however, that the Omaha station would be doing the same (I got a "Best of Steve Martin" SNL episode). Not that I think Al Sharpton was going to be all that funny . . .

P.S. - Seen in a public chatroom on the Yahoo! Chess servers tonight:

boycott_all_liberals: sup
joe_hambleton: exactly
joe_hambleton: that's why people can worship Satin

(Cris was pulling for equal time for worshipping Flannel, too.)

Slow Motion

So I was almost in an accident today. I was about as close as you can get to getting into an accident without actually getting into an accident. I was on my way to work and was approaching the street where I wanted to turn left (from a one-way street going south to a one-way street going east). It has a curb lane, where there are parking meters used for parking during some hours and the rest of the day it's a normal lane (only for turning left). There was a bus in the next lane over and a long line of cars (some going straight, some turning left), so I pulled over into the curb lane. I was on my way up the curb lane when an elderly woman (probably late sixties, early seventies) decided she was tired of waiting behind the bus and pulled over into the curb lane, either without checking or without checking sufficiently. I saw her start to pull over and time slowed down. I braked and swerved to avoid her (complete with squealing tires and everything) and actually ended up half-way up on the curb, between two of the parking meters (there were no pedestrians on the street, luckily, and I'm also not quite sure how I avoided hitting a parking meter; I'd like to say skill, but I'm thinking it was 99% luck). I thought for sure she was going to hit me anyway, but then she saw me and braked and stopped, literally, a foot from my car. The whole thing took less than 4 seconds, but it seemed like 10 minutes at the time. The woman's eyes were the size of dinner plates (she clearly realized she'd screwed up), and another elderly woman in the car looked pretty freaked out, too, but I gave her a "no blood, no foul" smile and wave and she backed up and let me go past. I'm sure we both had enough adrenaline for the day . . . I checked my car out when I got to work, just to make sure she hadn't actually hit me anyway, but my car seems okay (I guess I'll wait and see if jumping the curb did anything to the alignment). I was a little jittery at work for awhile, but everything seems to have worked out.

Stamp Update

On Tuesday I posted about my adventures in buying stamps, noting my decision to purchase the Eid stamps for my Christmas cards and musing aloud (in print, anyway) my curiosity about whether my friends and family would think it odd or even notice that I put stamps celebrating a Muslim holiday on Christmas cards. Imagine my surprise, then, at the ironic e-mail I received on Thursday (a mere two days later). This particular e-mail is a forward from one of my uncles (not something he wrote, although that lessens the stupidity only slightly), one that has been circulating on the Internet for some time and which I'd seen referenced before, but had never actually received. In a nutshell, the e-mail presents a list of terrorist attacks, points out that all of the parties responsible for said terrorist attacks are Muslim and then exhorts all "patriotic Americans" to boycott the stamp. The idiocy of such an e-mail is staggering. To list events perpetrated by a handful of individuals and then to extrapolate backwards, claiming that all people who share the same faith are, by their very definition, terrorists is just asinine. There are millions of peaceful Muslims living not only in this country but all over the world. There are also many members of other faiths, including Christianity, who have rightfully earned the monicker "terrorist." And yet I have yet to see any boycotts of the Christian stamps that are offered right next to the Eid stamps. The whole "slap in the face" comment is its own slap in the face to millions of peaceful Muslims who were as horrified by the terrorist attacks as every other American. Intolerance is bad, regardless of its source.

I'm tempted to put two Eid stamps on his Christmas card. And circle them. And write "Happy Eid al-Fitr!" on the envelope. In big red ink. Maybe with some glitter.

The State of Marriage

Received from my Reason list today: A *great* article on the debate surrounding gay marriage. It summarizes the way I feel on the issue and points out a lot of the flaws that I see in the opposition to gay marriage. It highlights one of my biggest pet peeves regarding the, for lack of a better word, stubborn arguments that opponents often cite, and that is the idea that marriage serves some "greater" purpose that everyone should just inherently understand and respect. The problem with this is that a lot of people define this "greater purpose" using their own subjective (and often religious) perspectives. Well, that's a fine and dandy opinion to have, and you're free to think that there's some divine and sacred purpose to marriage, but the State can't have that opinion. The State can't legislate using the religious opinion of one group, any more than the State can legislate using one group's opinion of another race or another gender. The State is limited to rationality and equality, and the whole "marriage is a sacred institution" thing is a smokescreen because there is no convincing, rational reason to say "A man and a woman who have known each other for 3 minutes and are 3/4 drunk can be married by an Elvis impersonator and that's an acceptable marriage but two women who have known and loved each other for 15 years are threatening the fabric of democracy by wanting the same legal recognition." And let's not even touch the stupid "Marriage is necessary for the proper raising of children" argument because, as the article points out and as I've believed for years, that argument requires the State to invalidate all marriages that don't produce children, something no one is seriously going to suggest. So, to summarize, individuals are free to believe that gay marriage is against their personal religion, but it's not an opinion the State can have. Let people who love each other have the same dignity, regardless of their orientation.


Amusingly, the random advertisement that loaded when I looked at the page was for a weekly religious column by Bishop John Shelby Spong entitled "Is the Bible the Literal Dictation of God?" Not exactly in harmony with the intent of the article.

The Fine Art of Buying Stamps

I'm actually mailing Christmas cards this year (my first year) because, thanks to Lisa, I have some kick-ass Christmas cards from UNICEF. So I need stamps to mail them, and the American Flag stamps that I use to mail my bills (the few bills that I don't pay online now, anyway) don't really fit the whole "holiday spirit" motif. Most people would go to the post office to get stamps. I, on the other hand, work a weird shift and I'm lazy, so I tried to work around it. My first attempt: the stamp vending machine at Wal-Mart. It, unfortunately, didn't have any Christmas stamps that I liked, although I did buy a book of American Flag stamps (I'll need them sooner or later). And I paid for them with a $20 bill. In return, the machine gave me $12.60 in change . . . in golden dollars. So I'm walking around Wal-Mart with seven pounds of change . . . Anyway, so I went online to usps.com (I originally typed in usps.gov, but it auto-redirects to the .com site) and found out that I can have stamps delivered to me for $1 (and, as an added bonus, if you order $5,000 worth of stamps, they ship by Registered Mail instead of Priority Mail). A buck! Hey, that's more than worth the hassle of getting up early and locating a post office (not to mention driving there). I looked at their Christmas stamp options and I wasn't really that impressed with the cartoony little Santa stamps that they're offering. So I ordered some of the Eid stamps (which I think are pretty), and I guess I'll see if any of my conservative religious family members mention that I'm putting stamps celebrating a Muslim holiday on their Christmas cards (not like the Christmas cards themselves are religious or anything). While I was at it, I bought some Breast Cancer and Domestic Violence stamps (those are the stamps that cost $.45 a piece instead of $.37, with the extra going to a social cause). The Breast Cancer stamps are being retired at the end of the month (according to the Cure Breast Cancer site, anyway; it doesn't say anything about it on the USPS site), and domestic violence prevention and awareness is a subject near and dear to my heart. So I spent about $35 on stamps today. I should be set for awhile.

I finally put the Thanksgiving pictures up. Enjoy the photorecord.


I also put up a page of my baby pictures (provided by my mother, although I scanned them). Enjoy.