Datsa is sitting quietly (for a change) as I type this. Here's how he decided to settle himself (the video is silent because I didn't want to disturb Rob, who's taking a work break and napping in the bedroom):
For whatever reason, I also uploaded this video to Flickr, probably because I've been updating my Flickr set of our Christmas table and holiday card wreath, since the items on each have been changing over the week. The wreath keeps getting fuller, and the table has fewer oranges, gingerbread cookies and crackers but, somehow, more chocolate. Not that I'm complaining, it will make a fine New Year's Eve spread.
This morning I decided to actually get some exercise for a change, and shoveled the snow off our car cover, as well as around the sides and back of the car, in anticipation of doing some New Year's Eve shopping. I feel terrific, and wish I could do this sort of thing more often - I worked slowly and meticulously, didn't do a lot of bending, and I used my downstairs neighbor's smaller shovel to clean off the top of the car, walking most every shovelful over to the side of the property where the big mounds of snow still sit and making them bigger. I like to think I went about things logically, and it would seem that I now ache in the right places (mostly shoulders, arms and legs) and not in the wrong ones (back). Still, I could use some good abdominal exercises that don't involve bending or kneeling, and I can't think of what to do.
It took forever for the 7th Avenue bus to get down to Times Square this evening, where they're already starting to pen people in anticipating tomorrow night's crowd. Perhaps this is all just a big game of Kettling (via BoingBoing). In any case, I'm glad to be out of Manhattan for the next few days, and I hope that by the time I venture into The City again things will be a bit less slushy...
For my mom, who likes to send me Jew-Haikus that have been online forever and which I usually pass on to my boss' daughter, BoingBoing has linked to Haikuleaks, which derives its poetry from searching through the Wikileaks "Cablegate" data for naturally-occuring sequences of 5/7/5 syllables. Clever and, yeah, pretty poetic.
Bob Greenberger has just posted more about Robin's dinosaur-drawing assignment for Zenoscope/the Discovery Channel. My favorite part of all this has been the research, as I love watching speculative TV shows about dinosaurs.
We couldn't even get down the outside stairs this morning, much less traverse the unplowed driveway-road to the unplowed main road to get to the express bus which wasn't running anyway. So yeah, snow day! Spending much of it under covers with comic books and kitties while Robin works. Every now and then I make a futile attempt to catch up on some blog reading. At least I'm down to only three unread categories, all the News+Views ones, but each of those has around 700+ unread posts. So, no blogaround for the foreseeable. Nonetheless, I'm starting to catch up on some individual blogs, and one of Kevin Drum's posts intrigued me, as it discusses a new Google program in beta, the Ngram Viewer, which looks through "lots of books" from the past 200 years to find which phrases are popular during which eras. A great way to look up all the odd phrases I seem to use in every day speech - peachy keen!
A very nice Christmas/Boxing Day weekend so far! I got Robin Civilization V (which he's been playing pretty regularly the past couple of days), and he got me a bunch of audiobook versions of A Christmas Carol (I figured hey, now that I've collected most of the movie and TV versions I want, why not start on the radio plays and so forth?). We saw the Doctor Who Christmas special - very "eh" I thought - and are now watching The Weather Channel intermittently as the snow piles up outside. I might not be able to get in to work tomorrow; oh well! Meanwhile in Chicago, via Keith, they're staging a Klingon Christmas Carol. Hope it works better than the Doctor Who version...
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it in whatever way they choose. I didn't grow up with Christmas - in fact, for a long time I was vehemently against it, it was for goyim only and that was that. But as I made my way into a world wider than the closed confines of Judaism (while not totally abandoning the rituals that gave me comfort as a child, such as lighting Chanukah candles) I found many things to be a lot of fun and quite universal, particularly the banishing of the darkness through warmth and lights, as well as the celebration of the turn of the year and the renewal of lengthening days.
I also liked the way the media celebrated the holiday. When I was growing up I adored Christmas variety shows, which usually featured performers my parents and I liked. I've always been fascinated by cartoons and animation, many of which were centered around Christmas and only shown this time of year in the age before home TV recording devices. When I married Steve and added more personal traditions (like visiting his family in CT, exchanging gifts, getting a fiber-optic tree) we would seek out various versions of A Christmas Carol which aired every year. Now that I'm married to Robin (having added the card wreath, the holiday table and Christmas at home with food and crackers) my love for this redemption tale has only grown (along with my love for modern-era Christmas-themed pop songs).
But if you've read my Wholly Trinity links you know all this. What may not be as apparent is the sort of warped way in which I view the holiday and its media depictions at this point in my life. As I have no stake in the Jesus game it's all sacrelicious to me. And I'm lucky in that Robin seems to share my skewed view on some things. Hence our holiday ecard to you this year: You can see it larger on Flickr, of course. It's borne from possibly watching the Dickens classic a few too many times. My favorite bit is the heart he holds in his hand which Scrooge's quote blesses. Now comes the news that Marvel will be putting out A Zombie Christmas Carol - so it feels kinda cool that we're ahead of the zeitgeist for a change.
Here are a couple of photos from our Riggs Residence Christmas 2010 celebration, seen larger on Flickr along with their captions:
The holiday table as it looked yesterday afternoon. We failed to find mince pies or Christmas pudding, I really need to get those earlier in the season next year. But we do have three kinds of Terry's chocolate oranges (milk, dark and mint), four different flavors of Toblerones, gingerbread cookies, other assorted cookies, satsuma and blood oranges and, of course, the obligatory Guinness, don't ask me why. Above the table is a nice tray of English robins (a very common herald of Christmas in the UK, you see them on lots of holiday cards) which Rob's sister Pat gave us one year. Not shown are the foods I'm actually eating, the sugarless and low-sodium ones. Um, yum.
This year's card wreath, shot from the right. I can't get a proper head-on shot as it decorates our hallway and there's only so far back one can stand.
And here it is shot from the left.
Now I'm going to eat my first blood orange of the day so that the house smells all proper (according to Robin, Christmas smells like oranges and cigars, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass on the latter). Have a safe, peaceful and happy holiday, all!
Lots of bright sunshine this morning, as we try to wake up enough to do our last-minute Christmas grocery shopping. As ever, head on to Flickr if you want to see these full size.
Datsa takes over Robin's living room chair.
Amy prefers the carpet (although I needed to move the footstool to get the full effect, hence what looks like a hole in the rug).
It's that time again, so here are the links to my "Wholly Trinity" of Christmas-related media culture essays, from back when I had the time to expound upon such weighty matters:
Enjoy! Our annual online card appears in this space tomorrow (Robin really outdid himself this year), but the link is up now on my Facebook page. And of course, in my opinion one of the best ways to enjoy A Christmas Carol online is to access the original text and, hey, read it out loud for yourself!
*(I note that this probably needs a bit of updating since it doesn't include Disney's 2009 computer-animated movie featuring Jim Carrey, so for now let me just say my nickname for this version is "Mr. Scrooge's Wild Ride" and leave it at that.)
I'll probably post my Wholly Trinity links tomorrow, as I have the day off (and with over 3000 blog posts to read I'm grateful for the extra free time), but until then let's all be thankful for Taiwanese animated company Next Media Animation, as they present a modern-day nativity tale:
Whoa, way too many fake Hulks tweeting out there! Jim has actually made a list. I think I might try to get Robin (who worked on an actual Hulk comic book for quite awhile) to illustrate a few of those...
What a perfect day, and a perfect weekend with my husband. And DADT has been repealed, and Macca's been making the chat show rounds promoting the reissue of Band on the Run, and I just had to post this via Mark Evanier:
And Rob's hard at work on our holiday e-card which will be posted here and on Facebook and elsewhere this coming weekend... back to cooking dinner! (No, not tofu wings.)
Hey kids, what time is it? It's time to play TSA MadCivLibs on BoingBoing! Have fun getting geared up for all your travel this next couple of weeks! Me, I'm staying home, thank goodness.
Datsa enjoys Robin's footstool more than mine because his is nearer the radiator.
Amy just likes to stretch out on the radiator itself.
Larger versions available on my Flickr account. By the way, we just got back from the Alex Simmons-organized Kids Comics Caper down by our subway station, and the photos from that event are here, including a few of Robin and our buddy Jamal Igle discussing the next eight pages that Rob's inking over Jamal. Oh, and here's Alex's video (you can see me briefly in the background, playing with my smartphone):
I know 'tis the season to fire up the light shows to the tune of either Mannheim Steamroller or the Trans-Siberian Whosiwhatsis, but this building in London has a movie to sell!
Do you know what happens when you don't post very much? You go to the bottom of the internet. From Wonder-Tonic and Urlesque, here's a way to do it faster: SocialBlast. Right up my totally-uncool alley!
And the day got away from me again. Considering I overslept, having forgotten to reset my alarm after yesterday's early wake-up, I accomplished a lot at work (including getting there on time), and the smartphone means I was able to keep up with my email. But blog-reading? No time there, I'm afraid. Oh well, like Jello, there's always room for a Silly Site, and today's, via BoingBoing, is Spacelog.org, featuring the communication between Mission Control and various NASA missions reinterpreted as Twitter-like feeds. Way cool!
It's coming time again to reprint my Wholly Trinity, but not yet. First, please savor John Scalzi's 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time (via Arthur, who still never wishes me a happy birthday on his blog).
Now that I have your attention, please skim this article from Publishers Weekly; towards the bottom there's a mention of the book Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Predators. Robin and I are pleased to announce that he will be pencilling eight pages for this book, thanks to our buddy Bob Greenberger. His assignment: velociraptors! Thanks for making our holidays brighter, Bob!
The colder it gets, the cuter the cats seem to become. I have posted an entire Flickr set called Amy and the Balloon, including a brief narrative. I also uploaded the following two photos, which you can open on Flickr as well if you want to see them enlarged.
Hmm, that bed looks pretty inviting. I think I'm going in the bedroom to warm up a bit.
Getting ready for my office holiday party this evening by recharging the camera, so there should be a number of kitty photos up soon, and I've started work on my city holiday gallery as well. Speaking of intrusive photography, Robin's found an interesting site for people who want to protest Rapescan RapiScan machines in airports - 4th Amendment Undergarments. "For when unwarranted searches go too far." I think limiting liquids and making people take off their shoes (for industry!) goes too far, but what do I know?
Okay, if Galileo was wrong (via Arthur), could we please get the sun to move around the earth a little more closely? Or, you know, just around this room?
If you have a dedicated site, don't you want more than one page on it? Bacon or Beercan now has a second page, Hairpiece or Herpes. Seriously though, I was expected to hit refresh and hear a whole 'nother person pronouncing the word. Ah well. Via BoingBoing.
Way too cold to stay in this room, and I can't do that much on the smartphone yet, so a really quick link via BoingBoing to the Flash game Mowdown. Have fun, y'all; hope you're in warmer rooms than I am right now.
Today Robin marks his 49th birthday. It would have been nice if the degrees Fahrenheit outside matched that number, but that's not to be this year, so I think we celebrate at home this evening. It's also a very neat thing indeed that he has work to do on his birthday, although considering the current apartment temperature I think a nap or two is definitely in order for him. And soup. Lots of soup. Also very happy birthdays to Leonard Kirk, David Ossman and Paul Jenkins; for the first time I was able to leave greetings for all on their Facebook pages. I love the 21st century! Now I'm off to play with my new smartphone on the commute to work.
As Robin will attest, as much as I admire Chuck Jones, I've never really had a thing for Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner cartoons. But I really liked this live-action version:
Sometime last century, before smartphones, before Web 2.0 in fact, Robin and I were on Usenet's comic book groups, and one day the discussion turned to The Empire Strikes Back. During a discussion that arose from my review of X-Men #77, Robin wrote about being deeply disappointed by that movie, whereupon I emailed him jokingly, "Marry me," as I felt exactly the same way and he was one of the only others who shared my opinion that, in essence, Empire is not a movie, it's a chapter. All the people, and they are legion, once more praising the movie to the skies upon the death of its director, Irvin Kershner - well, I must say I just don't get it. The least a director owes his audience is a resolution, in my opinion. Regardless, it's nice to look back at that "Marry me" on our anniversary, and for all you people who liked the movie here's I, Lobot (via BoingBoing).
So much tech, so little time! This is a more "old-fashioned" way of posting photos to Blogger, from my digital camera via Flickr so people can go there and click on full-sized versions instead of me taking up space on Blogger. Yeah, I know, so last year!
Datsa naps on his red pillow here in the computer room.
Amy finds a hiding place among the stored papers underneath my computer desk.
Wow, I can't believe I've finally taken another step into the 21st century - blogging via smartphone! At least most of the keys are more or less where I expect them to be. But it takes forever, and is certainly less user-friendly than texting (yes, I sent my first-ever text today) or Facebooking or Tweeting. Let's see if it works...Update from computer: Yep, it came out fine, but I don't know how to format it yet, and it's a real pain. Not sure how much blogging I'm going to do that way, I still prefer my desktop keyboard.
A very happy 12th wedding anniversary to my dear husband Robin. We're off to the mall to celebrate and take care of our holiday shopping, such as it is.
Thanks to everyone for a great birthday - once I got home from my 10+ hour day, that is. Over 90 greetings on Facebook, a great card from Rob's Dad, phone calls from my mom and brothers, a fun giggly evening on Firesign chat listening to my favorite album... I'm a pretty happy camper.
That's me at 53 with Robin's sparkly birthday card, kitty by my side. Night, all!
Well, I may still feel like I'm about 23 years old in my head, but my body is feeling just about all 53 of my years today. The least Datsa could have done was let me sleep unbroken for my birthday. But I gotta tell you, nothing cheers me up like going to Facebook and seeing all the greetings. I never thought I'd anticipate that the way I used to look forward to getting cards in the mail. I can't wait to get a smartphone with apps and whatnot so I can look at that Facebook thingy all day and learn how to, what do the kids call it, text. Yes, I'm so hep! Goodness, I'm old. Hey you kids, get off my imaginary lawn! And if anyone's so inclined to take the photo on my blog and match me with a look-alike celebrity, maybe you can figure out how to do the Totally Looks Like Builder, I sure can't. Probably because this new-fangled technology confuses old folks like me.
White Rabbits, and happy holiday month! Tonight Chanukah begins, then tomorrow's my birthday, then Rob's and my anniversary on Saturday, Rob's birthday on Monday, and something around the 25th that seems to excite a lot of folks, then of course they all go out to Times Square at the end of the month to watch their balls drop or something. And just in time, the Generator Blog links to a British gift idea generator! Guess I'll have some of that Tesco sushi.
