Wii Three Kings

Hello World,

Merry Christmas! It's hard to believe after all the hoopla and build-up that the big day has already come and gone, and somehow the world seems pretty much the same way it was the day before as the day after, when all is said and done. But I always say that any adventure that you can walk away from and live to tell the tale, is a good thing and in these crazy days, not something to be taken for granted. So whether you spent the holiday at work, at the casino, on vacation, or in the very epitome of the most Norman Rockwell version of the perennial tradition, once you've gotten all the way through it to the day after, you've got something to celebrate right there.

Of course, Christmas is the 900-pound gorilla in the field of holiday merchandising, and nothing else even comes close to warming the cockles of retailers' hearts like the holly jolly jingle jangle of cash registers ringing up sales for Santa's big day. On the other hand, it's hard to keep the attention of merchants at the best of times, which these certainly aren't, and being the top banana might not even be enough to keep you in their good graces until the very end. It was on Tuesday, December 23, that I was looking to get a Christmas card at the hospital's gift shop, which happens to be a franchise of particular Hallmark stores that they have located in hospitals all over the country. Because they cater to hospital patients and staff, they carry a lot of baby gifts, activity items like crossword puzzles and travel games, and personal care items such as toothpaste, deodorant, aspirin and shampoo. Most of their cards are get well cards, but they also have a few birthday and seasonal cards, for people like me who need a card at the last minute and can't get to a store outside in time. Two full days before Christmas, there was not a single Christmas card to be had in the entire store, no matter where you looked. I followed the card racks along through all the get well and new baby cards, until I got to a section that was all red, and figured that I had hit pay dirt in my quest for Christmas cards. I actually laughed out loud when I saw that it was a display of Valentine's Day cards instead, and don't forget, this was still before Christmas. So despite being the darling of retailers the world over, Christmas had worn out its welcome in our gift shop, and got the old heave-ho, just like any other second-rate has-been in the jungle of commerce nowadays, and that's not just a lot of ho-ho-ho.

Last Friday, we had a bad snowstorm in the area that made conditions treacherous for getting around, causing me to leave work early, and closing our diner so early that we had to eat dinner at home for a change, and not one for the better, I can tell you that. Saturday was clear but cold, and although the roads were mostly clear by then, trying to go shopping was an exercise in futility, as the parking lots and sidewalks were dangerous and impassable. I did some shopping anyway, although it could not be recommended, and also went to extra choir practice at church, and pitched in with their decorating crew putting up wreaths, garland, poinsettias and the Christmas tree. I went in early to church on Sunday for more choir practice, and it was pouring rain, making the snow and ice underfoot even more slippery for drivers and pedestrians alike. Bill and I went back later in the afternoon for Lessons & Carols, and in a turn of events that can only be described as providential, the sun came out just in time for people to start arriving for this beloved annual festival of hymns and scripture readings about The Nativity Story. The program went pretty well, all things considered, and seemed to be well received by an indulgent audience of mostly friends and relatives of the singers and musicians. Bill did his usual admirable job on the videotaping detail, and not to point fingers at any under-performing participants, but an inordinate amount of mistakes in the soprano ranks were made by someone who looked suspiciously like me, although heaven knows with so much extra choir practice, that should not have been a problem. One interesting aspect of Lessons & Carols for me is that the choir finally gets a chance to hear the other musicians and soloists who have been practicing separately from us, so a lot of the program is new and different for us too, even though we're singing in it. Because our music director is retiring, we had a party for her afterwards, where we showered her with parting gifts, and if hugs and kisses were money instead, she could have retired rich as well as happy. Best of all, the spirit of Antonio Vivaldi did not rise up and strike us all dead for ruining his exquisite Laudamus Te, although Bill said it was probably because we did such a bad job of it that the poor man wouldn't even have recognized it, much less been outraged by our amateurish attempt at his classic.

No one would have convinced me last Friday, when it was snowing as well as frigid, that by the following Thursday, it would be warm and sunny with no left-over snow anywhere, but that's what happened on Christmas in these parts. For many years of our marriage, we've gotten up at ungodly hours of the morning, like 4:00 AM, to open presents, and while we weren't trying for anything outrageously early this time around, I certainly wasn't expecting to still be sound asleep at 8:30, which sets a new record for me sleeping late on Christmas, as far as I can remember. We started by opening our stocking presents and had a lot of fun with that, and Bill is very patient with me when he unwraps peculiarities like bird feathers, promotional items from work, and found objects like beat-up spoons and bottle openers that I find in parking lots and feel deserve a good home. After that, we packed up and headed for Long Island, but first I needed to stop at CVS for some plastic utensils to bring, in conjunction with a copious picnic hamper that we were carrying with us. First we stopped at the nearby 24-hour CVS, and not only was the store mobbed with crowds, but you couldn't get in the parking lot, it was just a total madhouse. On top of all that, they had no plastic utensils, so we left empty-handed, which was probably just as well. It turned out the supermarket was closed for the holiday, so we tried another CVS in a different town, and when we pulled in the parking lot, and saw no one there, we figured they were closed as well. Bill said I should go try the door anyway, which I did, and was surprised to find it open, and when I went inside, there was not a soul in the place, but one lonely CVS employee who was vacuuming the carpet. They had a whole shelf of plastic utensils, and I hurried out of there flush with success and glad of it.

We reconnoitered with the family at Mom's house and then all went to the diner for lunch, which was very tasty, and took advantage of the rampant commercialism of the holiday to run some errands besides. When we got back, there were plenty of presents to go around, and there didn't seem to be any complaints, so Santa's elves must have done a good job of choosing just the right gifts for the occasion. Our original plan was to leave early and go home to open our own presents, but the day sort of got away from us, in all the fun and frivolity, and we ended up staying until very late, so that even with no traffic to speak of, we got home after 11:00 PM and could not muster up enough energy for anything more than falling asleep on some furniture, rather than on our feet.

Luckily, we were both off from work on Friday, so we woke up in the morning for Merry Christmas 2, The Sequel, and wished all of the cats "merry Christmas" all over again, and gave them special treats and new toys to play with. We settled down to the serious business of opening presents, which quickly turned into a cornucopia of goodies that would effectively belie the bleak economic reports, so I think we can lay those rumors to rest once and for all, at least in our house. I got a new Asus 900 netbook in purple that I had been longing for, as well as a new camping watch, USB keyboard, books, DVD's, shelves, rain boots and a clock radio that serves as a docking station for my MP3 player. Bill was surprised to unwrap an IOU for a new cello, updated maps for the GPS, a Slingbox Solo media system, Nintendo Wii and an underwater camera built into a swim mask, which has a cool factor that would be hard to beat. In a class by itself would be a small wooden Viking ship with two small wooden Vikings (with toothpicks as spears) and wooden shields that say Salt and Pepper, which are indescribably cute and too funny for words. Bill already set up the Wii, which is no mean feat on our old TV set that is already connected to the cable service and set-top box, a VCR, DVD player, and TiVo service all at the same time. And while Bill possesses special wizardry to be able to set up complicated electronic components far beyond mere mortals, he admits that he's going to need a lot more practice to improve at the Wii games that he's tried so far, and he's thinking of quitting his job to devote more time to honing his game-playing skills. That may be a fanciful notion dreamed up in the heat of the moment, but we can't rule out the possibility that he's determined to stand up to the Wii, no matter what it takes. After all, everyone knows that Wii-bles wobble, but they don't fall down.

Look For The Union Label

Hello World,

Well, this could shape up to be an interesting winter in these parts, the way things have been going so far. We had snow in November, which is highly unusual around here, and after that, we've had two snowstorms in December, one of them looking ugly enough to inspire me to leave work early today and get home while the getting was good. (Well, "good" would not be an appropriate description of it in any sense of the term, but at least it was still light out, which if nothing else was an improvement over going home in the dark at 5:00 PM in this same slop, or worse.) Bill was already home and shoveling, and I put out extra bird seed for the critters, so we did our civic-minded part for the greater good of the wider community, and long may they wave. In fact, it was so nasty that our diner gave it up as a lost cause, and they were closed up tight when we tried to go there after work as we do every Friday. I was planning a busy day tomorrow, so having ugly weather today would not have been in my top choices of options, that's for sure, although I can't complain about losing my influence over the weather conditions at this point, since I obviously never had any influence with that to start with. But we've certainly gotten out of the expectation of having this much snow at such an early time of the season, and while I'm as much in favor of a white Christmas as anyone, I can't say this unexpected turn of events has been greeted with the unbridled enthusiasm of days gone by. I suppose in those halcyon days of yore, someone else used to do the shoveling.

Speaking of those halcyon days of yore, it's beginning to look a lot like 2005 around here, at least in terms of gas prices nowadays. I had been holding off getting gas, because I figured the price was just going to keep on going down anyway, and the longer I waited, the cheaper it would be, but finally I couldn't wait anymore without having to push the car to work. While the Exxon station around the corner was still at $2.03 for regular, I pulled into the Sunoco down the block and snapped up a tankful at $1.99/gal, and the whole thing wasn't even $22 when I was finished, which is a far cry from the $50 hit I took in July at the same station in the same car. Meanwhile, a co-worker said that the Citgo station across town was down to $1.71, which really seems like the good old days, and is the kind of early Christmas present I think we can all live with. Please remember to send a holiday donation to OPEC, so they can enjoy Christmas too.

Of course, Christmas is right around the corner now, as we'll be lighting the fourth and final candle on our Advent wreaths this Sunday (and you can't count on the "wreath stretcher" to add on more candles for you, believe me, because if that worked, we would all have done that long ago) and you can be sure that the 25th will be right on schedule on Thursday, along with the jolly old elf himself and all the trimmings. Walking around the hospital, you see the signs of the season everywhere, with trees and poinsettias in the lobby, stockings and candy canes in the hallways, and decorations of every sort all over the departments. This week, I noticed that the Mail Room had put up a Santa Claus and garland on their door, as well as Christmas cards they had received from other departments. I told the Supervisor that I was impressed at how popular they were, as evidenced by all of the cards they received, since we hadn't gotten any cards from other departments, and obviously no one liked us. Oh no, she averred (and I'm sure we can all appreciate her spirit of honesty in admitting this right up front) what she does is to save whatever cards she has received over the years, and just hangs them up on the door, so she has something for decoration, even if no one sends them any cards in a particular year. I had to laugh, and agreed this was a clever (if stealthy) idea. I was glad that she came clean about that and told me, so I didn't feel that my department was so unpopular after all.

On the popularity front, we have more unexpected news at the hospital, which has been in business for over 100 years, so you would kind of figure that they had ironed out all of the wrinkles by now, but you'd be surprised. Apparently the bargaining unit of 1199 SEIU local, which already represents the Housekeeping, Dietary and other service employees at the hospital, decided to extend their benefits to what they describe as the Business Office Workers, that would include secretaries, clerks and administrative assistants. They spent a few weeks making information available to the interested parties (I kept bumping into them in the cafeteria) which ended up being almost 200 employees in the qualifying categories at both hospitals. I'll be the first person to say that I'm not anti-union, and in fact, when I worked in the semi-conductor industry decades ago, I was a card-carrying member of IBEW and proud of it. I think a union is a good idea for people in low-paid, low-skill jobs, who mop floors and stock shelves, and it can't hurt to have an organization behind them to keep their employers from taking advantage of them. But I never thought that conditions were so deplorable for secretaries and clerks that we needed a union to protect us, and I found that I could not get on board with this idea at all. I figured after being there for 20 years, the hospital may not have lost its ability to surprise me, but it had certainly lost all capacity to scare me anymore, and I didn't need to hide behind anyone or fear the consequences. So I was perhaps more surprised than most people when the day of the vote came and went, and the union had been voted in by a landslide, 106 to 24, because I just never realized that people were all that dissatisfied with the way things were. So as far as they're concerned, and in spite of my personal opposition, I'm now officially a member of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, along with the floor moppers and shelf stockers, and the 23 other disgruntled people who voted against it. (A co-worker asked me to let him know when it was official, so he would know when he should start to shun me.) Of course, they say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I've got news for them. Don't forget that I'm in the Business Office Workers or BOW, and our hospital's official name is the Sound Shore Medical Center of Westchester, which we like to call the S.S. M'CoW. So all I can say about this is SSMCOW BOW WOW!

Also in the spirit of the season, television viewers were treated to a new holiday special called "A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa" earlier this week on NBC. According to a story in the TV section of our newspaper, it featured regular actors from popular TV shows, along with the usual Muppets cast of characters, like Kermit the Frog, living at a hotel in New York City. At one point, when Miss Piggy is waiting on line at the Post Office to mail her letter to Santa, she becomes indignant at the delay and demands to go right to the front of the line. Standing in front of her, Mayor Bloomberg turns around and deadpans in his trademark style, "Miss Piggy, that would be rude. And the one thing New Yorkers are known for is being polite." Frankly, I'm not even sure that Hizzonor is known for being polite, much less the rest of the local population, but I thought he was a good sport to play along.

Another favorite quip from the TV section this week was courtesy of Rachel Maddow, who has a new show on MSNBC, which has enjoyed a ratings bonanza since it began. In her remarks, she was modest about her role in the show's popularity: "I started my show the day after the second major-party convention, so I basically opened an umbrella factory at the start of the monsoon season. Everybody's ratings went up, MSNBC's more than anybody else's. To the extent I can claim credit for that, I'm happy to, but I recognize that all boats were rising at that moment." In all my years of reading stories about television programs, that's the first time I can ever remember anyone likening the launching of their show to opening an umbrella factory, so that was a welcome change of pace.

Also a change of pace, but in a completely different way, last Sunday we went to the local VFW on our annual trek for the perfect Christmas tree, and did not return empty-handed, believe me. It was a nice enough day, although it had rained earlier, and even with the straw they spread out over the mud, the footing was uncertain as we tramped around the lot. I admit that I sometimes look on wistfully at the people who pick out a perfect little 5-foot tree, carry it with one hand, and sling it casually into the trunk of their car without a thought. Meanwhile, we're wrestling with a 10-foot behemoth that weighs a ton and refuses to be subdued with twine or threats. (We once carried home one monstrosity that collapsed our roof rack under the weight of it, and the poor thing has never been the same since.) Every year, the VFW lot has very many trees, but they don't always have the kind of tree that we're looking for, which is between the small "apartment-type" trees and the massive gargantuan ones that you could only put indoors if you were a huge bank or shopping center. Of the height that we're looking for, there's usually very few, and of those, to find one with a good shape is very hit or miss. This year, we were surprised to find several that were the right height, and with pretty good shape besides. The one we picked is not the tallest tree we've ever had, but it's very full and has a good solid shape all around. We set it right up in the stand and only had to cut a little off the bottom and nothing off the top, and the angel went straight on without a fight, compared to her usual shenanigans. The cats greeted this interloper in the living room with the bored indifference of jaded socialites at a tag sale, as if a tree in the house was just another eccentricity of ours that was beneath their notice. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that curious cats are in a different union (perhaps the Climbers and Swatters Union) while ours are in the Snoozing and Glaring Union, which is what they seem to do most of the time. Bill will tell you that their real strengths would be represented by the Food and Poop Union, which could explain those little FPU buttons that they wear. Everyone is aware that I'm not anti-union, heaven knows, but I'll be darned if I'm going to wear a button that says BOW!

Something To Sing About

Hello World,

Although it still seems early in December, this Sunday we'll be lighting the third candle on our Advent wreath, as impossible as that may be to believe, with only one more candle standing in between us and the holly jolly old elf himself on the 25th. I don't doubt that this comes as unwelcome news to many people whose holiday preparations are woefully incomplete, as mine are, although I think it's safe to say that our name is, in fact, legion. A person might wonder why it seems impossible for some of us to get ready for Christmas on time, since you can't even blame it on being a movable feast like Easter that is sometimes early and sometimes late, because Christmas has been observed on the same day pretty much around the world for centuries now, and no end in sight. But it's a common enough situation to deserve some sort of explanation, so I guess Legionnaire's Disease is just as good as any.

On Friday of last week, I had very carefully written a note in my calendar at work to put up the Christmas tree, to get the department into a festive frame of mind, and enjoy some holiday decor around the place, as our seasonal contribution to cheering up our co-workers and visitors. That would have worked too, except that I somehow neglected to consider that the tree I use at work is one of my old table-top trees from home, and before I could put it up at work, I would need to remember to bring it to the hospital with me first, which I completely forgot to do. Not to be daunted, I decided to put up the rest of the decorations around the offices, so that when I got to the tree, it would be the only thing left, and would take much less time than doing everything at once. So I hung up the garland and ornaments around the shelves and windows, and stuck paper snowmen and stockings on the file cabinets, and I even covered the cart with its yuletide tablecloth, where the tree would be placed when I finally brought it in. Of course, the most popular thing I do every year is cover the horrible "fun house" mirror in our hallway with a Santa Claus door cover, to the undying gratitude of everyone who comes to our department from far and near. They say there are no atheists in fox holes, and when it comes to covering up that horrible mirror, you can bet that everyone in our building believes in Santa Claus. I think it goes without saying that at least in this case, our name is legion.

I figured the easiest thing would be to lug the tree in with me on Sunday after church, and just set it up then and get it out of the way when the building was empty and I didn't have to run and answer the phone all the time. So I carried it in and the bag of ornaments, and it didn't take long to set it in place on the cart (I always tape the legs down to the tablecloth, so it doesn't tip if someone bumps into it) and decorate it with the ornaments and garland, plus assorted trinkets that we've amassed over the years. The hardest part is actually the angel at the top, since she doesn't technically want to stay on the tree, much less be straight, and I have to use twisty-ties to keep her in place. Since I was trying to get this finished in a hurry, so that I didn't have to spend more time there than necessary, it wasn't until I climbed down from the step-ladder and backed away from it, that I noticed what it really looked like. I don't mind saying that I've been putting up a tree at work for almost 20 years now, and if this isn't the most pathetic, crooked and lopsided tree ever, well, I just don't know what it would be. Of course, the tree is no prize to begin with, and there's a limit to what we can expect from it. But I have the feeling that I must usually try to determine its "good" side and put that in the front before taping it to the cart, rather than just setting it up any old which way and hoping for the best, which is certainly not the result that was achieved. You might say that this is a Christmas tree that only a mother could love, and as the saying goes, she could be jiving too.

The following day on Monday, Jean the bookkeeper from down the hall made a point of stopping me and saying that she hadn't even noticed the tree when I put it up on Friday. Oh no, I assured her, I came in on Sunday to put it up, it was still at home in the attic on Friday. She laughed and said that everyone she mentioned it to on Monday morning, about how she hadn't noticed it on Friday, had all insisted that it had been put up on Friday and she just hadn't paid attention to it. She felt better when I set her straight, and was not suffering from any optical delusions, although it did make us wonder what the other people had been smoking to convince themselves that they had seen the tree set up 3 days before it was there. Personally, I consider this a whole new low in mass hallucinations, even for our building, but Jean had the last laugh after all, not giving in to this phantom Friday tree school of thought.

In other seasonal news, I've been going in to church early every Sunday to rehearse for Lessons & Carols, and as we have not improved as much as might be hoped since October, we've added more rehearsals after church as well. Bill also put together a music file with the soprano part so that I could practice our big number from Vivaldi wherever there's a computer, so I've been practicing at work whenever I get the chance, and it would be safe to say that my co-workers are already tired of Laudamus Te and way ahead of time, since Lessons & Carols isn't for another week and a half. Speaking of songs that have worn out their welcome, or not, our friends at spinner.com put together the following lists, which I thought might be interesting:

THE 12 WORST CHRISTMAS SONGS:
12. Santa Baby - Madonna
11. Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney
10. Christmastime - Smashing Pumpkins
9. Eight Days of Christmas - Destiny's Child
8. Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Bruce Springsteen
7. Christmas Conga - Cyndi Lauper
6. Santa's Beard - The Beach Boys
5. Merry Christmas with Love - Clay Aiken
4. Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
3. Oi to the World - No Doubt
2. Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) - John Denver
1. Do They Know it's Christmas? - Band Aid

THE 12 BEST CHRISTMAS SONGS:
12. I Want an Alien for Christmas - Fountains of Wayne
11. Pretty Paper - Willie Nelson
10. Candy Cane Children - White Stripes
9. Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You - Billy Squier
8. Someday at Christmas - Stevie Wonder
7. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - U2
6. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee
5. Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto - James Brown
4. River - Joni Mitchell
3. Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley
2. Happy Xmas (War is Over) - John Lennon and Yoko Ono
1. Christmas in Hollis - RUN DMC

Now, it's true that I don't know every song on the Worst list (although any list of worsts that doesn't include that poor grandmother getting run over by a reindeer is not worthy of the name in my opinion) so they may actually be the worst songs, although I admit that I personally like both Santa Baby and Santa's Beard in spite of their criticism. But I earnestly believe that any list of the best Christmas songs has to include more than 4 songs that any normal person would know, and needs to have at least Bing Crosby and Nat "King" Cole at a minimum to be considered credible. Call me a hide-bound traditionalist (see if I care!) but RUN DMC have a long way to go before they'll be making anyone forget chestnuts roasting on an open fire and treetops glistening with sleigh bells in the snow, and that's not just a lot of fa-la-la-la-la.

Of course, nobody cares about my problems, heaven knows, but I suffer from a perhaps uncommon malady known as "hypo-peppo-jingle-crinkle-claustrophy." This obscure but debilitating condition renders its victims incapable of wrapping Christmas presents without having a candy cane or two to help the process along. Normally, this would not present a problem in any way, since candy canes are plentiful and inexpensive, and handily begin appearing in stores as early as August, for those of us who like to get a jump on their holiday wrapping. (And dare I say, our name is legion?) But as anyone who's tried this can tell you, getting into candy canes nowadays is no mean feat, and implements of destruction can be of no help to you, since the packaging not only gives you no place to cut into, but also nothing to hold onto while you're doing it. The plastic won't tear, and if you cut it with scissors, it peels into slivers that adhere to the candy cane like invisible tendrils. Usually by the time I've managed to breach the nefarious outer wrapper, the candy cane itself is broken into at least three pieces, so that it may as well just be Starlight Mints instead of a candy cane in the first place. But last week, Bill brought home a box of candy canes from the store to help with my gift wrap efforts, and they were a revelation. They were so easy to get into, just like the good old days, so that any old moron could do it, not only blind-folded, but with one hand tied behind their back to boot. To be honest, I wouldn't even have cared what they taste like, I was just so glad to be able to get into them without a fight. I have a medical condition, you know.

It was only scant months ago, although it seems like a lifetime now, that I thought this day would never dawn, and yet here it is. It was on Tuesday that I passed by the Getty station near City Hall in our fair city, and the regular was selling for $1.97/gallon. Later that day, I noticed the Citgo station in what the locals refer to as "up the west" had a price of $1.94 for regular. Bill's computer dealer said they were selling it for $1.50 in Danbury, and I said if that's the price in Connecticut, can you imagine what it must be down to in New Jersey, by golly, it must be a whole team and the dog under the wagon, as they say. (Although they probably don't say that a whole heck of a lot in New Jersey, I'm thinking.) The next time I saw it, the Citgo station had come down to $1.87, and that was only two days later on Thursday. Honestly, at this rate and the way things are going, the next government bailout is going to be for the oil companies. Merry Christmas, OPEC.

Ever since we were married in 1983, I've been putting up Christmas lights at our house, and for most of that time, we've been about the only house in our neighborhood with lights for the season. This is a small and old-fashioned enclave full of old houses, where they prefer more traditional decorations for the holiday, such as tasteful wreaths, pine garland and red velvet bows. Next to these understated adornments, our house looks like the tree at Rockefeller Center, even with just a few strings of lights inside the windows. Now for the first time since I've lived here, the big house across the street has put lights out on their balcony, which would seem mundane in any ordinary neighborhood, but here it's like a bolt out of the blue. Meanwhile, the new neighbors next to us have gone one better (or perhaps "better" is a relative term in this instance) by plopping on their front lawn one of those enormous inflatable snow globes with the carousel that spins around inside and snows on itself. Well, this is certainly a new wrinkle in the old neighborhood, and obviously no one saw this coming ahead of time, or they would have changed the by-laws to prohibit "out-sized displays of petroleum-based chemicals, including simulated precipitation and rotating objects," so that this travesty of holiday excess would never have been able to defile the soil of their Utopian homeland. I have no doubt that the hide-bound traditionalists (oh yes, our name is legion) have long since taken to walking their dogs on the other side of the neighborhood, to avoid this eyesore and affront to their sensibilities. Of course, everyone knows that I always say that you can teach an old dog new tricks, but by golly, you can't make him sing Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and I ought to know, or my name isn't -

Legion

Let There Be Light

Hello World,

Happy December! We seem to have finally turned the corner into winter in the local area (although technically, the actual Winter Solstice is not for another couple of weeks yet) and it's gotten much colder, and pretty darned quick besides. I remember one Saturday a few weeks ago, when the weather reports were predicting frost and overnight lows below freezing, and I hurried out and put the bird bath heaters in both bird baths lickety-split, and glad to get this done before they both froze solid. This had the effect of making the temperature go up 20 degrees overnight, so that by Sunday morning, I couldn't help but wonder what all the fuss was about. But last weekend, we had snow flurries (when it was still November) and the temperature has really dropped so that even when the sun is out, you can still tell it's December, and no joke. Why, at this rate, people are bound to stop wearing flip-flops any day now.

This coming Sunday, we should be lighting the second candle on our Advent wreaths, so the time is flying for anyone who may not be completely prepared for the gift-giving occasions of their choice coming up. At our house, the Advent Anthem Brigade (who shall remain nameless, but looks suspiciously like me) was not at the top of its game on Sunday, so we wound up lighting the wreath on Monday instead, opting for quality over timeliness. (Although it must be said that the perception of quality is judged solely on a subjective basis, which may actually have no foundation in reality, and I ought to know.) One reason that the Advent Anthem Brigade was woefully unprepared for its moment in the spotlight on Sunday, and on time as it should have been, was that it was busy instead putting up Christmas lights around the place, upstairs and downstairs, inside and out. We got some new lights for this year, along with the old tried and true, so it looked pretty festive when it was all said and done, and as for visions of sugarplums dancing, well, it goes without saying.

While we're on the subject of lights, we get the following story from Bill, when the overhead lights blew out where he works:

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As for the stupid lights, they're still out. Luckily, Danny recommended an electrician he knew who is, understandably, equally as reliable as Danny is. This guy showed up 2 hours after Tommy put in his 'EMERGENCY" call. When he walked in -- into the dark room -- he said "So, what's the problem?"
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And now for the local area gasoline report, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Sunoco station down the block. Of course, everyone realizes that gas prices would continue to plummet, especially since I went ahead and got gas last week, and in fact, there was a note on the AOL Welcome screen recently that said gas prices were the lowest they've been in 3 years, and I don't doubt it. At the Sunoco, I had been watching the price of regular come down all week, until it finally reached $2.09 when I came home from work this afternoon, from $2.11 yesterday, and even I was surprised at that. But when Bill and I drove past it later on the way home after dinner, it had gone down again, to $2.07, just since the time that I left work! This kind of thing just has to make you shake your head and wonder, because there's something about this that is just not right, and that's not just John D. Rockefeller talking, believe me.

In other news, if you missed the night sky on Monday of this week, you really missed a show that was worth seeing. I came home from work and said right to Bill that he needed to go straight to a window and look out, immediately if not sooner. He replied that he didn't need to do that, because he had already seen it, and in fact, even took pictures of it, because it was so spectacular. All in one spot and bright as anything, there was a perfect sliver of the moon, plus Venus and Jupiter to the side. Bill said it looked just like the flag of Turkey, and it certainly did. It was really a sight to behold, and the three of them so close together was just dazzling. Unfortunately, the rest of the week, they had moved farther and farther apart so the effect was not nearly as impressive, so Monday was the time to catch that astronomical event. On Tuesday morning, our local newspaper had a picture of it on the front page, which looked like it had been taken with someone's cell phone, or worse, and through a dirty window besides. Heck, Bill's pictures beat the pants off that one, and everyone knows that he is not a professional photographer, because he's intent on maintaining his amateur status. But his record speaks for itself, and I've got the moon shots to prove it.

I will admit (albeit under protest) that I am not the world's most organized individual, but I'm a very busy person and I certainly don't have time for trivialities. Last week, I got the most bland and undesirable looking envelope in the mail, and I was just about to toss it unceremoniously into my pile of junk mail for the "someday I'll get around to looking at this stuff" phase of my life that may never come at this rate. It's true that the sender was identified as the United States Postal Service, but the return address was some cockamamie place like 8300 NE Underground Drive, Pillar 210 in Kansas City, which sounds like a bad sketch from the Spy vs. Spy cartoon in MAD magazine, of all things. And it had no postage, just the usual bulk mail notice printed in the corner, so there was really nothing about it to entice me to open this up and see what it was all about. But I figured they might be sending out information about shipping holiday packages or some such helpful hints, so I opened it up after all. You can imagine my shock to find the Christmas stamps that I ordered from their web site, tumbling out of this crummy looking nothing of an envelope, which I nearly threw away, and would never have thought of again, and then wondered why I never got my Christmas stamps. Especially since I've been buying stamps from them online for years and years, and the order always comes in some big and flat official looking mailer with a lot of no-nonsense design elements all over it, so as soon as it comes, you know this is serious. The new way of doing things is not only not serious, but it looks like just about the last thing in the world that you would ever want to open, even if like me, you know that you recently ordered something from them. I suppose in the fantasy world where the Postal Service lives, every single piece of everything that comes into the house gets opened by someone, but I can tell them that I'm certainly not living in that world, at least not anymore, and I need mail that does a little better job of getting my attention, if it's something important. Especially if they're sending it to me from an underground pillar, for heaven's sake.

Speaking of heaven, alert readers may be wondering about the beloved annual ritual of Lessons & Carols at church, particularly in light of our Music Director retiring at the end of the year to spend more time with her family. Far from giving up the seasonal celebration as a lost cause, she actually started rehearsals in September, so all of the senior choir, the youth, the music school students, soloists and bell ringers could be prepared to pull out all the stops, close out her career on a high note and go out with a bang. This time around, we're taking a break from torturing poor Georg Friedrich Handel, may he rest in peace, and not rendering his exquisite For Unto Us A Child Is Born into some unrecognizable caterwauling like we usually do. In its place, we'll be tackling Laudamus Te from Vivaldi's Gloria, that is, unless the Vivaldi Anti-Desecration League gets wind of it first and burns the church down to protect their hero's masterpiece from the likes of us inept amateurs. On the other hand, we'll be performing it in English, and it's possible that no one would recognize it for what it really is, at least not the way we do it, so I suppose we have that in our favor.

In spite of her best efforts, it may be possible that not everybody in the world knows that my sister Linda is going to New Zealand and Australia for three months, beginning in January. I guess you could say that this is someone that retirement agrees with, and that's putting it mildly. Because of weight restrictions on a lot of the connections between different stops, she needed to pack light accordingly right from the start. One leg of the journey has a 15 pound maximum for luggage, so that set the limit for the entire trip, because it won't be possible to leave any extra weight luggage along the way and retrieve it later. She weighs everything she wants to take with her (like her new Asus 1000 laptop, which is ultra portable without being too small to use) to stay under the 15 pound limit. I have to give her a lot of credit, because it occurred to me that I pack more than 15 pounds of stuff to stay overnight in a hotel that's only 20 minutes from my house, so obviously my chances of international travel have no hope of success, unless I buy a couple of extra seats just for my luggage. Of course, some enterprising innovator could invent Heavyweight Airlines, for those of us who want to trip the light fantastic without packing light to get there, and our patron saint would certainly not be Holly Go Lightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," that's for sure. Obviously, I would be the poster child for this new "travel heavy" initiative, so if you hear of anything, please don't leave me in the dark, because I'm not really afraid of the light. (Oof!)