Twiddling...

It's 6:30 am Christmas morning, and I'm the only one out of bed. You might think this is because TheGirl is a bit too old, TheBoy a bit too young for Christmas morning excitement. Or you might think it's because we got home late last night, and the kids are still tuckered out. I doubt these explanations, since this year's slumber is a repeat of last year's and that of the year before. I'm not sure of the cause, myself. But I do know that there has never been a Christmas morning where I lingered so late in bed.

A pile of presents from Santa (family gifts will be given on Orthodox Christmas, in January) lies under the tree, awaiting frenzied unwrapping. The fireplace still lies open where Santa emerged to hastily consume a biscotti (no cookies handy at bedtime!) and glass of milk before depositing the loot beneath the tree. Still, no children emerge. I grind coffee, make a large pot. Still no kids; no wife either - she's smart enough to take advantage of our offspring's aberrant behavior.

A batch of scratch faux-cinnamon roll muffins is baking. Clanking bowls and muffin pans have not stirred the wee ones. Nor has the smell of cinnamon and fresh-brewed coffee dislodged a single reveller from their blankets. It's peculiar... perplexing... and so I wait. What else can I do? Although I have to say, those muffins are looking pretty tasty. I wonder if there'll be any left by the time the rest of my household emerges. If there are, it'll be a Christmas miracle!

Non-canon Critters

I guess this is a bit hard to read. Click on the image to go to Wondermark for the full-sized toon.

Amie Street

Over Christmas, my parents bought me my first MP3 player - a 2 GB Zen V from Creative Labs. It's a great little player and, in addition to advancing me one phase further in the music playback game, it has provoked a brand new obsession. I've been spending hour after hour on AmieStreet.com

Amie Street is an mp3 store with an interesting business model. All tracks start out free to download. As the number of downloads increases, the price creeps up, eventualy topping out at 98cents. Customers can throw as little as $5 onto their account. Then, it's click to buy! The artist gets 70% of the sale price (after paying for a $5 listing fee). [Percentage corrected, thanks, commenter!]


But customers can profit, as well. For each dollar spent, the customer is granted a 'Recommendation' or 'Rec'. I've been tossed a few freebie Recs along the way, as well. When you Rec a song, and the price later goes up (due to additional downloads), you get a cut. It's just a few cents store credit, more of a thank you to the fans, and an acknowledgement that the fans are the really important part of the promotional scheme. I don't know if it will last, but it's just the kind of innovative thinking we need to save the recording industry from devolving into a theft-based free-for-all.

I think it's pure genius. Cheap songs attract customers. Free customer-driven marketting attracts the acts.

Lawn signs

I meant to blog about this in December but, with this year’s more-than-typical Holiday Madness, it slipped away from me. What the heck, I’ll blog it now.

We’ve all likely seen the “Keep Christ in Christmas” signs that have been popping up on lawns and streetcorners in recent years. They’ve always subtly bothered me, but I couldn’t ever seem to put a finger on exactly why. This year, some of the signs near my house were subtly different, and I suddenly knew why I’d been bothered.

As best I can recall, the signs in question seem to have been provided by Racine’s Grace Lutheran Church, a local congregation. (I may be wrong. I never managed to get a photo of one of the signs, and it was a bit difficult to read the fine print as I drove by). The subtle change? They added a two-letter word to the sign –“We”.

Suddenly, instead of a notice that a religious battle was being fought, or a cold command to the world at large that December 25th and the surrounding days were theirs and theirs alone, the sign was a warm and welcoming statement of faith. Instead of ‘You damn well better celebrate the season my way!’, the sign projected a feeling of ‘This family is trying to focus on the religious aspects of Christmas. If you’d like to try it too, why not check out this church?’

I like it. Now, I don’t mean to imply that everyone with one of the original signs is trying to push people around. I’m sure that most of them meant nothing of the sort. They likely intended to project the same message that I got from the revised sign. But somehow, in the sign maker's excitement to get the message out, their focus slipped a little to the side. It happens to me all the time. I get excited about a point I want to make, and instead of simply revealing my excitement, I come across as argumentative and pushy. It’s a trap that most of us with a point of view fall into at least once in a while.

The difference in the signs is similar to the difference between “You shouldn’t eat meat’ and “I don’t eat meat”. The sign seems to side with the sentiment of “Be the change you want to see in the world.” as opposed to the sentiment of “By any means necessary.” That ‘we’ on the new sign? It’s a word a lot of causes could stand more of. If you want people to remain open to your way of thinking, it helps if you don’t start by giving them the feeling that they’re the enemy.

Christmas Gifts

I am finally the owner of an MP3 player. Mom and Dad gave me a ZenV for Christmas. It was the only one that didn't feel like over-conspicuous consumption to me. The iPod family just makes me wince when I look at the prices, and iTunes just infuriates me with their massively DRMed files. The ZenV are reasonably priced, with flash based memory, and the little buggers are tiny! I'd say about 1 1/2 by 2 inches. easily slipped into the coin pocket on a pair of Levis.

So I spent the afternoon moving my small existing mp3 library over to the new software that comes with the Zen, and cleaning it up. I tell you, we could use a little standardization on the genre tags. OK Go is Indie. Fountains of Wayne in Rock. And I've got no freaking idea what genre Emo represents (bizarre personality comedy? probably not). I consolidated a bunch of them, and spent a bunch of time on it. In the end, I think I'm going to use four genres, none very descriptive to outsiders.

1. The Girl's Music
2. Holiday Music
3. Curiosities
4. Other

The first three categories are a tool for removing stuff I don't want in my regular random playlists... like Hilary Duff, Mylie Cyrus, Auld Lang Syne, The Twelve Days of Christmas, or Louis Farakhan singing Calypso. Other is everything else. I'm guessing that'll be about it. Maybe I'll add a category for female jazz vocalists, but otherwise, I'm set. Now to start dumping CDs onto my hard drive. A long road ahead... a long road, indeed.

Merry Christmas!

A recipe...

Yule Toddy

2 oz. Ginger Brandy
1 oz. Barenjager Honey Liqueur
1/2 oz. Maraschino Liqueur
1/2 oz. Dark Rum
Juice of 1/2 lemon
4 oz. boiling water

Serve hot.

This is just about right. I may need to reduce the amount of Maraschino a bit, since not everyone enjoys the strangely spicy flavor as much as I do. Otherwise, I think it's delightful. Works out to around 40 proof, so think schnapps when deciding how much to drink. If serving to a crowd, I think I'd pre-mix the first 4 ingredients in bulk, then add the lemon juice and boiling water just before serving. This would reduce the amount of fiddling required. I think I'll try this out on the family at Christmas... in small cups.

PS: I've submitted the recipe to drinksmixer.com. (not listed yet) As of today, Google shows only two hits on "Yule Toddy", both apparently referring to a toddy drunk at yuletide, not a specific recipe. I'll be curious to see if that number increases.

Greatest Christmas Time Waster

Line Rider lets you draw lines, and then a poor little sap sleds down them. I say poor little sap because, eventually, the poor kid either slams into something or falls off his sled... or both. Endless entertainment. Enjoy! (Thanks to deviant art via webzen)

Is there a Santa Claus

I just came across this explanation of Santa Claus in a book of Christmas Stories. It's written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

“Ma!” she cried. “There is a Santa Claus, isn’t there?”

“Of course there’s a Santa Claus,” said Ma. She set the iron on the stove to heat again. “The older you are, the more you know about Santa Claus,” she said. “You are so big now, you know he can’t be just one man, don’t you? You know he is everywhere on Christmas Eve. He is in the Big Woods, and in Indian Territory, and far away in York State, and here. He comes down all the chimneys at the same time. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Ma,” said Mary and Laura.

“Well,” said Ma. “Then you see –“

“I guess he is like angels,” Mary said, slowly. And Laura could see that, just as well as Mary could.

Then Ma told them something else about Santa Claus. He was everywhere, and besides that, he was all the time.

Wherever anyone was unselfish, that was Santa Claus.

Christmas Eve was the time when everybody was unselfish. On that one night, Santa Claus was everywhere, because everybody, all together, stopped being selfish and wanted other people to be happy. And in the morning, you saw what that had done.”

I love that. Thanks, Ms. Wilder.

Christmas Beverages!

From The Cocktail Chronicles, comes this recipe for Christmas Rum Punch:

6 oranges
1/2 gallon sweet cider
1 bottle Jamaica rum, bestest
Sugar to taste
Whole cloves
Ground cinnamon and nutmeg

Stick the oranges full of cloves and bake them in the oven until they soften [20-30 minutes at 350 should do the trick]. Place oranges in the punch bowl, pour over them the rum and granulated sugar to taste. Set fire to rum and in a few minutes [ed note: make that seconds; see above] add the cider slowly to extinguish the flame. Stir in cinnamon and nutmeg, and keep the mixture hot.

I am totally making this for Christmas. Y'know... maybe I'd better do a test run first... and I think I'll add fire extinguisher to the list of ingredients. After my last flambe' experience, I think TW may require it!

PS: Speaking of TW.... I'm feeling much better know, as is TG. Sadly, TW and TB are now suffering the pangs of stomach voles, and The Mother-in-Law also seems to be showing symptoms. I just hope I haven't passed the voles on to 1) everyone who was at the Rep on Sunday, 2) everyone in the Disso course today and tommorrow. Poor souls. With the voles. eating holes. in their...bow'ls. Time for bed.

customized beer stationery

The perfect christmas* gift (or kwanzaa gift, or channukah gift, or new year's eve gift, or whatever) for your favorite beer drinker, homebrewer or brewery employee: customized beer stationary!

Bonus! If your name is Isaac Jenner, just print out the image at left and cut to size. Voila! Discount stationary! Everyone else can order it from the link in the title.

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Happy Saint Nicholas’ Day!
Well, old St. Nick visited the Fishmongers’ Place last night. Earlier in the week, stockings had been hung by the firsplace with care, and the old boy pulled through as usual. The Girl’s Stocking had a Disney Fairies book, a Tinkerbell ornament, and assorted treats (nerds rope, reese’s snowman, cookie dipping sticks, and some nasty sweetart goop in a tube). All quite well received. The Boy, being much younger, received pacifiers in lieu of candy, but he also received a Christmas ornament, and a book – tho’ his was a board book. Sounds like TG really like the contents of her stocking this year. Sadly, I was already in my car on the way to work when she got out of bed, so I didn’t get to see it. Still, she called me on my cell and gave me the blow-by-blow, which was almost as good. Kinda sucks to have to work for a living.

PS: Don’t know what I’m talking about?In the US, it seems to be a phenomenon centered around Milwaukee, WI, although it extends throughout Wisconsin, and even through the Chicago area. I see it as Santa doing a warm-up for the Christmas deliveries, but only to certain selected houses, mostly in Wisconsin. He delivers candy, and maybe a small gift or two (a book, a CD, an ornament, something like that) in the early morning hours of December 6th. I know for a fact that he arrived at our house after 2:30 am, because when I was feeding TB at that time (yawn), I realized the stockings were still empty. So, he arrived sometime between then and 5am when my alarm clock went off . Did I mention ‘yawn’?

Racine's Festival of Trees

The Racine Downtown association does a Festival of Trees fundraiser downtown each year, and we usually visit. Since the roads had mostly been cleared, and snow had stopped blowing about, we decided to go down yesterday evening. It was lovely, if nearly empty.

They changed the venue this year from Festival Hall to Memorial Hall. Good move. There's lots more room, and the place is already attractive in that old fashioned hall sort of way. Lots of pillars and balconies. But the trees are the star of the show. Well, they are if you discount Santa. And speaking of discount Santas... Zack had his first Santa pic taken. He went about a minute without crying, then burst into tears. See flickr for individual photos, as always.