First "gift" under the tree

We put up the tree this afternoon/evening, just getting it up and the star on top and then broke for dinner. I made a stir-fry so the break was about 90 minutes, but dinner was good. As I was walking through the living room after dinner I noticed something on the tree skirt. It was too big to be kitty throw-up/fur ball and too far under the tree to be doggy doo. And when I asked Bruce whether he had put it there he said no. So here's the first "gift" put under the tree by HollytheDog:





It's her bone! Yes, it's blue, but it's a big rubbery thing that we were advised to get for Holly because she's a hard chewer. (NylaBones can chip and if you've ever stepped barefoot on a well-loved NylaBone you know just how sharp those chips can be. I guess they're dangerous to a dog's insides so she doesn't get them anymore.) I don't know if she didn't want the cat to get it, or was being considerate about us tripping over it (she's never been considerate that way before...) or whether she was pretending to be outside because her walkies got cut short today when she stepped on something or twisted an ankle, anyway she got hurt. So I just had to put the photo up here. That dog is way to much like a human sometimes.

BTW, just a thought that occurred in my usual free-association way, here's a quote attributed to Groucho Marx: Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Hallelujah

I forgot to say anything on Sunday about our concert on Saturday night. The Champlain Valley Voices, F.K.A. the Champlain Valley Oratorio Society, presented portions of Handel's Messiah oratorio. We did the whole first section, virtually nothing from the 2d section, and much of the last section. We had a 20-piece orchestra and 90 voices plus 4 soloists. The soprano had a glorious voice, pure, clear and effortless. She's a local girl, the 23-yr-old daughter of a pediatrician and she's studying currently at Mcgill University in Montreal. Just an angel of a voice. The alto soloist was the former director of CVV (when it was CVOS), the tenor was a college student currently in NYC, and the bass sang the part his dad had sung 20 years ago with CVOS. I'm pretty sure that performance was the one I sang in; I very vaguely remember it but it would've been the first time I ever heard the whole Messiah.

The chorus sounded pretty good from where I was and I actually bought the CD so I could hear what 90 voices sounded like in the college's auditorium with the worst acoustics. Here's the PSU Web site's image of E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium:



It's pretty but you have to work to get the sound out to the audience. We were onstage--all of us--so it was a bit crowded. And the orchestra was, of course, in front of the chorus, so we really had to work! But I think it went well.

And the Messiah was certainly a good way to get me into the holiday spirit, anyway, so tomorrow I'll get out the house decorations and probably do the tree on the weekend. Let the holidays begin!

A very interesting video

My friend Wayne, another librarian, sent me this link for "Old Fat Naked Women for Peace." (He's further left than I am, even.) It's pretty neat. I think I'd have to have a very personal reason for such a protest--a child serving in Iraq or the like--or I couldn't do it. But a lot of women can, obviously!

So here's the link.

Still here, part deux

So after I finished talking with the trooper, who almost fell again getting INto his patrol car, I got back on the road and drove about a block from the intersection of death to the next intersection of death. (This is literal; there have been fatal accidents at both intersections in the last 10 yrs. Both times they were caused by drivers on the Rand Hill Road running their stop signs and either broadsiding or being broadsided by someone doing 55 mph on NYS 374 or even just 40 mph on NYS Rte. 3 [the latter would have been me]). ANYway, I sat at the stop sign at 374 while a long string of cars made its way slowly up that highway, led by a person driving a red Jeep convertible. She turned left in front of me and started to go past me, only HER wheels had nothing to grip and she continued to pirouette until she hit me in the LEFT rear fender. She was truly crawling and although the crunch sounded disastrous, again my miraculous blue baby didn't get even a scratch in the paint!

However, two bangs like that are two too many for little me. I felt like a pinata! I drove home evereverever so carefully, very grateful for Bruce behind me, and STAYED HOME the rest of the day.

This doesn't compare in danger to the accidents that have befallen my sister in the last couple of weeks: a blown rear tire--while she was talking to me on her cell phone (I've said that it's my familial duty to be the one to hear her death, and I'm truly not joking about that, just really really hoping it doesn't happen)--and an exploding rear passenger window while driving on I94 in Wisconsin. At least we weren't talking when that happened; I would have been the casualty!

I know she won't read this but there was a conversation yesterday on NPR, her favorite radio station, between an NPR reporter and an expert on the neurology involved in "multi-tasking." Turns out we really cannot multi-task. What we do in reality is pay attention to one thing at a time, switching among all the demands on our attention and managing them all worse than when we concentrate on only one thing such as, um, driving. Our brains simply can't do more than one thing at one time. And the PhD who was making this statement specifically addressed driving and cell phone use, saying that our attention is naturally more on the conversation than on the driving. Just as an aside, a trooper told Bruce and me that they're familiar with "cell phone lane-drift." Apparently it looks a lot like inebriated driving but it's really people paying more attention to the phone than to the road.

I've always found it too distracting to talk on the phone and drive. It's one thing to have the person there and carry on a conversation; they see that you have to ignore them to pay attention to traffic. I'm glad to learn that I'm not really working with an under-developed brain!

Okay, okay, I'm off my soap box. I'm going to veg in front of the TV: Chuck, Heroes and CSI:Miami are a 3-hr. no-brain-required evening for me. Yay.

I'm still here!

This will be very brief and I'll try to expand a bit tomorrow. I'm really, really tired because my adrenaline was so high for a period today and then it dropped and I made about 8 dozen Spritz cookies and wrapped presents, on either side of making lamb chops for dinner (for the first time in my life) ... and they were very tasty!

Why was my adrenaline up? you might ask. Because I was in a minor accident that almost was a T-boner--either I would have broadsided someone or he would have done it to me. As it was I managed to pull my car to the left and scraped across his front bumper. Then I slid across the opposite lane and headed directly for a sturdy wooden fence in someone's front yard but I went onto the grass where my wheels finally got some purchase and I didn't even get a scratch -- on me OR the car. But the other guy never even came to see if I was okay; he just took off. I did call 911 (after a call to Bruce) and reported it all to a very nice trooper, who nearly fell on his fanny getting out of his car. Slippery doesn't begin to describe it.

More tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Our Feast

Here's what we did for Thanksgiving: I cooked and we ate. But I've been very good lately (lost 6.5 lbs. so far) and didn't blow it on too much food. But I ate carbs for the first time in awhile.

What you see here is my traditional Thanksgiving menu: roast turkey with stuffing (still in it), mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, and cranberry relish. No rolls (as if they were necessary!) and only a few crudites.



And here is what we look like this year: older! Bruce NEVER smiles in photos. I smile like the Village Idiot (minus drool ... usually). And next time remind me to try to coordinate what we're wearing; print with plaid is a bit hard on the eyes!

Long Ago, in a Galaxy Far Away ...

Actually, it wasn't THAT long ago that my first daughter was born. And since my sweet niece Kitty asked me to put it here, I'm posting the picture that was taken of me when I was in labor before delivering my darling Emily.



I then owned that little Honda "mo-ped." It wasn't a real moped because it had no pedals, just a little engine that topped out (with a governor) at 25 mph. And I had driven it to work that morning, then my water broke at noon. My husband came and picked me up, then took the bus back to the library and brought the scooter home. By the time this picture was taken I was truly having contractions.

You have to realize that my official due date was actually one month hence. That pic was taken June 3, 1979, and my due date, according to the OB, was July 4. So I'm not as horrible a pre-mom as you might think! But that due date was obviously wrong, as Emily was born at 12:50 a.m. (I'm pretty sure; she'll have to check her baby book) on June 4--NOT July 4. And she weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz., so I'd hardly call her a preemie. What's a little weird here is that Emily's first baby was due on Dec. 20, 2006, and she went into labor on Nov. 20. Her dr. stopped her labor temporarily, so Kaitlyn was actually born on Nov. 22. But she, too, weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz. And she had jaundice, just like her mom. And they treated her like a preemie, but a little more relaxed-ly than had been done with Emily--I didn't get to hold her for 12 hrs. while they kept her under what I call the McDonald's french-fry lights.

I just thought people might get a kick out of this. And aren't the glasses a piece of the past? Were they big enough, d'you think?