Hey there. I’m still on the road, so not much today. My Christmas was merry and bright and so calorific I’ll be in elastic waistbands for a week.
How was yours?
For Boxing Day, a little boxing:
More tomorrow, when the world wakes up from its food coma, eh?
basset said on December 26, 2011 at 8:54 am
Fighting is not a sport.
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Connie said on December 26, 2011 at 9:43 am
My husband is a heavy duty boxing fan and our daughter grew up watching boxing on Dad’s lap. She used to have a crush on Oscar DeLa Hoya. A couple of weeks ago she called her Dad from IU to discuss the Pacquiao fight. Our roller derby girl is definitely her father’s daughter.
I can deal with boxing in the house but mixed martial arts fighting, well I have to leave the room.
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coozledad said on December 26, 2011 at 10:50 am
We did a little work outdoors yesterday, but mostly stayed pretty close by the kitchen. I made some labneh and flatbreads for dinner, and mixed up a bunch of bahrat to make a chickpea-kale soup later today.
It’s supposed to flood here tomorrow. That means more recreational eating.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 26, 2011 at 10:58 am
Not that into boxing, but I did get a red Chicago Black Hawks jersey of Magnuson #3 vintage for Christmas – close enough? Plus a Hebrew Reader’s Bible and a 1906 laudanum bottle made in Newark OH just down the block from my office (Styron Beggs “Great Seal” brand, whose motto, I kid you not, was “It pays to demand Great Seal Brand; get the habit” – now there’s a slogan to sell laudanum, eh?).
I hope everyone gets their partridge in a pear tree today! Eleven days of Christmas yet to go, without the commercial maladjustments.
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Rana said on December 26, 2011 at 11:35 am
Happy holidays, all! Wishing you lots of light and warmth, literal and figurative!
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beb said on December 26, 2011 at 11:42 am
I’m with Basset on this. And if Muhammad Ali has shown us anything it’s that evenn the winner are losers. (Brain injury)
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coozledad said on December 26, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Newt needs to brush up on his historical analogies, or he needs to go the full Husband Kimmel, rip his shoulderboards off and go the fuck home.
Maybe he and Ron Paul can partner on some blood diamond investment strategies and when it goes bust, they can call it their Isandhlwana.
This isn’t a political party, it’s a farm team for the QVC network.
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caliban said on December 26, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Right on Cooze. What sort of strange concatenations brought Newt to Pearl Harbor? Is he saying he was “japped on” while uncharacteristically avoiding the inflammatory term? What the hell is he talking about. Sounds like mental defect or disease. Perhaps he was comparing the jejeune incompetence of his laughable campaign organization to the unpreparedness of the US military in the Pacific on the Day of Infamy. As for Isandhlawna, phew. Almost lost Michael Caine in that fiasco. Kimmel is a sad historic figure, and nobody will ever know if he created a FUBAR situation or was a deliberate scapegoat.
They just lie their asses off, and dumbasses believe them anyway.
Dicks
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Connie said on December 26, 2011 at 4:53 pm
What a quiet bunch today. Though for many of you it is your Christmas Holiday off. I am in the office and the library has been very very quiet. We are seeing our usually post holiday patrons: Grandparents desperately seeking DVDs to keep the visiting grandparents occupied.
And many years we can tell from library requests what the popular Christmas gifts were. I started as a librarian about the time everyone wanted a how to cook with my new microwave book. I’ve been through several holidays of bread machine cookbooks as well. Our prediction for this year was books and ebook download assistance for new ipad and ereader owners. Coming true so far.
I can’t believe we thought we would be actually cooking with microwaves. Don’t you think that what we do is just heat, melt and boil?
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beb said on December 26, 2011 at 5:26 pm
The forecast for the day after the day after Christmas is for rain… and maybe a little snow. Is this weird or what? I read a blog posting a couple days ago about how the Republicans in Congress were opposed to any changes in the weather service even if it cost nothing and offered enhanced forecasting services for farms, builders and so on. But what was interesting was the number of people in the comments who noted that they were suffering unseasonable warm weather. I suppose this will near a late Spring. But, jeez, a nationwide heat wave in December!
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Deborah said on December 26, 2011 at 5:30 pm
One of my other favorite websites is called Cabin Porn (now that we are getting ready to build a tiny cabin on our land as a first step in our strategy on the mesa), one of the guys who runs it is a successful Internet intreprenure, Zach Kein. I checked out his Twitter feed and his other blog and lo and behold guess who he follows? Good ole Nancy Nall! His family lives in Fort Wayne. Small world eh? I suppose LA Mary knows him too.
If he reads these comments: love the cabin porn.
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Dexter said on December 26, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Great time in Columbus…my kids filled my van with presents for me…I do not understand it. We had a great time with the new granddaughter,and one of my gifts was a package of snickerdoodles cookies. Are they good or what? Good to be home from the activity, though…and you know what I mean.
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alex said on December 26, 2011 at 6:30 pm
ooh la la le cabin porn.
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Judybusy said on December 26, 2011 at 6:34 pm
I have been laid back today, reading a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots by Alison Weir, and making sinful (for the diabetic)spiced molasses cookies for Maggie Jochild. (I asked first.) I also was recently encouraged to join Goodreads.com, which I did. I spent a couple hours writing about books I’ve read in the last couple years–thankfully I have a “to-read” list on my library account, so I could pretty much capture any thing I’ve read. I will really appreciate being able to write a bit about books I read in an accessible-anywhere format. At a party on Friday, I was reminded of Downton Abbey, so added it to the Netflix cue. Looking forward to it based on recommendations here.
I hope everyone at nn.c had good food, good times with friends and family and enough down time to reflect and enjoy!
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nancy said on December 26, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Deborah, Zach and I are casual friends, and were in fact just trading FB comments about getting together in the new year. We met when Zach determined, in 2002 or thereabouts, that we were the only two people in Fort Wayne with a blog. We had drinks — he used a fake ID, I’m sure — and kept in touch.
After he graduated from Wake Forest, he and some of his friends started CollegeHumor.com, which was a huge success, and they sold out to Barry Diller for something like $40 million. He then co-founded Vimeo and is in yet another startup, but I know he took some of his dough and bought some land in upstate New York, where he is building/refining a very spare cabin retreat. He has a Tumblr blog about the project here. I was teasing him that all his friends look like they stepped out of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Zach’s the one in the outdoor-shower thingie.
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brian stouder said on December 26, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Good to be back home again, although most of the young folks remained in Logansport for the week, as we look forward to the New Year.
One of the books I got for Christmas is Once Upon a Car by a newspaper guy named Bill Vlasic. The author was on Book-TV recently, and I thought he sounded interesting. Let me just say, I picked it up yesterday and I’m 75 pages in (lightening-pace, by my standards) and enjoying it immensely.
After that one, several other alluring books await, all of which look really good (and most of which I first saw discussed on Book-TV); but Once Upon a Car is just flat-out good stuff
edit: Nance’s post above reminded me of Fort Wayne Observed (started by another Fort Wayne internet early-adaptor, who started that site and then sold it off and went on to greener pastures), now Mitch Harper’s site, and Lo and Behold – there was Nance’s smiling mug!
Mr Harper had a nice write-up about Nancy’s new position at The Bridge
http://indiana.typepad.com/
…and he could not resist this last sentence, which got me laughing:
While The Center for Michigan seemingly uses the Mackinac Bridge as the inspiration for its logo and name of publication, readers should not confuse it with The Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
(and that last proper noun is hotlinked to that right-wing PAC – or whatever it is)
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Deborah said on December 26, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Nancy, somehow I left out the L in Klein. How cool that you’re friends. I remember reading a few years back an article in the New Yorker about the College Humor guys. They all seem so impossibly young to be so impossibly rich. And full of energy and enthusiasm. Oh to be young again.
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Deborah said on December 26, 2011 at 9:27 pm
We took Little Bird to Santa Fe again today to catch the shuttle to the train at Lamy (pronounced lay me by the locals, named after the archbishop made famous by Willa Cather). Before doing so we had our third breakfast at Pasquals in the week we’ve been here. I love the huevos rancheros. Little Bird hates to fly, we talked her into flying out here but she is much happier to sit on a train for over 24 hours back to Chicago. It was amazing to think that next year by this time she will have lived in Santa Fe 5 months or so already. We are very optimistic about the places available to rent in Santa Fe, there are a lot of places in the downtown area that seem to have a lot of character and the prices are much better than Chicago.
We will be in New Mexico until the 8th, loving every minute of it.
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Rana said on December 26, 2011 at 9:36 pm
I was teasing him that all his friends look like they stepped out of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
*laughing* Oh, that is perfectly true. What gorgeous pictures. What gorgeous young people!
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caliban said on December 26, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Even peaceful Canadians take football seriously:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/real-life-hamburglar-sneaks-drive-window-makes-burger-snack-15014413?tab=9482931§ion=1206839&playlist=9660543
I hope dementia is involved when a couple of 73 yolds go after each othe 45 years after the genesis of the grievance.
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Little Bird said on December 26, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Writing from the train here, with one minor exception this has been an uneventfull ride. That one exception includes a stop in a tiny town, an ambulance, and the quietest announcement ever. Those are pretty much all the details I have.
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Connie said on December 26, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Brian, not a PAC but rather a conservative think tank, very influential in the state.
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James said on December 26, 2011 at 11:20 pm
“Maybe he [Newt] and Ron Paul can partner on some blood diamond investment strategies and when it goes bust, they can call it their Isandhlwana.”
Ron Paul has too much integrity to partner with Newt on anything.
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basset said on December 26, 2011 at 11:27 pm
Jeff TMMO, the wood stove in our deer camp was made in Newark, it’s a Wehrle “Wonder.”
Meanwhile, deer season has been most disappointing and I am letting work and reading slide while I spend as much time as possible in the woods trying to salvage a little meat for the freezer.
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moe99 said on December 26, 2011 at 11:50 pm
On the plant returning to Seattle from Mpls. Have a hearing tomorrow where the other side failed to provide me with their Dr’s report until I asked for it: got it at 4:30 the day before I went on leave last Thurs so I am not looking forward to that ( my motion for a continuance was denied). Add to that the fact that I came down with a cold after I spent an hour and a half in a deposition last Tues with a lawyer who was sneezing up a storm and using Kleenex willy Nilly. I should have postponed the dep sooner but I’ve never done that before. Word to the wise.
Deborah, California Guitar Trio has a song with Lamy in the title. I bet there is a connection.
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caliban said on December 27, 2011 at 12:20 am
California Guitar Trio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdEAccE7BMs
Insanely great guitar playing.
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moe99 said on December 27, 2011 at 2:15 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ghOelQlpE&feature=related
California Guitar Trio: “Train to Lamy”
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Dexter said on December 27, 2011 at 3:41 am
I have an old friend who lives down Forth Worth way. He knows a lot of Texas musicians from several generations. I had never heard of Don Edwards until a few hours ago…I guess this song is a sort of take on the book of Job…anyway, here I post it for the guitar playing. He sent it to me in a Christmas greeting post.
http://youtu.be/VgHFyKs_1E8
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Dexter said on December 27, 2011 at 3:56 am
Deborah, Little Bird…for all the reasons we have heard about for years, I too would rather ride a train than hop a jet.
I haven’t ridden for about ten years now but I used to, about as soon as Amtrak started and way before that, as a kid I’d ride the NYCentral passenger trains out of Waterloo, and the B&O trains out of Garrett, Indiana. Almost all those trips were just to Chicago and back the same night.
One thing is that since one has so much time , lots of stories develop. I have had to sit in cars on sidings waiting for freight trains to go through; I have endured power failure for many hours in the heat of July with no AC and the beverage service suspended, and many other situations as well.
Train travel is most fun when alone, I believe, because some people hate trains and one might have to listen to four days of constant bitching by a seatmate…that sucks!
My family travels a lot by air, though, Detroit to Las Vegas mostly. Our eldest daughter and her family live in Las Vegas.
Christ, I hate that place. It’s evil. My daughter is a nurse practitioner and she donates a lot of her time running clinics for the people who live in tents . She does what she can, prescribing meds and handing out sample meds to some very sick people. Las Vegas is a horrible place in my mind but she loves it. I never go..can’t stand to see all the bullshit that goes on there. Still, most folks think it’s just all fun and good times. To hell with the whole damn place.
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Jolene said on December 27, 2011 at 8:48 am
Job was an Old Testament guy, Dexter. The Edwards song is more like the story of the Prodigal Son.
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moe99 said on December 27, 2011 at 10:53 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clq01TXQR0s
Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails.
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Jeff Borden said on December 27, 2011 at 10:58 am
The analogy with Pearl Harbor demonstrates the astonishing self-regard Newt Gingrich has for himself. His campaign, which melted down entirely last spring when he and Mrs. Helmethair took a cruise in the Aegean Sea, fouled up in qualifying for the primary in the state where the smarmy assheel has lived for two decades. But it’s not incompetence. No, it’s a sneak attack! Like Pearl Harbor!! But bigger!!! God, what an ass.
We’re still in Florida with my wife’s mother. Christmas Day was at my brother-in-law’s apartment, where his fiance served up a big ham, sweet potato souffle, green bean casserole, potato salad and a choice of blueberry cheesecake or pumpkin pie. I’m lucky to have a metabolism that burns this stuff off, or I’d be as pudgy as, well, Newt Gingrich. Our niece and nephew were there, too. They’re now 14 and are interested largely in cash, cash and cash. It was more fun shopping for toys and games and sporting goods, but time marches on. And they’re smart and engaged enough to have good conversations on films, music and even a little politics.
We get back to Chitown tomorrow, but too late in the day to collect our four-legged friend. I’m a relatively inexperienced pet owner –Cosmo is my first dog– but I can’t believe how much I’ve missed him. I hope to spend most of the day Thursday just playing with him.
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