You really care? Okay...Christmas Letter 2006

Oh my.

I haven't checked my site in a couple of days. I didn't get any comments the day I posted so I figured there was no interest.

I'm going to have to hunt down last year's "heads on pikes" letter, but I promise to post it.

Here is this year's. Like I said - probably won't live up to the hype.

In the comments, if you'd like to share your favorite - or most hated - moments in Holiday Letters, go for it.

Merry Christmas, blessed ChrisWanzaaKuh. Grab the Festivus pole while I air my grievances....

*

I’m told it’s time for another year-end letter. This version does not feature Sulla’s disastrous early attempts at haiku, double dactyl, sestina, or iambic pentameter. The Country ballad? Don’t even ask. So, put on your prose hats for our look back on 2006.

Cornelia’s silver VW New Beetle, which was never the same after 2004’s twin terrors of Interstate 405 and the repair shop that “fixed” it, finally breathed its last in February. We promptly turned around and purchased…a silver VW New Beetle.

Cornelia learned her new car is sturdier than the old one when she backed it into the flowerbed in front of our house. (The flowerbed lost.) Our city, in an effort to make our little corner of Ragnarok prettier, offered a home improvement grant which let us not only repair the flower bed, but also paint the house. Our stale-pumpkin-tart color scheme is gone; the cool spearmint-green with a dark green trim is a vast improvement. Our friends at first had trouble finding us because “look for the place with the butt-ugly paint job” no longer applied.

Our extreme home makeover has impressed the neighborhood burglary community so much that they’ve left our stuff more or less alone. Yes, we’ve had our first burglary-free year of our marriage (knock on wood), so our only property loss came from Sulla’s tendencies to (1) forget where he left things and (2) drop electronic stuff into, um, water.

Cornelia’s photography business continues to grow; she had more jobs than she did last year, and expanded her services to selling landscape photography to local stores. Cornelia isn’t pulling a profit yet, but she’s covering expenses, and has almost finished replacing her burgled equipment. Word of mouth remains her only advertising, and that keeps her busy enough.

Sulla has been an overtime machine this year, outlasting many of his younger and saner coworkers. He earnestly hopes it won’t last forever. His company did assign him a laptop this year, though, so he can work from home or the intensive care unit.

In spite of Sulla’s crushing schedule, Cornelia has managed to pull him away from the veal pen for a few short trips out of town. She has always been the more eager traveler, so when Sulla was stuck at work she occasionally imported friends from out of state. But next month Sulla and Cornelia will enjoy their first major vacation - Sulla’s first since high school - when they travel to China. Cornelia won’t let him bring a computer.

She did make him buy a camera, though. Apparently his cell phone isn’t sufficiently camera-like for traveling. He picked up a point-and-shoot that (1) includes a strap to connect to his jacket so he won’t lose it, like his mom used to do with his mittens, and (2) is waterproof. Cornelia knows her honey.

All in all, we’re relatively healthy and we still like each other; the rest is gravy. Next year promises to be turbulent, but “happily ever after” is how we’ve determined to face whatever life throws at us. It’s worked pretty well so far.

With love, from Sulla and Cornelia
December, 2006

Christmas Letters

We were too broke for Christmas cards our first year together, but last year we sent some out. My wife asked me to write it, so I threw something together.

My first draft was not serious. I expected her to say, " 'heads on pikes' has no place in a Christmas letter!" and hand it back for a rewrite...or give up and write it herself.

Instead, she loved it as is, and before I could ask what she thought, it had been mailed to a dozen or so friends and family.

As feedback poured in, there was a lot of outrage - that so and so got a copy but they didn't, and they'd BETTER be included this year.

Why? I assume because the family letter tradition has become, "here's why OUR family kicks YOUR family's ass." My family grew up laughing at letters like this, and fantasized about writing the anti-letter. When my turn came, I went with it.

Who knew? It worked. This year I'm screwed - how do you fake disinterest?

So I Iron Chef'ed it. One hour, one page, stop when the clock goes Ding.

Time will tell.

Food pr0n

I used to joke at restaurants that if the burger I ordered didn't make my arm go numb, I'd want my money back.

I've just met my match: The Heart Attack Grill, in Tempe, AZ.

Not only do they have a "quadruple bypass burger," their waitresses are nurses. Not just ANY nurse, neither: Shannon Tweed candy-striper Showtime After Dark HELLLOOOO NURSE! nurses.

If you FINISH one of the restaurant's cholesterolic WMDs, "Helllooo, Nurse!" will wheel you out to your car.

A director of a nursing advocacy group, Sandy Summers, is outraged - not for the health of the restaurants' "patients" but for the objectification of the "nurses" as smokin' hot dispensers of tender loving care with a heaping side of lard-fried taters.

Priorities. "Eat what you want, Jabba, but keep your eyes to yourself. Perv."

I imagine Summers is a ninja with a tongue depressor.

(hat tip Ace)

Boo Terfly is a LIER!

A certain gerbilly butterfly said she'd be posting on my site as soon as a certain dreaded Hoffy visage fell off the home page.

I don't see no steenking flutterby.



I'm so ronery...

My boring so-called blog

My co-conspirators at Teh Squeaky Wheel have far better blogs than I do.

They write because they have interesting things to say, independent of Gerbil Nation.

Me, I have the most fun playing off other people. Spouting off on my own blog was never part of my plans; I signed up for this domain name years ago, but I've done squat with it.

I feel like Howie Mandel. "Okay, someone give me an occupation. Okay, now give me a situation. Cool - now give me something funny to do!"

I'm just not funny on command. My humor tends to pop up when least expected...and desired.

Inappropriateness is half the fun. When a tree falls inappropriately in a forest when nobody's around, then it's just wasted effort.

I want to be the tree that falls in the forest, right on top of the Prius parked next to a Hummer. If there's one thing Nature abhors more than a vacuum, it's a smug little hybrid.

Merry Frischmas

Teh Squeaky Wheel notes the latest in the ongoing legal troubles of Dr. Deborah Frisch, whose occupation until recently was, ironically, teaching decision science.

I've had my share of fun at her expense, and I've swapped plenty of insults with her in the months following her Independence Day meltdown. But though I'm glad that she is being held to account for her actions - she has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people the past six months, and for years before that as the "word warrior" - I still feel for her.

One of the comments she made to Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom that shocked me into interest in her was when she said to him, "you're not human to me." Six months later, after all I've seen of her, she is still human to me. A messed up human, to be sure. But I can't take much joy in her troubles, and I pray that one day her downward slide will end, and she'll find some measure of a peaceful life.

BOOM goes the dynamite!

Much as I like WordPress - which Blogger doesn't use but which I use for other blogs - I always fear the "upgrade to latest" notification.

Note to self: learn how to back up databases.