Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

A thoroughly modern couple, Frank and I shoot multiply cc-ed emails back and forth between our adjoining studies. (No, we haven’t forgotten how to holler, we do that too.) He sent out a great one this morning and said I could share:

Here is a link to a very interesting video:

http://epic.chalksidewalk.com/

I got to it via chessbase.com. I recommend their “Christmas puzzles” both in themselves and as portals:

http://www.chessbase.com/puzzle/christmas2004/index.htm

Does this video forecast the future of bloggers, “Googlezon”, and the New York Times? Co-author Robin Good posted a transcript and more commentary. Oh, and the Christmas chess puzzles are fun too, not to mention those Flash-imated reindeer.

Our non-Christmas non-dinner today was open-faced California grilled veggie sandwiches. Mmmmm, delicious.

We’re saving our family Christmas hullabaloo for December 30, when both daughters will be around. Stockings will hang by the chimney with care on the night of December 29, while New-Years-Eve-Eve will feature more gifts and big festive meal.

There’s something comforting about shifting “Christmas” (the name we give our family’s own pagan festival of gifting and getting together) away from December 25, the official birthday of the Christ child since 336 A.D. It somehow gives us a little more leverage against the thousand and differing voices trying each year to tell other people how Christmas “should” be celebrated.

The commercial push to buy and spend, for example, doesn’t push so hard on people who don’t share the same “last-minute shopping days” with everyone else.

Our first early Christmas was in 1999 or so. Because we were scheduled to spend Dec. 25 on an airplane bound for Chile, we moved Christmas to December 21. Amazingly, the next four days felt calmer for us than for anyone else we knew–getting ready for 3 weeks on the other side of the Equator and the International Date Line was much less stressful than gearing up for Christmas.

Of course, our family might just cheat a tiny bit. As I type this, Frank is thumping out “Joy to the World” on the piano. And we had some Christmas stollen for lunch dessert.

Anyway, I wish all my readers a good celebration of any kind you fancy, and a happy 2005 to follow!

The longest night of the year (winter solstice) is over!

Northern Hemispherians (Hemispherites? Hemisphericals?) can
rejoice–our days now start getting longer, the sunshine gets warmer.
The lovely gray midday twilight of snowy we enjoyed in Kiruna now starts to stretch out and get brighter. On the morning of New Year’s Day, a real sunrise will happen.

Southern Hemispherosians, you just saw midsummer pass by. But your
equivalent months for July and August still lie ahead–so I can’t feel
too sorry for Southern Hemispheratics.

The longest night of the year ( winter solstice) is over!

Northern Hemispherians (Hemispherites? Hemisphericals?) can rejoice–our days now start getting longer, the sunshine gets warmer. The lovely gray midday twilight of snowy Kiruna now starts to stretch out and get brighter. Not too long from now, a real sunrise will happen.

Southern Hemispherosians, you just saw midsummer pass by. But your equivalent months for July and August are just ahead–I can’t feel too sorry for Southern Hemispheratics!

Last year at this time, two feet of snow fell overnight in Cambridge. This year in Stockholm, both daylight and snowfall are less. Thanks to mega-blogger Dave Winer for reminding me of how much my old dog Marianne loved last year’s snow bonanza.

I miss you, Marianne! But I’m sure Ilse is taking great care of you at home, feeding you almost as many different treats as the hospitable Stockholmians feed me and Frank.

See?

Elephant neckties but no donkey neckties are for sale in the Wyndham Hotel gift shop. Ninety-nine kinds of George Bush buttons or cute little heart-shaped buttons with Laura Bush on them.

Well, I guess Democrats don’t have much reason to come here unless, for example, the Swedish Ambassador asks them to drop in for dinner.

I realized something on the tiny plane that bounced us from Boston into Ronald Reagan Airport. The reason Republicans were “conservative” for years was that they were out of power. Democrats were running things and spending government money on programs Republicans didn’t want.

Once Republicans started running the country, after 2000 but with power-ups in 2002 and 2004, they used their new power to make some big changes of their own.

Now it’s Democrats wanting things back the way they were.

Pie crust was one of the few things my mother admitted she couldn’t do.
Old New Englanders called it “a heavy hand for pastry.” She said that
in her case, one foot must be heavy as well.

Harold McGee to the rescue! From today’s New York Times:

McGee is promoting the new revised edition of his scientific cookbook, On Food and Cooking. I definitely want one!

The first Thanksgiving I cooked for was the hardest. Amity was a tiny
baby–Frank and I both had flu. I managed to stagger into the kitchen
and heat up a can of Campbell’s chicken soup with rice for us to
celebrate with. We were both thankful we could keep the soup down that
day, a sign that we were finally getting better.

I remember
the Thanksgiving when I was 10, when my Aunt Mary let me help make the
giblet gravy. It was delicious. She and I kept tasting it in the
kitchen, and when it was time to serve it we* had none left.

I remember the many holiday meals I shared with Frank’s grandparents.
Grandma Wilczek would cook an authentic Polish feast with lots of
kielbasa. Then we would all drive over to Grandma Cona’s for an Italian
super-spectacular–turkey plus pans of lasagne, meatballs, and sausage.
It’s a miracle we have any arteries left.

I remember when I
realized, 10 years ago, that my computer could help me stage-manage
Thanksgiving. I created timetables, lists of dishes and recipes. I
don’t know how people did all this before they had printers.

I remember last year, when I blogged the universal veggie pot pie and killer brownies along with the
turkey and gravy for carnivores like me.

Now I better get cooking!

** Heh. Almost 50 years later, I just realized–Aunt Mary was quick to
claim half the blame for the missing gravy, but she probably didn’t
drink more than a tablespoon of it. No wonder everybody loved Aunt Mary!