Happy New Year!
*taps conductor wand thingy*
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Depends. Were they good or were they dicks to you?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of Auld Lang Syne?
See above.
For Auld Lang Syne, my dear
For Auld Lang Syne
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For Auld Lang Syne!
Getting wasted on kindness? Good idea!
*drinks*
Hmm. I might be immune. Oh, well.
*pant* *wheeze* *gasp*
Huh, what? Is 2013 just about over? Ah, it is. What a ride. Well, let’s get right into it with months named like episodes and a lot of cryptic notes.
January: Ball of Yarn
-These are some bizarre interview questions.
-Reading Deathly Hallows again.
-Les Mis with Kathleen, Alexander, and Pam!
February: Baskets
-LOL Superbowl power outage
-Hey, Ravens won the Superbowl! Even if being a Redskins fan means I should hate them apparently.
March: In the Garden of Brookside
-Got some NYRA stuff!
-Ugh. Alex’s house caught fire.
-Bill saw last year’s recap and accused me of libel. Inb4 same with this one.
-Hmm. Job paying a lot less than previous and still didn’t get it because not qualified enough. :irked:
-Laser tag!
-#26 Freewill
April: The Right Side of History
-Me, to Takoma Park: “Lower the voting age! All the cool places are doing it!”
-Holy crap, is this thing actually going to pass?!
May: Fifteen Percent
-Aww, crap, I turned 30.
-Hardy? You’re going to get over the lymphoma, right? Right?
-Oh. Only months left tops. 🙁
-Oh no.
-RIP fellow NYRAnian, fellow board member
-And on that same day…
-In Takoma Park… “Councilmember Smith?” “Aye.” “Councilmember Seamens?” “Aye.” “Councilmember Schultz?” “Nay.” “Councilmember Male?” “Aye.” “Councilmember Grimes?” “Aye.” “Councilmember Daniels-Cohen?” “Aye.” “Mayor Williams?” “Aye.”
-And with that, the voting age was lowered to 16 in Takoma Park, MD.
-Just like that… #16tovote
-Oh. I got a job! Finally!
-I can do this. Must do a good job.
-So many minus-80 freezers!
June: Coffeemaker
-Hang on. One of the background music pieces in Lemmings is supposed to be Pachelbel’s Canon and I somehow never fucking knew this?! MIND BLOWN
-Whoa. What’s that thing hanging outside the walk-in freezer?
-Coworker: “If you stop moving, it starts chirping. If you still don’t move, it starts screaming. And they have to come drag your ass out.”
-Eep. Hope I don’t have to go in there!
-Hmm. We just got a week off because there isn’t anything to do. Oh, well.
-At least we were brought back.
-Finally telling off someone at NYRA who needed a good telling off. 😀
-Alright, I should probably be more specific, but if I did, he’d probably whine about libel again. :cute:
July: Stop! Hook up!
-Woo, Nationals game!
-Speeding?! You can get pulled over for speeding on I-270? Interesting.
-Okay, fine, I’ll run for the damn board again.
-Job just moved to me new location. Big but same basic job.
-Wow, those man-down devices for the walk-in freezers are loud!
-NYRAnians calling to confront ageist sushi restaurant in Virginia!
-I think I just scared WES. I called them out for ageism in a platform response. 😛
-What the mother of crap, did I just get pulled over again?
-What do you mean I was tail-gating?
-Huh? I need to go inside the walk-in freezer? Gulp…
-Okay, this isn’t so bad…
-And I’m in and out. Did what I needed to.
-LIKE A BOSS
August: Blueberry Muffin
-First the Snipers in Baltimore and then some more NYRAnians in DC.
-It’s not Annual Meeting day, but it damn well feels like it!
-Time for Kathleen to go to San Francisco.
-Even if it requires driving her to the airport at 5am. Sigh.
-Hmm. MLK Library may have to do for the AM.
-We’ll connect NYRA-Twin Cities to the DC AM by video chat!
-Okay, this worked out.
-If this AM sucked balls. Oh, well.
September: Maybe
-I’ve been laid off again?!
-Oh, lovely, now a prolonged power outage after thunderstorm… This will be a while…
-Hmm. Just five hours. Could have been a lot worse. Okay.
-OMG I met Heather Corinna!!!
-NYRA board meetings on Google Hangout? This is pretty awesome!
October: Labyrinth
-Meetings to plan Winter Festival!
-I want to play Kingdom Hearts again.
-Dear God, forgot how awesome this game is.
-Oh, no, I’ve got a cold. On Halloween!
November: Spinach Bean Thing
-Auction!
-Time for Sugarloaf climb!
-Dad sold the house? Oh no.
-I’ll make that spinach bean thing for community dinner.
-I’ll make it again for Thanksgiving!
December: A Platypus and a Sloth Skiing in the Alps
-Ordered holiday cards late again.
-Taking little brother to Winter Festival!
-I’m a smug skiing platypus!
-Uh oh. We’re leaking water into neighbor’s house somehow.
-Fucking heating condensation pipe! :irked:
-Cookies!
-Last Christmas in Grandma’s house. 🙁
-Followed by a week straight of moving shit out.
-And then settlement.
-And the house is no longer ours. As of this afternoon.
-But we went out to dinner.
-And I’ve just barely made a post every day in December!
And the ball is dropping now, we close the book on the veritable clusterfuck that was 2013! Oy.
Well, let’s see what 2014 has up its sleeve… :scared:
So the Washington Redskins just fired all their coaches. Well, after a 3-13 season, something needs to change. This is sucky even by Redskins standards! Are the coaches the problem? I don’t know. This isn’t a sports blog. Go watch SportsCenter or something.
But lately, a lot of talk about the team involves the admittedly if arguably racist name. As far as that issue, I find myself pondering a solution. So here it is…
If the Washington Redskins change their mascot and logo to a potato, can they continue to be called Redskins?
But then again, I think the better question would be…
If the Washington Redskins coaches and players were replaced by potatoes, would anyone notice?
What do people mean when they open their yaps and say words? Here’s a guide to some of the things. Even if some of intention isn’t always there, such a message is conveyed.
“Learn more about dealing with drug abuse among teens and young adults.”
Translation: “Teenagers are bad and you should hate them.”
“Good luck when your kids are teenagers!”
Translation: “Teenagers are bad and you should hate them.”
“We’ve had shoplifters, so no unaccompanied under-16s allowed in store.”
Translation: “Teenagers are bad and you should hate them.”
“Brains aren’t fully developed until 25, so young people can’t make decisions well and are impulsive.”
Translation: “Teenagers are bad and you should hate them.”
You get the idea.
Alright, here is yet another mine field. Time to uncover.
One.
Not bad.
Open another square…
Two.
Watch your step!
Three.
Just don’t get into a corner or hit a wall.
Four.
Getting around another side now.
Five.
Eeep! They’re closing in.
Six.
It’s like a hallway or a ninety-degree turn.
Seven.
It’s a dead end. Or like being in a dangerous little room. Almost totally surrounded. Almost…
Uh oh… It is…
EIGHT.
Totally surrounded.
It’s like you’re in some kind of Fortress. Or something like that.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
EIGHT!
Happy 8th Anniversary, Eight Mine Fortress!!!!
Since the family is moving out of Grandma’s house this weekend (which has eaten up my time and made the daily posting here rather difficult but whatever), I have been occasionally just claiming items around the house I feel like keeping that no one else cares about anyway. One item I snatched last week was Grandma’s 1982 hymnal.
When I went home that night, I looked through the Christmas songs in it. Some I never heard of anywhere else, while others were very familiar and were sung on Tuesday night, as well as ones not done then but heard of nonetheless.
One song was Good Christian Men Rejoice. Only the lyrics didn’t say that. It said “Good Christian Friends Rejoice”. Huh.
Then Christmas Eve night, at the service, singing some of the very familiar songs out of copies of the same hymnal, I noticed some of the slight variations to the lyrics from more popular versions. In the second verse of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, where it’s usually “Pleased as man with men to dwell”, it instead read “Pleased as man with us to dwell”. And in the third verse, where it’s usually “born that men no more may die” it was “born that we no more may die”, and then where it’s usually “born to raise the sons of earth” it was instead “born to raise us from the earth” or something like that. Plus a few other little alterations like that, which never occurred to me much before. Until I saw the “Good Christian Friends” thing and put it all together…
The hymnal… is gender neutral. 😮
MIND = BLOWN
And a one and a two and…
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
The mention of the Feast of Stephen being the single only reason this is a Christmas song.
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Yeah, yeah, winter, got it.
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
Good. So you can see where you’re going while you freeze to death. Go inside!
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.
Got to keep the car gassed up and heater all kerosened up.
Second verse!
“Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know’st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
Getting kind of nosy.
“Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”
He’s a wizard who will eat you. Better stay home.
Third verse!
“Bring me flesh, and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither:
Thou and I shall see him dine
When we bear them thither.”
Leave people alone while they are eating!
Page and monarch, forth they went
Forth they went together;
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather.
A lot of inter-class bonding in the NSA’s early years.
Fourth verse!
“Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how;
I can go no longer.”
See? Your voyeuristic ways are getting your assistant killed.
“Mark my footsteps, good my page.
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
These alternative medicine cures to hypothermia are weird.
Fifth verse!
In his master’s steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.
Ohhh, got you. Wencie was dropping them glove warmer things from his feet. Or something. I guess.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
Well, it beats getting mind-fucked by some ghosts Christmas Eve night at least.
I made cookies.
That’s the main thing. I’d been studying cookie recipes for about a week and got eager to finally try one out. Want to develop my own cookie recipe sort of. I’ve already got a muffin recipe, even if I haven’t made them in many years. But, it’s Christmas, so it’s cookie time, and I’ve put it off for too many years. Can’t just make and poorly-modify the store-bought Pillsbury dough. Got to make my own! 😀
Christmas is about the old and new.
So I watched specials. So I saw the family. So I went to the Christmas Eve late night church service. So I held the candle and sang Silent Night and for some reason found myself holding back inexplicable laughter. So I stayed up way too late wrapping presents.
And this morning I baked some more of my cookies.
Damn, they are good! If really goddamn sweet.
There’s white chocolate and milk chocolate and peanut butter and butterscotch! 😀
This morning, opened presents and saw the little brother get another damn train.
The new were my cookies.
The old is this old house that has belonged to my family since my grandparents bought it in 1965. Every Christmas of my life has brought me to this house.
And it’s been sold and we’re moving out next week before the year is even up.
Well… I don’t know what to say about that anymore. Certainly not giving any more details than that.
I’ve got a lot of Christmas traditions, from those lasting my whole life, such as the simple opening presents with family and having our feast of roast beast, and watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve. To newer ones like the Christmas Eve night service, having gone to it every year since 2003, with a few times before then. To NYRA’s holiday cards since 2006. To Washington Ethical Society’s Winter Festival since 2009. And to whatever others may come in what I sure hope will be many more iterations of this holiday.
Can’t say it’s totally happy right now.
But I’ve got cookies. They’re awesome.
There is this article going around that you’ve most likely seen by now. I think half my Facebook friends have shared it, most hating it but a few agreeing. I’m not going to link it because it’s obvious click-bait and they’re getting enough attention anyway, so I don’t need to add to it.
It starts off good with the little bit about the light switches, and then seemingly out of nowhere it goes into a nonsense diatribe on gun rights and making weird and unexpected comparisons to the Spanish Inquisition. Next was something about the writer’s niece baking gluten-free brownies and this tied back into the light switch thing somehow.
You know the one I mean.
I enjoyed this line:
When we arrived at Chicago O’Hare, the airline had lost my sled and accidentally sent it to Detroit. So I had to get to my aunt’s house without a gift and ran by 7-11 real fast and had to settle for giving a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
It proceeded to blame ObamaCare for a few rude mall security guards.
I don’t get what the ending about the narwhals was supposed to be about.
But in all in all, it wasn’t terrible, but again, obvious click-bait. The crap people write these days!
So I was at the grocery store earlier getting some food and avoiding going home to cringe at the Redskins game. I’m in the holiday aisle with a crapton of Christmas goodies, though not quite as much as they had last week. Despite the obvious fact Christmas hasn’t actually gotten here yet.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear, occupying just one little area but present nonetheless… Easter candy.
Seriously! Three days before Christmas, and the Easter candy is out.
Know when Easter is in 2014? April 20. It’s going to be one late ass Easter this coming year. And stuff for it is appearing already.
Mary’s not even two centimeters dilated and we’re already planning her son’s crucifixion.
Though one could argue it’s fitting, as Christmas/Winter Solstice celebrations all come down to promising that Easter/Vernal Equinox will come. If four months away still. If the (freakishly warm) Winter Solstice was only yesterday.
Already there are the Peeps. Already there are the Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. Already there are Cadbury Creme Eggs…
…
I’m okay with this.