Mac Christmas Bash 2009

Last year, we were at the Scabby Cabby.  This year, a group of college friends and one special guest (more on her in a second) got together in Chicago for drinks, dinner, and more drinks.

I got to Nic's condo just west of downtown about 4:00.  On my way down, I saw HIM!  The Master of the Universe!  Traffic was a bitch, and what should have taken 15 minutes or so took about an hour.  As I got to his place, I realized that I forgot my CAMERA!  So, you are just going to have to suffer with these taken on my crappy cell phone camera.  Dems da berries.

So, I get there, and who do I meet?  The lovely and talented Whiskey Marie was there with Gwen.  Like I said the cell phone does not do this lovely lady justice.  We talked and had a good time.

Gwen was looking lovely as always, too.  In her fabulous black dress and vibrant green belt.  I think Nic set up the laptop just to get her to bend like this.  Curse you crappy camera!  CURSE YOU!

Eventually, planes, trains, and automobiles were used to assemble the party, and we taxied into River North to Sullivan's for dinner.  Yum!  I had the tomato & mozzarella salad with balsamic reduction.  I love tomatoes and these were ripe and flavorful.  And the balls of fresh mozzarella?  Devine.  For my main course, I had the grilled swordfish.  And a couple of spears of asparagus.  So, yeah, my pee stills sounds funny.

After dinner, we went back to the neighborhood, and hit a little dive bar for a while.

The bar had a great jukebox, and we got to hear Sweet Caroline (bhu, bhu, bhu) twice in the hour that we were there.  After the bar, we headed back to Nic's place for a bit (someone broke a heal on the way).  The a few quasi-responsible people went back to our hotel rooms.  Yes, I live a $20 cab ride away, and stayed in a $125 hotel room.  I knew that if I went home, odds were low that I would make it back the next day for brunch.

A fitful night of sleeping (man, I can't drink like I used to) where I was up every 2 hours followed.  About 10:30, we were back at the condo, drinking fabulous Bloody Maries, and eating wonderful omelets made by Laughlin.

And to top it all off, we watched Elf and A Christmas Story.  Until that time, Whiskey Marie had never seen 'A Christmas Story'.  I know.  Deprived child.

About 2:00 some people needed rides to the train station, and after dropping them off, I got home and took crashed out for an hour and a half.

And thus ended Mac-Christmas-Bash 2009.

Except for a little Christmas Ho-Ho-Ho!

Christmas Music 2009

Tired of your collection of Christmas music?

Need something a little hipper than "The Holiday Lite"?

I've got a little something for you from Chicago's WXRT.

Just click the big icon right there, and enjoy.

What has been playing while I've been working on this post?

• Keith Richards – Run, Run, Rudolph
• Melissa Etheridge – Santa Claus is Coming To Town
• Fountains of Wayne – I Want An Alien For Christmas
• Charles Brown – Merry Christmas Baby
• Los Lonely Boys – Feliz Navidad
• Bob Rivers – Toy Sack (to "Love Shack")
• Chuck Berry – Run, Run, Rudolph
• The Pretenders – Blue Christmas
• Bing & Bowie – Little Drummer Boy

And you can even pause and skip songs if you need to.

Hope this puts some ROCK'N in your STOCK'N!

Six Word Saturday - She Said What?

I'm joining in on "Six Word Saturday" is hosted by Cate at Show My Face... via the lovely and talented Sassy Britches. 

YOUR WIFE CALLED YOU A WHAT?

[Click to enlarge]

The Post Where I Show You My Balls…

And my "Space Needle"

And my other Christmas decoration, and then ask you to show me yours, too.  ;-)

Early disclaimers to get out of the way now…

• My birthday is December 22nd, and I love Christmas
• These pictures are carefully staged and cropped.  The condo is currently a toxic waste dump just off camera.
• Jan, the beautiful ornament that you sent kept washing out in the flash, and without the flash, it didn't show up too well, either.  :-(  But in person, it looks great.  :-)
• There's a whole lot of pictures in this here post.
• This is the first year I've ever done a tree.  Wreaths?  Yes.  Tree?  No.

Despite that fact that I am CURRENTLY a bachelor, living on his own, I do decorate for Christmas.  Always have.  In fact, number of years ago, I started giving out (and keeping) a different silver Christmas ornament each year as a package topper.

Crate & Barrel usually comes thru for me.  Like this year's silver Christmas tree, or last year's silver reindeer.

Speaking of my tree, here it is in all it's sparse, Charlie Brown-esque glory. I have done a little shopping and wrapping so far, but not a lot.  I am taking today (Thursday) off work to really go to town on finishing up the final bits of shopping, get some presents wrapped and in the mail, get my hair cut, etc.  Hopefully I will get that done.

"Why not take Friday off instead?"

Good question.  The answer is simple: Office Christmas party is Friday after work.  And that kicks off a weekend of celebrating and kicking back with some old friends (including the lovely and talented Gwen of Everything I Like Causes Cancer.)   She and Whiskey Marie will be in town, so I really don't plan on doing anything productive on Saturday or Sunday, so if it is going to happen, it needs to happen on Thursday.

But I promised you some balls, right?  I'm getting there.  I just had to ramble long enough to fill in the gap beside the picture.  Duh.

So here's my fireplace, and you can see that my balls are hung…

I have some hand painted glass ball ornaments that I got at a craft show.  Long boring story short, my parents had a booth at the show, and he was next to us, and didn't sell a damn thing all day, so I bought the snowman…

the Christmas trees…

and the constipated sun.

And speaking of hand painted ornaments, (not constipation) this guy, "Party Boy" is a P. Buckley Moss design that I bought at her museum a few years back.  It is hand painted on the inside of the glass!

Getting back to the tree, I have a bit of a travel theme going on.  Restoration Hardware used to sell these beautiful brass ornaments of icon structures and airplanes and such.  I bought many for places that I had been.

(Note, there's the starfish Jan from Struck by Serendipity sent me, it has glitter and shells, and is most charming.)  So to go with the Eifel Tower, Big Ben, Roman Coliseum, and the Golden Gate Bride (off camera), I wanted a Space Needle, for my heart currently lives in Seattle, and I wanted one on the tree.

But, I searched the internets, and all I saw were some cheesy looking glass ones.  So over Thanksgiving, Cora and I hunted and hunted for a nice, metallic one.  They had to have them, right?  This was the best we could find.

A cheap resin one.

But there's that story about beggars and choosers, so I bought it as a backup.  While at the festival of lights, I did buy this Borg sphere looking ornament, so that I would have a "nice" ornament to hang on the tree.  (In real life, it doesn't look like a big ball of tin foil, honest.)

On the way to the airport for my return flight, Cora and I stopped in at Wal-Mart of all places, and struck gold.  Well, bronze.  We found two different sized bronze Space Needle paper weights, that with a little ribbon or monofilament thread can become ornaments.

  To wrap up this monster post, and to get wrapping, I wouldn't want you to think that my decor is ALL fancy and sophisticated.Yes – The hat has sequins on it.
Yes – The nose blinks.

So, I've shown you mine, now you show me yours.  What do your decorations look like?

Yesterday's Blog Post / Insane In the Brain!

So, stepping out of the holidays for a little bit of real life blogging.

Yesterday, was the 3rd (but not final, I have at least one more days worth of stuff) post of the twisted Christmas presents.  Being that I am a lazy cuss, and have learned that it is better not to reinvent the wheel, I thought I would use part 2 as a template to create part 3.  That way, I wouldn't have to fiddle-fart with the fonts and colors, and could concentrate of the writing.

As noted earlier [LINK] I use, and STRONGLY RECOMMEND, Windows Live Writer (WLW)for drafting my blogs.  It's desktop side editing, and is much better than writing it in Blogger.  Well, I wanted to use part #2 as a template for part #3.  Unfortunately, I wrote #2 on my netbook while traveling, not on my main computer.  No problem WLW lets you download a blog post from the web.  So I did that, changed the title, created the post, and then put it up yesterday morning.  I didn't set a date / time like normal, because it was after my standard 6:00 am post time, so I wanted to post immediately.

Funny, when I post, it automatically takes me to my blog so I can see what it looks like.  But it wasn't there.

So I set the date time and did it again.  And there it was.  But how did it get 13 comments?  And it dawned on me…Oh holy CARP!  I just overwrote part 2 with part 3.  I thought this was a new post.  And I start to panic.  The computer thought it was an update to the original!  I can't find the original part 2 anywhere, so I toss a panicked disclaimer at the top of the post, and ran for the shower.  While speeding through the shower, it dawned on me: The original should still be on the netbook.

Barely dry, I boot it up while finishing dressing.  I made a backup of the correct post, (dealing with document check in / check out / overwrite issues is what I DO for a living, I've learned a trick or two about securing the good copy.) and uploaded that one back to the web.

Whew!  Recovered.

Now, it was simply a matter of grabbing the source content for part 3 and pasting it into a new blank shell, redoing the 3 pictures that were mangled, and uploading it.

Ah.  But look at the clock, I'm now late, it's freezing out, and I really don't want to be as late as walking to the train will make me.  I click on the CTA BUS TRACKER site to see when a bus is due at my stop.  2 MINUTES!  DOUBLE CARP!  I grab coat, gloves, wallet, BlackBerry, etc and dash out.  As I get to the street, I can see it is already at my stop.  But if I run, I can race it to the next stop and board there.

I did.  And I did.

Not sure which got my heart racing more.  The run, or the panic of screwing up my blog.

Tomorrow, I will be back into Christmas, showing off my balls.  After all it is TMI Thursday.  See you then

A Scope-Tech Christmas – Part 3

As I mentioned HERE and HERE, the flying monkeys of Scope-Tech have taken over Santa's workshop and are creating toys for the children this year.

Santa and I left them unsupervised for a bit longer than we should have.We were arguing aver what men REALLY want for Christmas.  Santa thought they want a 58" flat screen TV.

I thought they may want something else…

[PSA from Scope-Tech:  While I cannot put THAT under your tree, I can put it on your computer screen.  That is the lovely and talented Angela from Angela's Archives.  Listen to her singing voice, and you will know she was aptly named.  And I have a feeling great things are in store for this wonderful lady in the new year, so do yourself a favor, start following her now.]

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Old:  Lincoln Logs
New:  Lincoln Togs 
Comment:  With their black suit, stovepipe hat and beard, your kids can play Abe the Great Emancipator.  Or in his simple white shirt, wool pants and axe, they can play Rail Splittin' Abe.

Gaping head wound set sold separately.

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Old:  Lincoln Logs
New:  Lincolon Logs
Comment:  Like the original, but made out of freeze dried monkey poo.  Hey, the stuff is piling up here at the North Pole, and even with the ice cap melt, there's only so much monkey poo you can drop in the ocean.

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Old:  Lincoln Logs
New:  Lincoln Lego
Comment:  No, they aren't made out of wood like the original Lego, they are a whole line on Civil War action sets.  The mini-figs also come with detachable limbs so your children can simulate those wonderful battlefield amputations.

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Old:  Lincoln Logs
New:  Lickin' Logs
Comment:   DO NOT CONFUSE THESE WITH THE LINCOLON LOGS!  These little soft candy wonders are imbued with the essences of  chocolate.  They are TOTALLY different than Tootsie Rolls, regardless of what the law suit says.  Can your stack Tootsie Rolls into a log cabin shape and have a red licorice roof?  You can?  Buzz off, who asked you.

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Old:  Barrel of Monkeys
New:  Apparel of Monkeys 
Comment:  Your kids will go ape for these vest and pill box hat combos.

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Old:  Rubik's Cube 
New:  Cherubic Cube
Comment:   The evil, twisted cube is updated.  Instead of 6 colors, there are 6 pictures of fat little baby angels, and internal and unseen mechanisms provide subtle hints and guide you down the path to salvation solution.

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Old:  Mouse Trap
New:  Moose Trap 
Comment:  Just like the original, but much, much, much larger.

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Old:  Memory
New:  Mammary
Comment:   This update of the classic "match a pair" game is for the boys.  The deck of cards has 26 different matching pairs.  As men put their lifetimes of B( . )( . )B watching skills to the test, beware of the "Walleye" B( . ) (  .)B.  That joker is one tough titty to match.

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Now, I suppose after that last joke, you are expecting a picture of some Christmas tart like THIS.  We at Scope-Tech prefer to take the high road.  Or at least a somewhat higher road.  Our Canadian Spokesmodel / Songstress, Angela (hear her perform "If" (she plays piano, too) ) returns to remind you:

1 – Be good to each other this holiday season.  That's the true sprit of Christmas. 2 – Go to her BLOG or she'll put you on the "Naughty List".

Getting Carded – 2009

I'm virtually finished with my Christmas cards this year.  As I mentioned last year, I'm a Christmas card sending fool.  So far this year, I am at 91 cards with only 1 address left to find.  I just need to get a some more stamps and getting a few sent off to Canada, and then I'm mostly done.  I did try to cut a few people off my list this year, but they were in the first 5 people to send me cards this year.

I still had some cards left over from last year.  And the year before that.  I used parts of 10 different boxes of cards this year, and that doesn't count the individual one-off's.

Besides the ones that I sent out last year, this year's collection was:

My caption: "I hope Santa doesn't leave you STUCK out in the cold this Christmas."

This card is a bit of a riff on a similar one that I used last year [LINK] but with a sock monkey.  And glitter.  And as we all know, everything is better with sock monkeys and glitter.

My caption: "On December 26th, Santa hit the beach.  HARD!"

My caption: "Even Santa is "going green" this Christmas."

And this year, I even did a Christmas letter.  Sort of.  I created a little one-off blog (I'm a bloggers, people, that's what I do!) under the ID I use for my family blog (don't cross the streams!), and then made a bunch of little slips of paper in Excel with the URL for people to follow to the site.

Save some paper.  Save the earth.

Oh, and Analytics will tell me who read it.  Like I said, I'm a blogger, it's what I do.

Lights, Camera, Action! More Christmas Lights

I…

Ummmm…

Yeah, I saw that in real life.

Ding! Fried Are Done!

I love Christmas music.  On of my favorite all time songs is "Carol of the Bells".  (Growing up, I knew a gal name "Carol" who had a nice set of "bells", too.)

Here's George Winston's take on that classic:

Have you ever heard anything so lovely?  Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

And if you ever want to hear it the same again, do NOT launch the video below.  Yes, it's politically incorrect, and you will go to hell for laughing, but if this is your first time watching it, you will laugh.

Ding!  Fries are dooooooooone!

[Editor's Note: Yeah I posted about the same post last year, bite me.  Next year it will be "tradition."]

Lights, Camera, Action! Christmas Lights

So, as a quick follow-up on my last post, here are some additional Christmas light.  I got two of these in emails, one that I've seen myself (but in the spirit of full disclosure, a friend took the pictures because I wasn't there at night), and finally, my sad light display.

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Email text - “Good news is that I truly outdid myself this year with my Christmas decorations.  The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days.  I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.  Great stories.  But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).  By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that.  My yard couldn’t take it either.  I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.”

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This is from another email.  I have always wanted to do something like this.  With yellow motion lights, and Santa writing his name in the snow.

Because I'm sick like that.

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This one is actually in suburban Chicago.  Oh, I know there are bigger, tackier displays out there, but I love the penguin choir up on the roof.  And you think the neighbor who has their place up for sale REALLY appreciates the heck out of it.

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This is my sad little lights.  But don't worry, my little chick-a-dee, my tree and fireplace are a lot more well done.

And you'll see those later.

Lights! Camera! Action!

After the Thanksgiving, Cora & I went to the Bellevue Botanical Garden's: Garden d'Lights with her father and stepmother.  It was beautiful.  There were about 500,000 mini-LED lights over all.

What did it look like?

The graves in the vineyard were glowed…

[Edited: The graves GRAPES in the vineyard were glowed GLOWING… Thanks Cora! Man I really need to proofread sometimes!]

The butterfly flitted over the flowers… 

The Princess was radiant…

The Frog shimmered on the lily pad…
 

The Princess must have kissed the frog by the poinsettia tree!
  And this dude was just chillin'.

Here's a little video that I shot of a fountain of light:

And face it, once you saw the title, you had "Groove Is In The Heart" in your head.

The New Venue Review – Coming Right At You

While out on my visit to Seattle, one errand (or series of errands, depending upon your POV) was looking at venues for out wedding / reception.

Our first stop was the the Sheraton in Bellview. The room was nice and full.  Full of Christmas trees.  It also had a bit of that "Adolph & Eva Getting Married In A Underground Bunker" thing.  And walking back to the car, I commented to Cora that there was no real nice outdoor space for pictures.  I don't think I want out wedding picture taken in a parking lot.

We then went to the Hilton Gardens.  It was a bit shabby and had a sad little courtyard.  :-(  Yeah, I know it was November, and I should try to use my imagination.  I did.  But I still couldn't.  Neither could Cora.

The third spot we hit was a golf course / country club.  WOW!  This is more like it!  Beautiful location.  A wall of windows looking out over the golf course, and a little lake and a fountain right there for pictures.  And they were on the ball.  Without an appointment, the events coordinator was with us in less than 5 minutes and had the booklet ready.

Unlike the hotels.  One of which said, "I think we did a ceremony / reception last year…"

We got excited and Cora thought of another golf course in the area.  This one was very close to her childhood home.  Like about a mile.  We went there and looked it over.  It kicked the heck out of the hotels, but was still in second place.

Until we got their price.

ZOINKS!  It was within the budget!  And the food wasn't that over priced.  And the booze?  Well, it was a bit high, but what do you expect?Before we got the pricing, we had another appointment at the Salish Lodge @ Snoqualmie Falls.

The falls and the rooms were all gorgeous.  The ceremony room/s where small and the reception would have felt real disjointed.  Oh, and the price would have started @ $6,000 – PRE-FOOD. So, we enjoyed the sights and the falls, but knew we would only be back as tourists, and not as a wedding couple.

Cora still has some work to do with the events coordinator at the second golf course, but it looks like we have a place!

This Won't Be Me… Promise

It appears that some people don't know when and when not to update their Facebook page or when to Tweet.  Here's some help.

Don't Facebook from a funeral.  Unless it is yours and there's been a BIG misunderstanding.

Don't Tweet from inside your car as your supermodel wife smashes the window with a golf club.  Call your agent, not your "driving range caddy."

Don't update your Facebook status about your engagement before you've told your closest living relatives.

Don't Facebook and Tweet just before the minister is about to pronounce you husband and wife like THIS ASSHAT DID!  Not really funny, and you deserve the cake that is about to get smooshed into your pie hole for that move.

People, there are times when it's okay to live in the real world, not the cyber one.  Don't make me use the BAN HAMMER in the real world.

[Editor's note:  I have a lot more of Seattle to tell, but I was up until 1:00 am working on an issue, so I didn't get it posted.  I will, just hang in there.  Like I was saying, something about "liv[ing] in the real world".]

My Seattle Thanksgiving (and some TMI, too)

I spent the holiday weekend out visiting my fabulous fiancée, Cora, and her family in Seattle.  She wrote about it HERE (yeah, I'm a few days behind), so I'm just going to spotlight a few points from turkey day for you.

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After breakfast, Cora and I made my mom's pumpkin bars.  The recipe below omits the cream cheese frosting.  There was a recipe for it on the back, but seriously, but the canned stuff.  Follow the link above for a look.

Only there was a slight miscalculation.  We used a standard 9X13 instead of a 10X14 as called for.  Therefore, they were a little thicker, and while we gave them the full 25 minutes, and the cake taster came out clean, the center was not fully cooked.

But they tasted great anyway.

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As we were dropping her daughter Gwen off at Gwen's dad's house, I decided to stay in the car.  It's a holiday, and he doesn't need me all up in his crib.  Well, after Cora was out of the car, and around at the trunk, Gwen reached up from behind me, and gave me a hug.

Awwwwww.

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At Cora's sister's house, we ate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.  I got to flirt with my future niece:

And watch a Rocket (aka "Rocky") tried using a Jedi mind trick on Cora's mom to get her to drop a morsel toward the floor.  I do not say, "to the floor" because that bit of ort would have a literal snowball's chance in hell of hitting the ground.

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Cora and I got home from her sister's house at about 7:00.  By 7:30, we were sound asleep.  We woke up around 10:00, and realized that the "short nap" had taken us to bed time, so we just got dressed for bed, and crashed.

We're old.

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WARNING:  TMI CONTENT TO FOLLOW

With that done, she trotted off to the bathroom to shower and get ready.  About 30 seconds after the shower starts, I get a warning shot from my bowels.  Normally, I get a nice, "Hey, you will want to be in the bathroom in 10 minutes, or you will need to burn those pants" kind of warning.  Not this time.  The game clock was under 2:00 and ticket fast and I had no time outs.  I sped downstairs to her mother's section of the house they share, and barely made it before I blew.  Horrendous acid burn.  Thank GOD her mom had already left for her sister's house.

Finishing up, I went upstairs, and heard the distinct sound of the hairdryer running.  With Cora's tresses, that's not a trivial task.  Before I could even get to my suitcase to start laying out my clothes for the day, the second wave hit.  Lordy, I'm surprised I didn't leave a trail as I sprint/walked with cheeks clenched tight down stairs again.

Figured I was doomed for the rest of the day, but Cora must not have used enough poison in the scrambled eggs she made for breakfast, because I recovered.

A Very Scope-Tech Christmas

Editor's Note:  I know that you really want to know about my trip to Seattle over Thanksgiving, and you're getting flying monkeys.  Nothing's wrong, I was just off the grid for so long that getting caught up on blog means I'm giving you a cheap, easy post that I wrote on the plane, and will get to downloading and organizing the pics from this weekend for later in the week.

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As I mentioned earlier, the flying monkeys of Scope-Tech have taken over Santa's workshop and are creating toys for the children this year.  Santa and I left them unsupervised for a bit longer than we should have.

It isn't called "monkeying around" for nothing:

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Old:  Mr. Potato Head
New:  Mr. Pot Head
Comment:  With only a few modifications, and the return of his pipe, this potato comes mashed on herb, and servers as you child's first water pipe.

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Old:  Hungry, Hungry Hippos
New:  Hungry, Hungry Hippies
Comment:  Maybe they got a Mr. Pot Head for Christmas, but it's your job to keep these dirty hippies in Doritos and Ding Dongs while they try to eat you out of house and home.

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Old:  Strawberry Shortcake and her friend Blueberry Muffin
New:  Strawberry Buttcrack and her friend Blueberry Muffin Top
Comment:  Teach your daughters about the perils of wearing the low rider, hip hugger style pants, with these Rubenesque lasses who lay it all out for all to see.

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Old:  Rainbow Bright
New:  Rainbow Blight
Comment:   There's not a pot of gold at the end of this Rainbow.  Following in the footsteps of American Girl's homeless doll, "Gwen" we introduce America's first crack whore doll.  Rubber gloves are included.  (She's not called "blight" for nothin')

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Old:  Big Wheel
New:  Big Wheel of Cheese 
Comment:   Or "le Grand Fromage" for the French children.

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Old:  Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
New:  Barack 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
Comment:   The red side and the blue side battle it out in in the political pugilism ring.