Friday Randomness, Now on Tuesday!

(photo found at SF Gate, here)

Does anyone else still get a newspaper delivered to your house, as opposed to looking for your news online?  We are suckers and pay quite a bit to support this dying industry.  Sometimes I wonder why, and other times, I’m glad.  Today I was glad, as I saw the picture above, which I might have missed if I had been looking online.  The story is that the San Francisco Ice Co. donated 10 tons of ice to the San Francisco Zoo, which the zoo had blown into snow for the Polar Bears, who look like they’re LOVING it, don’t they?  Doesn’t the bear in the picture look like s/he is trying to make a snow angel?  Here’s another pic of a couple of very happy bears.  What’s in the box, you may ask?  Fish and peanut butter.  Merry Christmas indeed.

I saw a disquieting study online this morning, claiming that dogs have a greater carbon footprint than SUVs.  Great.  Now I have to feel guilty for keeping Genevieve?  Or, more clearly, for feeding her.  It’s the energy and resources required to grow the  meat and grain that goes into their food that does the damage.  Sigh.  Don’t worry, I’m keeping my dog, and I’m going to continue feeding her her lamb and rice dog food.  Maybe I’ll walk to the store if I only need one or two things, or ride my bike, to balance it out.  Or maybe I’ll just say ‘to hell with it’, and enjoy our dog.  It is a little reminder that the choices we make in life, both wonderful and less nice, have an effect on the world in which we live.

Maya received a Chia Homer for Hanukkah.  Poor guy can’t even grow a full head of Chia hair.  Look at this male pattern baldness going on.  Straggly in the back, nothing on top.  It just isn’t fair. I wonder if Chia Obama would have had better luck?

My heart goes out to the family of Brittany Murphey, who died far too young this week.  And the speculation surrounding her death has me wondering…anorexia?  drugs?  both?  One thing I read was that she is diabetic…and that sometimes diabetics skip their insulin to control their weight.  Perhaps another factor.  Perhaps not.  She may have simply been more susceptible to cardiac arrest due to the combination of diabetes and her flu, which had her vomiting, which can throw off your electrolytes dangerously.

I’m ready and looking forward to Christmas.  Gifts purchased and mailed.  Leg of lamb ordered from the butcher.  Cookies baked.  Ted’s family has a tradition that we all enjoy.  We go out to his mom’s house, and everyone bakes a batch of whatever type cookies, and we share them.  We usually get hungry for something that’s not baked, so we venture out into the land of fried, and get KFC for dinner.  That’s the only time we eat KFC most years, actually.  This year we tried a combo of traditional and their new grilled chicken.  The verdict was that the grilled wasn’t bad, but the fried was better.  Duh.

It’s funny to me how differently people do their holiday shopping.  I like to have mine done well in advance.  My family lives in Oregon and Alaska, and my BFF is in Pennsylvania, so I have some mailing to do.  Plus, I just don’t enjoy the stress of waiting until the last minute.  Ted, my dad, and my friend Pat, all enjoy waiting until the last minute.  Something about enjoying the lights and the crowds, or perhaps just not wanting to think about it too soon, I’m not sure.  So last week, when I got my last package mailed off, Ted said, “I guess I had better start thinking about Christmas gifts, huh?”  I’ll admit, this attitude used to stress me out a bit.  Probably any OCD tendencies I have, or anal retentiveness or whatever.  But I have learned to let go and relax for two very good reasons.  1, it’s not me that has to go out at the last minute and find gifts, and 2, his gifts are always at least as good as, sometimes better than, the ones I buy people.  And since he doesn’t have to mail them, who cares if he bought them Christmas morning?  The only real downside is that there’s no contingency planning involved.  There was the year my dad was felled by a horrid stomach flu, which left my step-mom doing his shopping on Christmas Eve.  Since she’s more like me, wanting to have it done and feel free to relax and enjoy the anticipation of Christmas, I suspect she wasn’t thrilled at having to run out into the last minute crowds and find gifts.  But she performed admirably.

Maya has been taking ice skating lessons.  Our little city (big town?) has an outdoor skating rink, which in sunny, 50 degree afternoons California probably has a larger carbon footprint than my dog.  So she’s been taking lessons for a few weeks now, and I think she’s enjoying it.  Tomorrow if there’s not a lot of work to do, I think I’ll take a long lunch and take her skating so she can practice, and so I can see how much I suck at skating as well.  It’s been awhile.

After tomorrow, I’m taking the rest of the year off from work.  I’ll admit, one of my very favorite things about Christmas is how close it is to New Years, and how that just lends itself to taking time off.  And time AFTER Christmas is relaxing time.  Not hurry let’s go somewhere time, like in summer when you might want to go to the beach or something.  Not hurry let’s get things done like before Christmas.  Nope.  It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s quiet, and it’s time meant for relaxing, and visiting with family and friends.  I love that.

My current read is “The Road Home”, by Rose Tremain.  This is the last book for my book challenges this year.  I’m thrilled that I was able to get through them all, though I did switch some of them around a bit.  Which begs the question for next year…to challenge or not to challenge?  My first instinct is not.  I don’t really get any extra readers from doing the challenges.  I don’t tend to go and read the reviews of other challengers, so why would I expect them to come read mine?  So I think I’ll try reading more organically this year.  Read what I want, when I want to, and see if I miss the structure of having a list right there to go from.  I’ll still post reviews of the books I read, probably.  I do enjoy that.

To all of you out there in the snowy, snowy east…I feel for you.  I hope you’re enjoying the beauty of the snow, and not suffering too much from the pain in the ass of the snow.  We lived in Philly in ’96, when we got about 3 ft dumped on us.  Nice, because we didn’t have to go to work for three days.  Bad, because if we had known that was going to happen, we could have stayed in California for three more days, as it happened right after we returned from our winter vacation.  Bad also because the thought of three free days off from work made me want to go to the movies or other things like that, but the theaters were all snowed in too, just like everyone else.  There was a little Chinese take-out restaurant in our neighborhood that somehow opened.  I suspect they did a LOT of business those three days.  So while it was annoying to not be in California, and to not be able to be out at the movies or something, and I was very pregnant, so not up to much snow type activity, it was still pretty nice to look out my window and see all of that winter quiet surrounding us.  We lived on the 16th floor of an apartment building, so we could see snow for miles.  Lovely.

Chrissy mentioned Funeral Cakes in her blog post.  What’s a funeral cake?  I had to do a search, and here’s one of the pictures I found, which reminded me that I heard that divorce cakes, with the bride and groom fighting on top, are quite popular right now.  Hmmm.

(picture found here, where they also have some divorce cake photos)

Maybe I’ll post again this week.  Or maybe, as Maya said yesterday, I’ve abandoned my blog.  Not entirely, but you know…I suspect it has been neglected these last few months.  No matter.   If I don’t post again, Merry Christmas to all!  To my Jewish friends, I hope you had a wonderful Hanukkah.  To any pagans who might be reading, happy Winter Solstice.  Happy Eid.  Happy Kwanzaa.   Happy New Year.  Happy happy.