White Christmas

Live from West Tacoma, it's snowing! And it's sticking! And it's beautiful!

Update: It's slowing now, but here's a nice pic from when it was really going...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!
I know the New York Times is a den of Godless socialists and all, but they know how to get into the Christmas Spirit.

Here's a short Christmas story by author Roddy Doyle (author of Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, for those who had Brit. Lit with me in high school) called The Box. It's a nice Christmas treat.

And here's the NYT editorial on Christmas Morning (hint: they like it.)

Christmas is imbued with a more everyday hope as well, a recognition that the transition from sleep to waking always carries with it the immeasurable gift of a new day. The very premise is hopeful.

No one expects to wake every day as joyfully as a child at Christmas, or to sleep as badly the night before. The gift of possibility is there every morning.

Merry Christmas. I hope you make it a nice one.

Quietish Week

Funny that the week before Christmas should suddenly get quiet for me. Last night, because of scheduling, the immediate Fam all gathered for dinner and a present exchange. There will still be a big family dinner at Christmas, but since we couldn't all be there, this was like Christmas coming a week early.

So now I look at my calendar and it's like ... umm, where's the holiday stress? It's going to be a pretty easy week. Mary and I will venture up to Seattle tomorrow night for a movie. And hopefully I'll hang out with some friends Thursday night. Friday night ... open. The weekend ... open. Christmas Eve ... open.

Crazy. Maybe I'll use some of this time to finish up the novel from last month (43,000 words and counting!)

Blowing Glass Is Fun

So someone else did all the hard work. I picked out my colors and described what I wanted the glass Christmas ornament to look like. And when it was getting close I got to do the actual blowing into the ornament to fill it up. It was a fun morning at the M Space Hot Shop. And very festive! I'm excited to see my ornament when it's done.

The four of us started out at PSP and saw everyone there. Truly. Roxanne Murphy, Daniel Blue, Paul Sparks, Jamie Chase, Alexa Folsom Hill ... Puget Sound Pizza was the place to have breakfast this morning.

The 2007 Christmas Tree

Since the Christmas of 2004, I've been creating theme Christmas trees at my condo. I was inspired by my parents (who were in turn inspired by the Festival of Trees) to do a theme tree.

Unlike the trees at the Festival of Trees, my trees have been rather cheaply produced, but that's part of the fun of it.

In 2004, I took film from the Grand, movie tickets, and boxed candy and created a film tree (that was really really awesome, if I do say so myself).

In 2005, I created an Olympics Tree, since I was going to the Olympics within a month. I created Olympic rings out of Styrofoam for the tree topper, and then created medals out of chocolate coins and red, white, and blue ribbon. The bulbs were gold, silver, and red (red was as close to bronze as I could get).

Last year, it was a poker tree. I bought a lot of decks of cards in a variety of sizes and hung them together in poker hands. Then we lodged chips throughout the branches.

This year, Mary had the good idea of an Office Supplies Tree. Since she's now working from home and I am working with Suite133, a cool office in downtown Tacoma, the office supplies tree was a good fit. Here's the tree:



Note the index cards, the post-its, the 3-ring binder rings, and you can even make out the paper clip chains that substitute for tinsel. We hung pens, and there's a few staplers and scissors in there too. We'll still keep adding to it, I think, as we think of more things to put on it.

We even flocked it (kinda) with hole punches, which you can see in this picture.



The Christmas season is here!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Here in downtown Tacoma we're getting a nice bit of flakes. Right when "Let It Snow" started on the stereo ... while decorating the Christmas tree.

If that's not a good December 1, I don't know what is.

I'm going glassblowing at M Space!

After reading on Exit133 about being able to blow your own Christmas ornament at M Space, I was initially wary. I mean, did I really need to spend $36 on an ornament? That's more than what I spent decorating my tree last year (I did a theme tree, which a lot of people make fun of, but it's surprisingly frugal).

But then I thought, how cool. I get to a) blow glass and b) go back to M Space. I hung out there during the Twisty Cup last year to make a podcast and it was a blast to film.

So a group of 4 of us are going to go blow our own ornaments on the 8th. I think it's going to be damn cool. And also crazy hot, considering it's a hot shop. But it will be a good Tacoma activity. And if it's really cool, maybe even a holiday tradition?

The Tree is up!

Down on Broadway this year's Chistmas tree is up. It's still got the fresh limbs below it that fell when it was put up. I have fond memories of the tree ever since the winter of 2002 when I could see it out my window when I lived at the Bostwick. It's one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season. Yeah for Christmas!!

Christmas Tree Note

Happy Monday, all. I tossed out my tree at the dump yesterday into the biggest pile of dead Christmas trees I'd ever seen. If the pile hadn't been so big I might have been able to capture the carnage with my cell phone cam.

So, if you want to see a lot of lumber, the dump is the place to visit.

Support the Economy: Buy Gift Cards

The fun Freakonomics boys, Levitt and Dubner, are on the case of gift cards in the NYT Magazine today. Here's a crazy crazy quote:

The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $80 billion spent on gift cards in 2006, roughly $8 billion will never be redeemed — “a bigger impact on consumers,” Tower notes, “than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud.”

To repeat: consumers lose more as a whole on unused gift cards then they do on debit and credit card fraud combined. That is crazy.

A festivus for the rest of us

That's awesome ... Tacoma's very own Festivus Pole down by the Christmas Tree and Menorah. See more at Exit133.

Come on by tomorrow!

The last show of "It's A Wonderful Life: A 1940's Radio Play" is tomorrow at 1:00 at the Blue Mouse! Tickets are on-line (follow the link on the right) until midnight tonight and then at the Blue Mouse tomorrow.

It really has been a lot of fun. If you don't know much about the play, here's a quote from the program:

It’s A Wonderful Life is a classic movie that many know by heart. Not generally known, however, is that in 1947—a year after the release of the film—Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed performed a version of the story for the Lux Radio Theater. The Lux Theater adapted many Hollywood films to fit their one-hour format during the 1940’s and assembled the original screen stars to reprise their roles.

The script was re-discovered in 1997 when it was performed by Bill Pullman, Penelope Ann Miller, Nathan Lane, Martin Landau, Sally Field, Casey Kasem, and many others in Pasadena. The production was recorded and aired by PBS with the title “Merry Christmas, George Bailey.”

Since then, other adaptations of the film have been staged but this script sticks to the 1947 adaptation … right down to the many plugs for Lux soap.

Tickets are just $12.00. Hope to see you there!

The Tree

Every Christmas I choose a theme for my Christmas tree. This is like a low-budget version of the Festival of Trees. I choose very cheap and easy to execute theme trees and make them look kinda cool.

In 2004 I chose a Film Tree, with film wrapped around as ribbon, goobers and milk duds and raisinets boxes, and popcorn garland (of course).

In 2005 I decorated an Olympics Tree, in preparation for my Olympics trip. I used chocolate coins and red, white, and blue ribbon to create gold, silver, and bronze medals and then created the Olympic rings for the top of the tree out of styrofoam.

This year, it's a Poker Tree. Not for any specific reason like the other two trees, although I could claim that it is an act of defiance against the City of Tacoma for banning mini-casinos in town. I had thought of trying to do a Horatio or Drama themed tree, but couldn't really figure how to make that work.

So Poker will have to do. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, actually. The picture below is a little blurry, but you get the general idea. Giant-sized cards are spread throughout the tree in descending order of poker hands, with a Royal Flush on top, all the way down to the Ace High at the bottom. And pairs of regular sized cards that form good Texas Hold'em hole cards make for ornaments. Some bulbs round it out and I may try to figure out how to add some poker chips to the tree.

Way too much fun.

My hungry car

It looks like the Elantra ate my tree. The holidays have started!