December 31
[Taken 19 December 2004 | Trellis | Dayton, OH]
John and I went to the Dayton Art Institute this morning to check out the traveling Egyptian tomb art exhibit - "The Quest for Immortality". It was very neat. It is stuff like this that occasionally makes me wish that I had stuck with archaeology instead of veering off into IT.
As an interesting note, the audio tour portion of the exhibit was narrated by Jeremy Irons. I suppose that actors occasionally like to branch out and do other things for a change of pace... commercials, voice-overs, voices for animations, audio books, that sort of thing. But I would have thought that the audio portion of a traveling art exhibit would be a bit obscure for someone like Mr. Irons...
December 30
[Taken 19 December 2004 | Snow in the Cox Arboretum | Dayton, OH]
This is what the world outside my window should look like in late December. Instead it is about 50 degrees, grey, and rainy. I would expect weather like this around Thanksgiving, not just after Christmas. Of course, at Thanksgiving there was heavy snow, which is what one would expect around the Christmas holidays. Flip-flop. Huh. Must be global warming or something...
December 29
[Taken 27 December 2004 | Melting Ice | Dayton, OH]
I took these a couple of days ago when the ice covering one of the ponds at the arboretum was starting to melt and crack. Hopefully soon the weather will be back on track to what it is supposed to be this time of year...
Ever since I saw the movie Sahara, I have been re-reading a lot of Clive Cussler's books. (Well, re-reading all of the ones that I can find at the Centerville Library at least.) I first found and started to read them in, I think, 7th or 8th grade, or maybe early high school. They are basically spirited adventure stories, perhaps a bit geared toward the male gender, and can best be described as modern day Indiana Jones. There is always some sort of an evil plot to foil, and sometimes there are even Nazis to battle. For me, they are the literary equivalent of a bagel with cream cheese and lox - a yummy snack - rather then a steak washed down with a Merlot.
The books average 400-500 pages each. I can burn through one in about an afternoon.
John says that scares him a little.
I think that if reading were an Olympic sport, I would be a medalist.
December 28
[Taken 25 December 2004 | Christmas Morning | Dayton, OH]
Christmas at chez Lock and VanRoekel was good.
There was an embarrassing abundance of gifts under the tree that had arrived at our door (via UPS and USPS) over the previous week. We both got a lot of books, as well as a couple of CDs and DVDs. We immediately opened up the Wallace and Gromit DVD to watch during breakfast. John got me two new cameras - a holga and a lomo - and I can't wait for the rain to stop and the skies to clear so that I can take them out to play with.
I made a stuffed chicken for dinner.
John spent a lot of time playing with the RC airplane kit that I got him, and I spent much of the day reading some of my new books and re-watching A Christmas Story.
It was nice. Very quiet and relaxing. I missed seeing my family... but it was also very nice to just have a small, private, peaceful holiday.
-------------------------------
When I was little, like many kids, I had a huge problem with getting to sleep and staying asleep on the night before Christmas. I would usually nap for a few hours in my bed, and then – sometime between midnight and 3am – I would go downstairs, turn on the tree, curl up on the couch with a book and a blanket, and wait for everyone else to get up. One year my parents told me and my brothers that we could not under any circumstances get up and go downstairs before them on Christmas morning. I went downstairs in the middle of the night anyway to see what the big deal was… the big deal was a parakeet that was for one of my brothers that my parents didn't want to be disturbed. I spent a few minutes watching it sleep and then went back upstairs.
My brothers and I would always leave out cookies and milk for Santa. We would also go a step further and leave carrots and feed corn outside for the reindeer.
I know that I must have gotten a lot of toys on Christmas morning, I must have… but I can't really remember any of them. Which I guess means that a kid's devotion to a particular trendy toy is fleeting at best.
These are some of the things that I do remember getting when I was little...
A huge stuffed unicorn. It is still at my parents' house.
A paperback copy of The Hobbit. I think that I was about nine when I got it. I read and re-read that book until the cover came off and a chunk of pages in the middle of the book fell out. I love getting books as presents.
A reversible fleece blanket with a unicorn on it that my Aunt Gina gave me when I was nine or ten. I took that blanket to college with my, I took it to grad school with me, and 20 years after I originally got it, I am still using that blanket. It is on my couch, being used as a throw blanket, right now.
December 24
[Taken 20 December 2004 | My Christmas Tree | Dayton, OH]
Merry Christmas.
On most other years, I would be getting ready to spend Christmas Eve with my Mom's side of the family in Parma, OH. Dinner there is a fairly traditional Slovak meal. We start out with oplatke (all of the Slovak terms I am just going to try to spell out phonetically, and I will probably misspell every single one), which is a thin wafer (like the Communion host) and is eaten with honey. (My Mom sent me a packet of oplatke, so even though John and I aren’t going to have a Slovak meal, we can still start out with it.) First course, which I generally skip, is sadanka (sp?) soup, which is a sauerkraut and potato soup. The second course is whitefish. The third course is perogies and bubulka (sp?), a small honey and poppy-seed covered roll. I like the fish, and I love the perogies and bubulka. Dessert is holiday cookies. After dinner has been finished and cleared up, everyone hangs out in the kitchen and family room, sipping wine/coffee/tea/soda, munching cookies, and visiting. There is usually a white elephant gift exchange, and then a more normal gift exchange.
This year, when John gets home from work, we are going to have butternut squash soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. (With oplatke 'appetizers') We will have martinis and cut into the fruitcake I made last week for dessert. We will light a fire in the fireplace, watch A Christmas Story (my favorite Christmas movie ever), maybe we will watch The Thin Man (which also takes place at Christmas and thus qualifies as a Christmas movie...sort of), and we will play some backgammon and cribbage.
I think that it will be a good Christmas Eve. (Even though it is about 45 degrees outside, most of the snow has melted, and it is getting ready to rain... so much for the white Christmas...)
Merry Christmas. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Merry Christmas.
December 23
[Taken 20 December 2004 | Christmas Tree | Dayton, OH]
Dear Santa,
Please bring me a white Christmas. I know that there is some snow on the ground here already, but it is old, packed-down snow. I want thick, puffy, new snow. I want a blizzard like we had last year just before Christmas. I want a long, heavy snowfall like I remember from childhood in Cleveland. The current weather forcast says to expect rain on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Rain! How un-Christmassy is that? Is a little snow Christmas Eve and a white Christmas Day really too much to ask for?
Also, I have really had enough with this flu-cough-sinus-being-sick thing. It is just one thing after another and I am tired of it. If you could arrange for that to all go away, I would much appreciate it.
Thanks.
Maybe I ought to go start watching my favorite Christmas movie of all time to get myself in the holiday spirit a little bit more...
December 22
[Taken 20 December 2004 | Apples and Oranges: Still-Life On My Kitchen Counter | Dayton, OH]
I saw the peacock that lives wild in Sarah's neighborhood again this afternoon. It was picking its way gingerly across a snow covered lawn and looked like it was rather displeased with the situation.
While I was changing in the locker room of the YMCA after a workout, I overheard a conversation between two older ladies about holiday cooking disasters that had either happened to them, that had happened to people they knew, or that they had wittnessed. I think that the lady who told the story about the oven catching on fire while the holiday bird was roasting inside it 'won' the conversation.
I got a lot of stuff done today - errands and the like - but I don't really feel as though I accomplished anything. I believe that the dreaded pre-holiday ennui is setting in.
December 21
[Taken 20 December 2004 | Light Show | Dayton, OH]
One of my neighbors (a couple of streets over) is quite clever, has a good sense of humor, and very possibly way too much time on his/her hands. The cute little home-made Santa in the sling and his reindeer pal are animatronic... Every minute or so the reindeer leans over to hoist Santa (via the pulley and lit rope system) toward the roof of the house. This is one of the houses that John and I saw last night on our little tour of the neighborhood. A lot of the houses in our neighborhood are decorated for the season... most of them are very tastefully well done, a few are amazingly gaudy verging on tacky (I didn't know you could get hot-pink holiday lights, for example), and some are just stunning. A few houses were just so impressive that we had to stop the car to get out and take a closer look.
Our little string of lights around the porch looks downright wishy-washy next to them. But at least we made the effort. I like our little string of lights, and the decorated tree that can be seen through the front windows. Not spectacular, but we don't really need spectacular....
This afternoon John and I went to see King Kong. Very long, very well worth it. Very, very well done.
December 20
[Taken 19 December 2004 | Sunset and Snow | Dayton, OH]
It is clear and cold here... the sky is a brittle, pale blue and the snow is almost blinding. I like the way that the snow gets all crystalline and glittery when the temperature drops low enough, but right now I actually would rather is was a touch warmer and that it would snow a little bit more.
No fencing tonight, due to the oncoming holidays... so John and I went to the Washington Township rec center to check out their lighting display. We have driven past it a couple of times, and it looked pretty cool, so we decided that we ought to get a closer look. We got there, saw that they wanted to charge admission ($5 per adult), turned right around, and went for a drive through our neighborhood looking at all of the decorated houses (which was free) instead.
The Washington Township rec center lighting display looked cool... but it sure didn't look $5 cool.
Ho ho ho.
December 18
[Taken November 2004 | Holiday Banners in Chinatown | San Francisco, CA]
Total baking accomplished this weekend: a batch of pizzelles and two loaves of orange-cranberry nut bread. As soon as I get the cheesecloth and brandy, I can make the fruitcake.
December 15
[Taken 15 October 2005 | Red Maple Leaves in my Parents' Backyard | Cleveland, OH]
It was snowing again when I left for work... lovely heavy wet snow. The roads were seriously not that bad, but people were driving stupidly. I ended up getting stuck behind someone who was obviously deathly afraid of driving in the snow. They were doing maybe 3mph, 5mph tops, on a road that is supposed to be 45mph. Part of this road is a long hill up to a major intersection. The person I had the misfortune to get stuck behind was having trouble getting up the hill because they would not drive fast enough to build up the necessary momentum.
Oy vey.
(Still sick, by the way. You should hear my cough!)
December 14
[Taken 9 December 2005 | Bellydance Gothic | Centerville, OH]
I feel prepared for the incipient holiday season.
House decorated with lights? Check.
Tree (real)? Check.
Cards in the mail? Check.
Packages packed and ready to be posted? Check.
Cookie baking scheduled? (this weekend) Check.
Sick with the usual holiday season flu-like illness? Check!
I am feeling better now. The full body ache and the fever and chills and pulsing headache have gone away. The sore throat and cough, however, may be here to stay for a little while. (Seriously, I am hacking like 20 year smoker here. Riccola is my new best friend.) Still, better a sore throat from the flu then a sore throat because I had my tonsils out.
Oh, yeah... I feel compelled to comment on the following because I have been seeing it mentioned everywhere from the New York Times to the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
This quote is from the NYTimes.com
Since then, the perennial culture wars over the secularization of Christmas
have intensified, and this year the scuffles are especially lively. Conservative
Christian groups are boycotting stores that fail to mention "Christmas"
in their holiday greetings or advertising campaigns. Schools are being pressured
to refer to the December vacation as "Christmas break." Even the
White House came under attack this week for sending out cards with best wishes
for the "holiday season."
I would like to invite the aforementioned Conservative Christian Groups to take a few moments to meditate on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
Seriously, how crazy can they (and I know that not all Conservative Christians are crazy, but it is the loudmouthed, easily upset, crazy ones that tend to get all of the press) be?
Me? I will take whatever cheerful and seasonally appropriate greeting that people want to give me. I will be just as happy if you wish me a "Happy Hanukkah" as I will be if you wish me "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays". If people need to get red-faced screaming bent out of shape just because someone wished them "Happy Holidays" rather then magically diving their religious persuasion and wishing them the preferred "Merry Christmas", then I think that those people are in need of some combination of therapy, medication, and anger management classes.
Oh, and this is the best bit... while all of this caterwauling is going on, a number of Evangelical churches are planning on being closed on Christmas Day because (get this) they think that attendance might be too low to bother opening! How's that for the spirit of the season?
Do the aforementioned Conservative Christians even notice the irony here?
People are so silly.
December 11
[Taken 9 December 2005 | Bellydancers | Centerville, OH]
Still snowing, though the roads are clear and dry by now.
John and I continued our slide into the holiday festivities by getting a tree this morning. A real tree, mind you. A real tree that you have to remember to water and vacuum up after. I like real trees. My family always had real trees when I was growing up. I like the way that they make the whole house smell nice. Tree prices seem to have gone up a bit from the last time I went tree shopping, though...
All decorations on the tree are courtesy of Target and Meijer. You can really get some nice frosted glass globes at those places... which is basically what we have. Frosted (and some clear) glass globes of various colors and several strings of multicolored lights. And a silver filligree star as a topper. Perhaps not terribly unique, but stil very pretty. We put it in the library where you can see it out the front window.
John and I plan on slowly getting "nice" ornaments at the rate of about one or two a year.
This is the first Christmas tree that I have ever had on my own. I guess this is just a season of firsts, since this is also the first year that I am not going to Cleveland to spend the holidays with my folks.
December 8
[Taken 26 November 2005 | Chess Pieces at the Cleveland Public Library | Cleveland, OH]
There was a winter weather advisory out for Dayton all day today... a "Winter Storm Warning". My response to all of the breathless speculation of how we were supposed to get 4-6 inches and how bad it was all supposed to be? Yeah, right! I have heard it all before, and gotten all hopeful, and then been disappointed when nothing came of the dire predictions.
Confession time. I love snow. I love love love it. (Considering how I am pretty much perpetually cold during the winter, this is odd, but true.) I love watching snow storms (from inside, with a hot mug of cocoa, of course) and I love walking in snow and I love the way it makes everything look so clean and crisp and I love the stillness of the air after a heavy snowfall and I love taking out my camera and photographing it. I love the winter when there is a nice thick covering of pure white snow on the ground.
Well, I got my wish. For once, the weatherman was correct. It started snowing with a vengeance at about 4:30ish and is still going, though a bit lighter then it was coming down earlier.
I just finished shoveling the driveway. I have tossed many a shovelful of snow in my time, but this is the first time that I have shoveled the driveway of a house which I own. I am sure that the giddiness will wear off in a few days (or a few more shoveling sessions, whichever comes first) and I will start to regard it as the chore it is, but for now it is a novelty.
December 6
[Taken 11 November 2005 | Dancer | Dayton, OH]
This is what happens when my flash decides to either not go off, or not synch up properly with my camera... I am really not sure which it was. Or maybe the batteries in my flash were getting low. Who knows. It is a pretty neat looking picture, but certainly not what I was going for. Me thinks that I need to take some sort of remedial course in using the flash. Natural light... I love using natural light, I prefer using natural light over any other light source. Using a flash... I don't like that as much. Even when you look beyond the fact that I am just not that good with using a flash, I really don't like the way that a flash tends to flatten everything and wash out all of the colors.
But maybe that secondary problem is just another symptom of the initial problem of me not using the flash well. Maybe (probably, certainly) I need more practice. The fact that I approach the use of a flash already knowing that I don't particularily like working with a flash is possibly not helping.
------------------------------
It is snowing outside right now. Light flurries. I really hope that we get some sort of meaningful accumulation that sitcks around for a while this time. Everything looks so grey outside, I just feel like we could use a little snow to brighten things up. Plus, it is pretty cold out, and as long as it is going to be cold, I feel like it ought to be snowy as well, to make it a little bit more fun.
When I went to check the mail yesterday evening, I had trouble opening the mailbox because it was frozen shut. (Perhaps from the sleet storm over the weekend?) I had to chip off parts of the sheet of ice that was covering the mailbox before I could get at the mail. That wasn't something that I had thought of when I thought of being a homeowner. Shoveling snow off of the driveway... yes. Chipping ice off of the mailbox so that I could open it... no.
December 4
[Taken 19 November 2005 | Red Roadster | Dayton, OH]
The three inches of snow we were supposed to get yesterday evening and last night never materialized, but the several hours of sleet that we did get left everything with a nice, shiny, slick, and brittle covering. Very pretty.
Now that it is December, I feel less irritated by all of the over-the-top decorating everywhere and incessant playing of carols. Not that I have anything against holiday decorations and carols - but when the holiday decorating starts just after Halloween and the only carols ever played are the same tried-and-true (and tired) favorites... well, it does get a bit much. At least they (stores and radio stations and everyone else) could make a bit of an effort to vary the playlist a little bit. Thrown in some medieval songs (in the appropriate languages) and maybe some Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and some Handel's Messiah and I would be much happier.
For a while John and I said that we wouldn't put up any lights outside. Then we noticed that we are the only house on our street that didn't have any lights up. So... we caved. We are keeping up appearances, keeping up with the Joneses, whatever... but we now have a couple of strings of white icicle lights outlining our porch. Not as much as some of our neighbors, that's for sure, but a little something is better then nothing.
Because John was in Dayton for Thanksgiving and I was in Cleveland, we are doing a small, delayed Thanksgiving dinner tonight for just the two of us. The stuffed chicken (I used Grandma's stuffing recipe) and potatoes and parsnips are all in the over right now and smelling quite delightful. Mmm.