It totally wasn't my fault.

I'd have to check my browser history to see how I got there, but I came upon http://worldofweirdthings.com yesterday and couldn't stop reading. The first thing that caught my eye was about comments on blogs. Having a long history with allowing or not allowing comments here - well it struck me as brave. This guy, Greg Fish, writes things of a far more thought-provoking manner than I do, yet takes the noble stand to let people say what they wish.

Intrigued, I did something I also don't do anymore, and that is read comment threads. Finally, I found a website with comments that didn't devolve into disparaging remarks about spelling.

I read one whole thread that contained a highly amusing exchange between the author and a reader. And was moved to actually leave a comment.

Imagine that. Me. Leaving a comment on a blog.

Check it out. It really is a slice of brilliance on the interwebs.

As it so happens, pondring exists for just that purpose.

It seems like a billion years ago that I read the book mentioned up there in the header. No big surprise that lots of books grab me. That one did. And the quote that is up there immediately took up residence in my head.

I sent an email to Mr. Greeley, and asked him if I could use the quote on my website, and he said sure.

Pondring has gone through some iterations over the years, but if it has one guiding principle, that's it. (How many other quotes can you remember me putting in the header.)

The opinion I care most about is that of my kid. (Fortunately she is well aware of her mom's linguistic afflictions.)

Otherwise, not so much.

May seem harsh, but it comes from a place of peace. That was hard-won.

And infested with sentence fragments.

It was almost 50 CDs. No surprise I've been scarce.

My iTunes playlist is an embarrassment of Dave riches. I've got two lists. Dave, and everyone else.

Dave, Dave, Dave. It is so not at all a coincidence that my request for vacation from work happened right after your summer tour dates were announced.

The why of this all has been previously pondered.

Not to say it hasn't been pondered more since. Is to say that the stream of consciousness ramblings that have taken place (and been duly recorded in the also-previously mentioned Word document) will reveal little new.

I will admit to having pondered that in my heart of hearts I do not want to come face to face with him.

Of what then, will I dream.

In other news, I'm still baking bread, but not much else of the cooking thing stuck. Not a big surprise. The bread alone was worth the attempt, however. And no I didn't use the bread machine. It takes 14 minutes to make by hand.

Shea asked me why I knew it was exactly 14 minutes. I said because I looked at the clock when I put the yeast in the warm water, and again when I put the dough in the warm oven to rise.

I didn't really set out to time it, it just happened that way.

But now that I know it's 14 minutes, I know I can get it done while the long version of Rapper's Delight plays. Well, theoretically I could get it done in that time. I tend to sing that song with both hands.

Last night's musical treat came in the way of a King's Singers stream of a concert they were giving in Tennessee. Next week they will be here, and I'll be in the front row.

In a dress.

Uh huh. You read that right.

I simply need to go buy one.

And a day later drained them and put them in the pot.

Then even measured two quarts of water. Because that's what the recipe said. I put the water in the pot.

I boiled the water. Like the recipe said. Then turned it to simmer. Like the recipe said. Recipe further said to let it simmer for two or so hours.

I was fine up to that point, and for the next 20 minutes.

See, I had every intention of freezing some of the beans. And I didn't want the ones I was going to freeze to overcook. In fact I wanted them undercooked.

So 20 minutes of simmering later, I took a spoon and grabbed a bean out of the water and tried it. I expected it to be still quite hard.

Much to my surprise, it was almost fully cooked. So I dug around in the pot for the largest kind of bean. It too, was much closer to fully cooked than I expected after 20 minutes.

What the hell.

If I follow the stinking recipe and simmer another hour and a half, the beans will be mush.

It took longer than I should feel comfortable admitting for me to figure out where the disconnect was.

It was the meat.

Had I actually followed the recipe, I would have added meat to the soup. And of course it would have been the meat that needed all that time to cook.

The beans were done enough to freeze.

Twenty minutes later, the rest were soup. And were delicious.

I can stop myself during the day when I start to define elements and styles for things that don't really need them, like bath towels. Or wonder aloud if the soup I'm making should use embedded ingredients. Or when I think that drying clothes is a subclass of laundry which is a subclass of housework.

Nothing stops the night-time me though.

In my dreams last night, I created a not-to-code blog comment template.

The first one would yell "FIRST!!" and then say nothing else.
The second one would also yell first.
And in the third post say oops.
Then a few other people would comment on the actual post.
Then disagree.
And start calling each other names.

And who needs that.

The good thing is that if I wanted to do it, I now know how.

Dude says he's going around meeting the neighbors.

So I ask him where he lives.

"Florida."

He pulls out what I suppose is to pass for identification of his cause.

I say nothing.

Which turns out to be collecting points against some hundreds of other people.

I said nothing. He kept on. Asked me whether I was going to do "like my neighbors did" and ask him how he gets these points.

I say no.

He asks me whether I speak English.

I say yes.

He says, "Guess what else?"

I just looked at him.

"You're not going to guess?"

"No."

He flipped the card over and said, "If I win, I get to go to Europe."

(I'm sure the script called for customer to squeal in delight.)

I said nothing.

"You ever been there?" he asks me.

"Many times."

I think he didn't have many cards left to play, so he gets to the point that he's selling magazines.

I said no thanks, wished him well, and closed the door.

Maybe next time I'll go to the door with a German dictionary and hand it to folks and see if they will try to sell me something in another language.

Or maybe I just won't answer the door.

Peace and Season’s Greetings:

Considering the last holiday report I wrote was in 2006, it’s going to be tough to do a short version covering three years, but I’m going to try:

Family all doing pretty well. Moved back to SC from Milwaukee in April 2007. Got my old software training job back. Two new tattoos, one pet (Rosco – our Jack Russell) lost to a copperhead bite, tons of home improvements, no marriages, no divorces. Finally made it to Fenway, during the post season nonetheless. Men still perplex me.

It was a good year, all in all, although it ended with my Mom having to have surgery on her broken ankle. She whacked it against a big crock sitting in her kitchen. Rumor has it that she figured it was broken but didn’t want to disrupt Christmas, which was only a few days away.

She went to doctors she worked for all those years as a nurse, this time as a patient. The doctor saw her Monday and she had surgery Tuesday. (The doctors in that same practice have fixed now (over the years) her ankle, my broken knee, Robert’s knees, and Dad’s Achilles tendon.)

We are all very thankful that she’s home, healing well, and that us kids are close enough to look after her and Dad.

Robert, Suzie, and Wayne are all well. My niece is about to start college, and Shea just turned 14. Shea’s best friend just got her learner’s permit this past week. Wasn’t even my kid and I could feel the gray hair sprouting.

Shea didn’t take long to adjust to high school life. She is in the Naval ROTC program, and going great guns, so to speak. She gets good grades, and is really a great kid. And tall.

For the past few years, Shea, Bill, and I all took a summer vacation together. We went to Jamaica a couple of times, Disney World, and Bonaire last year when Shea got her SCUBA license.

This year, Shea and I took our own vacation, and I finally used the sky miles and hotel points I’ve collected over the years. I had lots of them. We went big. Flew to Rome, then to Berlin, then Madrid, then home. (Can’t say enough good things about Rome.) Shea does orienteering for ROTC (maps and stuff) so day one in Rome I gave her a map and told her what I wanted to see. Not a single missed step, and we walked for miles. For days. Same thing in Berlin, and in Madrid she had the metro map down in about two stops I think.

It was a great trip. Australia may be next on our list.

So then there’s me. I’ll start with the tattoos. For my 41st birthday (2008) I got a Dave Matthews Firedancer on my right forearm. (Unintentionally, it is now how the security folks at the airport know me.) I have grand visions that one day I will get to meet Dave and have him autograph it, but until then it’s just something nice for me to see every day, on the road or not.

It confuses many people, which was also an unintended consequence. Of course to me she makes perfect sense, and it’s obvious to me what, precisely, “it” is. It’s funny to hear people guess, though.

In January of this year, I was in Guam for a work project, so while I was there I had Shea’s nickname put on my left ankle. (This time the ambiguity was intentional.) With three I am the highly-tattooed geek in the family. And that’s alright by me.

I highly disliked my job in Milwaukee, so in February 2007 I resigned. I got my old job back, put my house on the market, it sold in two weeks, I bought a house from my dad and moved back home. As fast as I moved up there, I was back and settled in here.

So work-wise I’m back to teaching software. We are doing more and more classes online which means that I am often able to work from home with my Tasmanian Devil slippers on. This year I took exactly half the flights I took last year.

Which is a great thing. I’ve had far more time with my family. And time to get projects finished. (I had my housewarming party only 2 ½ years after I moved in.) Now I can just sit and be. There’s not a huge list of things to be done. Feels pretty good, I must say.

I did manage to have a boyfriend for a few months this year too. Nice guy. A cop from northern Virginia, and a fellow Dave fan. It was fun. But just wasn’t in the cards.

Speaking of cards and Dave, for Christmas this year I took myself to Las Vegas to see Dave and Tim Reynolds at Planet Hollywood. It was fabulous. (I also got to see the King’s Singers in November. A banner year, musically.)

I am thankful for the very many blessings in my life.

And to say I got my Christmas letter done this year, I better go for now.

Love,

Angie

She has been amusing me for 14 years.

Until the moment she was born, we thought she was a boy, and had named her William Montgomery, after Bill's grandfather. We were going to call her Will.

Instead she came out a girl, which meant that I got to name her.

Her first name is the name of the ranch that my Dad was born on. It's also a palindrome, and that pretty much cinched that deal.

Shea, because Mommy is a baseball fan.

Sorry, kiddo. But at least I didn't name you Progressive.

Or Land Shark.

(Wrigley was considered.)

I love you, pumpkin. Banillion times infinity cubed.

On the phone before she left her house she asked me, "You have an oven, right?"

"Yep," I said.

"Does it work?" she asked.

"Hang on..." I said.

I have messed up gravy, Jello, and rice krispy treats. I bring ice and/or beer to family functions.

Just is.

Christmas Eve is always at my Mom's house. Mom does the cooking.

Well, two days ago Mom called me. She hurt her ankle and wasn't mobile and needed some help. No problem. I went and got her and we did the grocery shopping. She claimed she could hobble through the store on her crutches, but I made her ride an electric cart. It was that, or I was going to put her in one of the race car shopping carts and push her around. Her choice.

So grocery shopping done, and when we got back to her house, I put everything away, and did a few of the chores on her list.

I went back yesterday and did food preparation.

That would be where this becomes a scary Christmas story.

No, not really. It was great being able to help my Mom out for a change. And funny. Laugh out loud funny.

You have to know when to stop the rip and eject the CD.

I put a different Christmas one in (because that's the stack I'm working on, you see). This one started copying right away.

Which was a good thing.

Then I noticed back to back two titles. (It's a mix of people singing a variety of songs. From Boyz II Men to Eartha Kitt.) Anyway, there of course is White Christmas (Bing Crosby naturally), and right after that Blue Christmas (Elvis naturally).

Naturally the post title wrote itself. Rest is just filler to go with it.

I tend to Christmas shop on Christmas Eve. Takes a lot of the pressure off.

As for me, not a single thing I really need. I pondered the fact that I might need a storage card for my MP3 player.

Until I decided to put my entire music collection into portable format. So I decided to wait and see how much storage I'm actually going to need.

And then let that inform whatever purchase I make.

So I'm in the process of ripping music.

Getting all kinds of distracted. I'm currently on CD one of Simon and Garfunkel's Old Friends. I'm listening to Baby Driver and it's hard not to be distracted. "My daddy was a prominent frogman; my momma's in the Naval reserve..."

And My Little Town. Plus there are two more CDs in this set And many waiting their turn after that.

Not too far down the stack is the Christmas music. Not that I needed a reason to build a fire, but that's likely going to be the kicker. With some more hot tea.

Goes down easy.

Like I told Mom this morning, at least I'm not in the ER.

As always, there is much to be thankful for.