Boxing Day

The joy of Boxing Day. Or maybe the most important aspect of today -- you made it through Christmas! Ah yes all that family dysfunction with unfufilled expectations, decision making at it finest and communication at its minimum. All of this along with major assumptions by all the players. It all adds up to the typical family Christmas we all wander through year after year. But wait there is some light at the end of the tunnel...only 364 days until the next episode. And you do have those New Year's resolutions to add even more guilt.

Here's hoping that everyone who did make it can at least point to a few good memories from this holiday season. We seem to always come away with enough memories to make Christmas that special and unique time in our lives.

George A. MacDonald

MacDonald is a Scottish writer who inspired the likes of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and others. If there is one author that you should be acquainted with it is him. Gutenberg has a wonderful e-text collection.

His Diary of an Old Soul is a marvellous poem with an individual stanza for each day of the year. Here is the December 3rd entry.

This weariness of mine, may it not come
From something that doth need no setting right?
Shall fruit be blamed if it hang wearily
A day before it perfected drop plumb
To the sad earth from off its nursing tree?
Ripeness must always come with loss of might.
The weary evening fall before the resting night.

He speaks of thoughts we all have and paints them in a picture that expresses new meanings.

Sleeping in

Unbelievably I slept in until 10:30 am this morning. That never happens. Why? We went to see the recent Harry Potter movie last night but given the black theme of the movie I should have stayed awake all night. Maybe it was the Buffalo potato chips that induced the slumber.



Interesting site Rocketboom.

There is a Quicktime there interviewing people (in the Archives section) asking people about their preference between Internet Explorer and Firefox. And the winner is.....
There is a daily newscast which is new and fresh.



Started reading Moby Dick by Herman Mellville. The first page has this passage:

What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads;

The question is what does spiles mean? A Google search indicates that it is the metal spout used in collecting maple sugar for making maple syrup. But that doesn't seem to be the same thing that Melville is writing about. Interesting that Oxford doesn't publish a meaning that fits either. The wonder of our English language.

Moby Dick is an e-text that can be found at Project Gutenberg. By the way if you don't know about Project Gutenberg you should. There are a huge number of e-text books there. It has more writings of George A. MacDonald than any library I've encountered.

It's that time of year

Yes boys and girls, Mr. Red Suit will soon be at a mall nearest you. I think my dear mother hauled us out to this guy once. There is probably some goofy looking shot of my brother and I somewhere in her bin of pictures. The best part of these pictures is when mothers bring them to work to show to their co-workers and the "isn't he/she/it cute" comments. I wonder if people take their pets up to get photographed, or better yet take some beloved object up and get a picture of the old guy with it. Can you image the picture -"Yes Larry this is a picture of your Dad's favourite lunch box and Santa, it was like a child to him." Let's get a picture of Mr. Martin or Mr. Harper with Santa. Santa will be able to tell us if they have been good this year. What we really want to know is if they will be good next year.