Merry Christmas

It certainly has been this year! Having to only work 2 half days this week and next week doesn't hurt either (Thanks IBM!).

Tuesday night we had the opportunity to see some old friends (they are not OLD, just no longer living here!) as we all got together at the Green Mill. It was wonderful to get together with everyone, talk, joke, and laugh.

Wednesday - VACATION! I took advantage of the down time to go to Caribou and spend a couple hours just reading. While the driving there wasn't really all that nice - everyone and their brother must have been out shopping - the quiet time at Caribou was great. I met friend Shelley for a leisurely lunch and then headed over to friend Bill's to hang out and watch a couple of movies. Wednesday evening was nice and low-key - bowl games, egg sandwiches, and kitties.

Thursday, for the first time in 12 years, I attended the Christmas morning worship service at my church. I'm not usually here on Christmas morning, and honestly I have always wanted to go because it's a smaller, quieter, more intimate service. This year was a great choice for my first one - good musical friends the Hammonds sang a beautiful trio (what singing talent in that family), and there was a string quartet doing much of the music - my church just has talented musicians coming out of the woodwork. A wonderful morning! And just enough time afterward to leisurely pack up and for Erin and I to hit the road. First to Roseville and my wonderful cousins, who filled us up with lunch, cookies, and the most decadant carmel dessert I've ever tasted (insulin shot included). After some fun time and conversation with them, another 45 minutes and we were at sister's house to meet up with the family. All sorts of present-opening with the kids, and fun for everyone. Displayed below are a couple of the fun gifts going on (yes that is a Chia Scooby Doo, yes they still make Chia Pets, and yes it hasn't changed in 20+ years).

Another nice relaxed day on Friday - brother-in-law made wonderful breakfast (and sister made coffee), and more playing with toys, watching new DVDs, playing euchre (cards), and pizza for a late afternoon lunch/snack. We finally decided it was time to leave before the weather got bad (it was raining but was still well above freezing at that point) and headed home, making a quick stop at IKEA to pick up a desk I had ordered earlier (it was not really that busy). Besides some very dense fog, we made it home without any slippery roads, and in plenty of time to play with the kitties - not having seen them for nearly 2 days we missed them!

Today is time to put together a desk (really not that hard). Blessings and safe travels to all this week and next!

By the power vested in Shelley and IBM...

Last night, after going to the Barnes & Noble downtown (I'm amazed I actually went to a retail store 3 days before Christmas, but the downtown store wasn't all that busy), Erin and I headed over to friends Shelley & Ryan's house to borrow Shelley's amazing powers of notarization. We decided a few weeks ago that it would be wise to get the necessary paperwork done with IBM for domestic partnership, so that, if necessary in the future, Erin could go on my health insurance. The main pre-requisite is to fill out a form provided by IBM Human Resources and have it notarized. We were honored to be stamped by Shelley :)

(I was going to title this based on the quote from the Brak Show "Thanks for nothing Don Tickles, Notary Public!" but I doubt most people would get it. Some say he grew a beard and still lives here...)

Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve

(yeah lame title I know, couldn't come up with anything better pre-coffee)

Last night (Sunday) was my church's (27th) annual Festival of Lessons & Carols at St. Mary's hospital chapel. Erin and friend Bill attended to watch. While it probably wasn't as packed as some years, it was still a pretty full house and the music was wonderful as usual. Everything went so smoothly that we were back at church unloading and done by about 9:10pm! That has to be a record...I really enjoy being a part of it all every year - this year I directed on 3 bell songs, played on 5, and tolled the bell at the beginning. In-between all that I just got to listen and enjoy the wonderful sounds of choirs, harps, brass, french horn choirs, and pianos. Bill, Erin, and I stopped in at the Honker afterwards and by the time I got home I was exhausted and fell right to sleep.

We've certainly been getting lots of "Minnesota" weather - two big snows the past 4 days, and sub-zero temps. This is more like what I expect here. I was dreading snowblowing Sunday morning but it actually went pretty well. The neighbor's snow blower was in the shop so he borrowed it to do his driveway, and later brought over homemade treats as a thank you. In addition to all the cookies we got at the cookie party we went to on Saturday, we are pretty well set.

Looking forward to a fun week of working half days, seeing friends and family and just enjoying winter in Minnesota.

I did learn a couple things yesterday with respect to Christmas cards.

1. OpenOffice is a fantastic program for free, but there are a few bells and whistles that it doesn't have that MS Word does.
2. No matter how much you want to save a little money and reduce plastic/paper usage, it is NOT worth it to try and run envelopes through your printer (instead of just buying a few sheets of labels and being done with it in 5 minutes). Do NOT attempt this at home.

I'll leave you with the Madame Sparkles happy food dance that she does whenever it's feeding time.

In Memory of Majel Barrett

Actress Majel Barrett passed away yesterday, at the age of 76.

http://www.roddenberry.com/FirstLadyofStarTrekMajelBarrettRoddenberryPassesAway.257.news

For those of you who are not Trek fans, Majel Barrett was married to the creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry. She was heavily integrated into many of the Star Trek series', including playing Nurse Chapel in the original series, recurring character Lwaxana Troi (Deanna Troi's mother) in the Next Generation and Deep Space 9, and of course was the beloved voice of the ship's computer in many of the shows. She had just finished her computer voice-over work for the next movie. She was a wonderful actress and will be missed.

Nirvana baby...17 years later

I don't know why I found this one so funny but it is

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598985/20081110/nirvana.jhtml

Flowcharts for Dummies

For those not in the Minnesota area, it has been VERY cold and snowy the past couple of days. So thankful the snow blower is working fairly well this year. And glad I didn't have to go anywhere last night :) Tonight I get to hang out with a fun 3-year-old while his parents are out.

Your fun geeky picture for the day (thanks to friend Ryan for this one):

Weekend and upcoming week

First, some shameless self-promotion (ok this really isn't "self" promotion). My church, Zumbro Lutheran, is doing it's 27th annual service of Lessons & Carols this Sunday evening, at St. Mary's Hospital chapel. If you've never been to St Mary's chapel, it's a beautiful place to sit and listen to an evening of wonderful Christmas music. It is free and open to the public. My church has done this for 27 years as a gift to the patients and staff of the hospital as well as the community. Some highlights this hear include a harp player, a liturgical dance group, a french horn choir, as well as the standard vocal and handbell choirs (I play in one and direct one).

http://www.zumbrolutheran.org/carolsposter.pdf

This was a good, albeit busy week. Monday we got whole bunches of snow, which was kind of fun (now that my snow blower works well). On Wednesday, I took the day off of work - Wednesday was designated "A Day Without Gays", where GLBT people were supposed to take off work as a symbolic protest to the passage of Proposition 8. I went with friends Bill, Jay and Eric to the Twin Cities. We hit IKEA first, as I had been wanting to get another desk chair, and price out an additional desk to match the one I had for Erin, and Bill also wanted to look at and possibly get some household items. We walked over to Mall of America afterwards and had lunch at Cafe California, and then headed to "Uptown" to the Landmark Uptown Theater (the oldest theater in Minneapolis, the only theater with balcony seating, and still technically the largest screen) to see the movie "Milk". We got there early and had coffee at a Dunn Brothers nearby - Uptown Minneapolis is a really neat area, lots of older buildings, very "city". The movie was fantastic - it talks about the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to a major office, all of the things gays had to go through in the 70s, and ultimately Harvey's murder.

By Friday I was so worn out that I fell asleep around 8:00pm. Saturday morning we had a make-up bell rehearsal because of the big Monday night snow, which took up most of the morning. Saturday evening friends Jay and Eric had a Christmas party at their house, which included a movie trivia game on the XBox 360. The more I see of the XBox the more I like - now you can stream NetFlix movies to it if you have a NetFlix subscription. Sunday morning was back to church to play for the service and then Peer Ministry afterwards. Sunday night we had a bunch of friends over for dinner and festivities, including playing with little LP, or rather watching him chase the cats around the house.

Mike Huckabee's interview on the Daily Show (~ 6 1/2 minutes long)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

In all fairness, I have to say that he at least attempts to explain his argument instead of just saying "It's wrong, that's it", or just not talk about it at all. I think Jon Stewart brings up some good points too. The part I don't like is that he brings up that a majority of voters voted in 30 states to uphold "traditional marriage" - which to me really means it's ok to discriminate as long as a majority of voters agree, which is obviously bad.

It's also been brought up many times that this is "re-defining" marriage - and while, strictly speaking it is, we've been re-defining marriage since the beginning of time, including defining it as both a legal and a religious institution.

Newsweek article on marriage

Big thanks for friend Shelley for posting this on her blog. This is one of the most comprehensive articles on marriage I've ever read.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653/page/1

Story time...

Thanks to friend Andy for originally posting this one:

Fire and Ice

"Oh the weather outside is frightful" is probably appropriate the past couple of days - really this is typical Minnesota, but usually January not December. We had two pretty good bunches of snow, combined with our first sub-zero night last night. Really though the weather has been pretty good - the ice/freezing rain they promised last night didn't happen, and besides being cold getting around is ok.

This has been an action-packed week. Friday night fortunately was some down time after a very busy week of work and activities. We stayed home and had Erin's wonderful chicken soup, hot tea, and played games and watched some shows we have fallen behind on (Ugly Betty is just so funny these days!)

Saturday was dedicated to the Blue Moon gig my band Fuego had going on that night. Around 2:00 Martial showed up and we started loading everything - an interesting process in 10-degree snowy windy weather but we got it all in and headed over to the Blue Moon. One of the Diego Sanchez dance lessons was going on as we were setting up, which was fun to watch - he's REALLY good, both as a dancer as an instructor. Finally by 6:00 we had everything set up and sound checked and were out of there.

The big moment finally arrived as we got back at 8:00 and after another Diego dance lesson group we kicked off the evening at 8:30. I know I'm biased, but we really sounded good - it's so much fun to play for a lively crowd with great musicians - the energy just keeps feeding back and forth and by the end of the first set we were rockin' (or "salsa-in'" to be more correct I guess). We rocked the house in the second set - we have one heavy jazz/blues song we have been throwing in adding our own flavor to it, and the crowd just ate it up. And after the second break, a song from the CD was playing and we just spontaneously started playing with it, and kept the groove going for another 4 minutes or so - everyone ate that one up too. We finished off with what I think is probably our best song now and it was just fun. Teardown, off to my house at 12:30am to unload, and by 1:00 I was too wired to go to bed :) Complete set of pictures below.

Blue Moon gig December 2008

I did manage to get a little sleep before waking up and meeting friend Bill for coffee and a much-needed big breakfast. I'm sure at some point here I'll crash and need a nap...for now I'm just enjoying the great feeling of yesterday and watching the snow slowly come down and the kitties chase each other around.

En Fuego

One last shameless self-promotion for my latin/salsa band "Fuego" which will be playing this Saturday:

Where: Blue Moon Ballroom
When: Saturday, December 6th, 8:30pm-11:30pm
What: "Let's Salsa", with guest Diego Sanchez, Champion Salsa Dancer, sponsored by the Rochester Salsa Community

Admission is $10 at the door, cash bar and refreshments also available. $15 if you come at 7:30pm for the dance lesson given by Diego. Besides this being a huge event for the Salsa Community, this is the best my band has sounded in a long time! We have a great show with a full slate of songs planned.

For all the cat lovers (and geeks)

TiVo Guilt

This article from friend Shelley's blog was so good I had to repost it:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/02/tivo.guilt/index.html

I SO have TiVo guilt, and an associated phenomenon, DVD backlog guilt. By the time you have whole seasons of things available (either on DVD or because you put off watching them on TiVo) it seems like a daunting task to start into them.

There is yet another spin-off phenomenon I've experienced because of the DVR technology era - TiVo Partner guilt. When I got my first TiVo, the "guilt" was just making sure I didn't delete anything that my old roomate hadn't already had the chance to see too (if it's something he wanted to watch) - yet not running out of space. We had ideas on how there should be ways for each person to mark that they've watched something - and then automatically delete it when everyone has watched it (I'm such a geek I know). NOW, it's a little more complicated - for shows that boyfriend and I watch together, it's the "I shouldn't watch this because I should wait until we watch it together" guilt - given how little our schedules actually line up to do this, I usually end up watching stuff anyway and then feel bad or watch it again because Erin hasn't watched it yet.

Hmmm, maybe we all obsess a little too much about TV....