Happy Holidays and one little Science Town joke

Happy Holidays!!!

I've gotten swept up in the preparations and haven't actually posted the posts I've written in my head. (But I've been thinking about you!)

I will leave you with this tidbit from a holiday party in Los Alamos, home of the Atomic Bomb and geniuses from around the world.

Conversation:

My wife told me she wanted to move to Santa Fe. And I said, why? And she said: the diversity.

(pauses)

Diversity! I said. This is Los Alamos. We ARE diverse! Sure, we have physicists. But we also have chemists and biologists and nuclear engineers!

(Smirks all around.)

What did she say?

Q.E.D., and she started packing. We've been there five years.


HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE AND SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!!

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Hollidailies messing with The Crib?

I think Hollidailies is bad for me.

I mean, I'm writing every day. But getting even LESS comments! And I love the comments! Maybe writing every day is - I don't know - a little TOO MUCH Krisco for the world. Could well be.

In the meantime, we are busy getting ready for the holidays. Luckily things are slow at work. Which is weird because I just got even better daycare arranged. Ha! So now I have twice the guilt! I'm not even busy at work but still my kids spend considerable time with someone else.

At our Thanksgiving holiday, every "young" mother - and by young I mean whose kids are not grown - was working. Save me as the only who ever didn't work for awhile. On the one hand they don't know what they're missing. On the other, I know what they're enjoying.

Still trying to strike the balance...

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The slow boat pulls in

Today I went to the post officed to pick up a package.

I was left, last week, with a card at my door. The other day I happened to be home when the post lady came, so I grabbed the card and ran out the door.

Here! I said. I signed it!
She looked at it, grimaced, took out a pen and made a mark and said, Oops, that should have been marked. You have to go in to pick this up and show ID. Registered Mail - it's this whole - big thing. You know.

What? Go in and show ID? My first thought was - and this must be my legal background - Oh my god, I'm being sued!

And then I thought of all the times I've pissed people off or seemed to just generally annoy people and I thought - Can they sue me for that?

Then I tried to calm myself down, wait through the weekend to see who I've wronged, and go in and get my package.

And wahlah! No lawsuit! Just the package I ordered off ebay a long ways back.

Note to the world-weary and wise: yes, bother to check where something is coming from on ebay. I ordered something I wanted RIGHT THEN, paid, and noticed - shipping FROM CHINA. Will take THREE TO FOUR MONTHS. Oh my gawd, I was so annoyed. I stopped checking where things were coming from on ebay long ago - Conneticut, Florida, what's the difference. CHINA? Big difference. Apparently it was the very slow boat. (Three to four months!) But it's arrived - some two and a half months later - so okay. I'm not annoyed anymore! And not being sued either. (crosses fingers)

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A very stuffed tummy and the existential question - when is a mountain really a hill?

Incredible food - incredibly tender beef tenderloin, almost raw, potatoes with truffles, haricort vert (so you know those green beans are good), not to mention the chocolate bread pudding OMG - and a fun group drinking way too much wine and other spirits.

It was a fun night out hosted by my broker as a Christmas party - "off the hill" of course - meaning in one of the nicer private club-type establishments near Santa Fe - and was just so very pleasant. Or maybe I should say raucaus. At any rate it was very fun.

(And I say it was ""off the hill" of course" because - sadly - there are few - possibly no - fine dining establishments in town. There's decent dining. There's even dining I like. But there's not a lot and none of it would be "fine" - or would offer, say, haricort vert (let alone the chocolate bread pudding, OMG) Also, if anyone has wandered by new today, we live in a town at the top of a mountain. So I don't know if it's the westerner's sense of understatement, or because the top of this mountain is a mesa, hence flat, and so we call it a hill, or if technically it doesn't count as high - although it's higher than Denver. Okay, face it, I have no idea why they refer to our locale here as "a hill" because I'm thinking it's more of an "ancient lava flow" or "very flat mountain top" but at any rate. I think I've digressed. We ate elsewhere. It was fun.)

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All Arial, all the time - that's the Santa letter

We went through all the catalogues tonight to look for things for our oldest girl. We wanted to shop for both, but justing starting with the one took us awhile. (There's no shopping here, so we have to do it all online or by catalogue.)

We have a good idea of what we want, and I say, Great! Let's look at her Dear Santa letter to make sure there's some overlap.

K: (reading)
Spousal: well?
K: No overlap.

Doh.

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He's come out of the smartaleck room, is what he has

In logging on tonight I saw an ad for Christmas presents, and the third suggested item was a diamond ring.

And I imagined someone thinking, Aha! That's what I'll get her!

And THAT thought reminded me of the time, at my own wedding, when I thought a friend of mine was walking around with an engagement ring in his pocket. I suppose because a lot seemed surreal that day, but when our mutual friend told me that D. had a ring for his girlfriend, I thought that meant he had it RIGHT THEN. IN HIS POCKET.

Only when I thought about it later did I realize, that was a dumb thought. He probably wasn't carrying it around with himself ALL THE TIME.

And THAT reminded me of another little story about those two young men at my wedding, R. and D. They had come together, because neither of their girlfriends were in town that weekend, and because they were my little pre-dating-Spousal posse, and because they were good friends.

What the one didn't know - D. - is that, as he wandered through the crowd introducing himself - because he's that way - because he's from Iowa - and folks are friendly there, he claimed - is that R. was following along behind him, introducing himself as D.'s partner.

I don't know why he did this. Because he's a smartaleck. Because he figured people wouldn't REALLY believe him, and if they did, he wouldn't care. But MOSTLY because it would irritate D. to no end - which it did - and so that made it... fun.

I saw them, briefly, at the wedding, as we crossed paths. D. wandering one way, nodding, saying hello; R. following behind, with his introduction: hi, I'm his partner, R.; D. turning around, his hands fluttering around in agitation - almost like a gay man stereotypically might - saying, Stop that! Stop that! Stop saying that!; R. smirking, Okay, okay. Both of them moving forward. R. continuing on.

Anyway, I didn't think much about it, until months later.

I saw a friend who'd been at the wedding and who had known R. since junior high. (We'll call him J.)

It was nice to see R. again, said J. I didn't know you were friends with him.
Yeah, I said. We got to be friends after law school and med school when we'd both moved back to Colorado again; he's a great guy.
I met his partner too, says J. He's a nice guy.

Yeah, he's a great guy. They were in residency together. But he's not really his partner.

(pause)

It's okay, K. He told me. I know.

And I kinda laughed. I'd forgotten about that moment I'd witnessed at my wedding. Oh yeah, I said. He was being a smartaleck. He's a huge smartaleck these days. But seriously. They're not gay.

And my friend had a scowl on his face. Like clearly I am not ENLIGHTENED enough. SERIOUSLY K, he says. HE TOLD ME. I KNOW.

Ummm, I said. Yeah. I know. But really. He has a girlfriend. The other guy might even be engaged by now. Seriously. Not gay.

And J. kind of stormed off, irritated I wouldn't acknowledge that he, too, was IN THE KNOW.

Later - a month or two - I saw R again.

Hey, R. I said.
Hey K.
You know, I said. J., from high school, really does think you're gay.
He DOES? asks R.
Yeah, he really does. I tried to tell him but he didn't believe me.

Ohhhhhhhhh, said R. (But I knew he didn't really care.)
He likes your partner though, I said. And we both kind of laughed.


Postscript: D. is married now and has two children. R. is married now and has three children. They live in totally different parts of the country. And they're not gay. Seriously.

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Some teacher, somewhere, would be really proud. Sort of.

Our friend F: Kiehl... we met in Kiehl. Hanover . .. I grew up in Hanover.

Me: Hanover home of the Hapsburg Empire.

Our friend T: Mm Hmm. (affirmative noise, German version)

Spousal: looks at me out of corner of his eye

Me: I have no idea where that came from.

It just came flying out of my mouth. Thank you high school history teacher. College professor? I have no idea and no adjoining information to go with such a random comment. You know, Like an idea what or even when that was. Just - that.

(This story would be much better if I could google it and give you proof. You know. Of Hanover, home of the Hapsburg Empire. Apparently it depends on the century of the Hapsburg Empire you are talking about. I told you; I had no additional data along with this... just some random thought that came flying out of my mouth, from years and years ago. I just hope I got that answer right on the test....)

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Why I really, really like development sometimes

So, in a quest to get my house more organized because - how can I say this - oh yes, it is driving me crazy - I made the two-hour schlep to Santa Fe (round trip, that is) to go to TARGET. That's right. To go to TARGET I have to carve out two hours of my day. And so does everyone else in this town. And we all do it! Of course.

I understand Target is considering coming here (oh please God YES) and I so hope they do. If you couldn't already tell by my sidenote.

Of course, this would be over the dead bodies of a contingency of certain people in this town. Who like it just the way it is, thankyouverymuch. They don't need Target (or organic fish or bulk diapers or bulk toilet paper for that matter and certainly not new children's clothes every three months) and so by gawd neither do you. Or, as best as I can tell, that is their argument.

(No, I don't get organic fish at the Santa Fe Target. That would be nirvana. No, I get that at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, the other places I would do a heck of a lot for to not have to drive two hours to see in person. And which, apparently, the opponents just don't see the need for.)

So that's how I spent my day. How about you?

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Please, please, come forward with us some twenty years . . .

"More Ovaltine Hot Please" - OMG, is there anything more annoying than that commercial? Because I'm pretty sure there isn't.

I consider myself an expert in commercials. Really, I do. I remember - clearly - watching a commercial that played before a movie when I was in, say, junior high - it was for the Camaro.

Now, maybe in other parts of the country - definitely in other parts of the country - the Camaro was actually considered a cool car. In my neck of the woods - hippie, trippie, mountain-climbing (though I didn't), hiking (did but didn't like it), backwoods-treking (thought about it) Boulder - a cool car was a Jeep. A decent car was your parent's Subaru (otherwise known as the Urabus (spell it backwards) by my high school crowd), in a pinch. But a Camaro? No.

So it's not like I was swayed by the commercial. But what I can tell you is - that commercial ushered in a new era in advertising. I don't know if you remember it - it had a girl in a bathing suit literally diving into the . . . back of the car. I don't know if you get the subliminal message there or not. But that's all that happened. (Or all that I remember). With this repetitive chanting going ("Camaro - Hot New Camaro. Camaro - Hot New Camaro.") this girl would dive and swoop and and dive and swoop - all very surreal - into the back of the Camaro.

At that time, I think the biggest commercial on TV was "You have ring around the collar!" - this oddly surreal in that it was so unreal and yet trying to be real thing - where people pretend to act, and say things actual human beings would never actually say in real life. It was the height of the Literal aka Our Audience Is Stupid commercial. What was cool about the Camaro commercial? Totally surreal. And you get the point. Hot new Camaro! Not in this town, but still.

Hello, Ovaltine makers? The mothers you are marketing to WERE RAISED AFTER THE CAMARO COMMERCIAL. We hate the Ring Around the Collar commercial of our youth - or rather, we scoff at it as the Can You Believe They Ever Spoke To Women That Way type kitsch.

And now with your More Ovaltine Hot commercial? Please, please. No child in the universe will ever say that; no mothers will ever have the conversations that ensue in those heinous thirty seconds. I'm just waiting for someone to pop out of the closet and complain about their collars. In a word - Update. Please.

(Although here you can actually get a coupon for it! I guess it's only fair since I rip on the commercial that I acknowledge the coupon. I was trying to find the commercial online. They are too smart not to let us link to it. Maybe they know it's heinous? I've since found out it's English. Maybe they think Americans are dumb?)

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If only they spread it out over every weekend . . .

There's a weird thing about small towns. Or about this small town at any rate. There's nothing to do, and nothing to do, and nothing to do (unless you count going to the local coffeeshop or bagel shop, which is what we do) on the weekends.

And then they have a weekend where they break everything out. Every single event you could have in a small town, they have. All in one weekend! So you can't possibly do them all!

It's called WinterFest and they pack . . .
everything into it. We went to the magic show, the kids-present-buying event (where they have personal shoppers at the local church, and select gifts for their family and friends - so cute), forwent the hay ride since we were having an arctic freeze, and participated in the Light Parade.

(Here's a tip - if you put a flashlight on the floor of a red plastic wagon, even if by accident, it will look like you lit it up that way on purpose! In the evening, the flashlight will glow through the red plastic sides, and light up the wagon. It looks pretty cool. Even if I did stumble into that one myself.)

It was actual small-town fun.

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Holidaisies, loses

So I signed up for this monthly Holidaisy thing. I envied the NoBloPoMo (or so) people, who posted every day in November - so I thought I'd get on board with this December thing...okay, okay, Holidailies!!!! I know . . .

So even though everywhere I turn there is something I need to do - now I have one more! Wheee! But maybe, just maybe, it will get me to write a little more. Even if I only say "we did blah" today. (Lucky you! : )

So for starters - I saw my good friend off today. They are moving away, far away, to England. She was here tonight so I don't feel like she's going yet. But by next week - next week - she'll be gone. And all I can say is, this is one more person who I really, really, really like - who you feel like you've been friends with forever and she knew you when - even though it's only been three years - and who you're supposed to be friends with forever - and I don't want her to just pass out of my life.

So - email T. It's one more thing to add to the list. At least this one I actually want to do.

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