Santa sleeps with his bum in the air

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Did you know that Santa likes to sleep with his bum in the air? It’s a little known fact.* All the better for the gas to escape…

*In fact, it’s not a fact at all. Nor is it known to be not a fact at all. Nobody cares how Santa sleeps. They just want him to bring their presents, and never ask how he copes with the sleep deprivation, cold air wafting through his trousers, and the pressure of the expectation of all the children in the world. It’s an even littler known fact that Santa spends 364 days in therapy because of our greedy expectations.

More grumpy and tree

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December 6, 2011 19:31

More grumpy and tree, originally uploaded by framboise.

Another day, another grumpy baby and grumpy tree. Plus, the messy fridge surface is really getting to me. Perhaps the baby will be less grumpy if the apartment is less messy. Something to aim for: a tidy home by WinterPaganFestival.

Grumpy and Tree

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Grumpy and Tree, originally uploaded by framboise.

This photo-a-day aim is proving difficult. I only get to see Mr Grumpy by the time I get home these days, and Mr Grumpy would much rather be held than pose the way he normally would in the mornings. Then again, morning experiments won’t last forever, and I will get to hang out with Mr Smiley again soon.

Fin’s First Fir

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It’s Fin’s first WinterPaganFestival, and to make up for not having an advent calendar for him this year (not that he would understand or appreciate it), we’ll have a virtual countdown to WinterPaganFestival that we can look back on in years to come and go: “Aww…”.

So, one day late, but better late than never, is Fin’s first encounter with a Christmas Fir tree*.

Fin's First "Fir"

*Strain erased from memory as soon as we walked out of the garden center.

Update: It’s an Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis), also known as a Jerusalem pine. And the adult form is nothing like our cute chibi tree, but sprawls out into a giant more suited for parks than home gardens. We thought it was the lesser of two spikey evils compared to the other available potted tree: the Italian Stone Pine (Pinus pinea).

Pot of tea

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The SNP victory in the Scottish elections can be taken in several ways:

  • A kick in the teeth for Scottish Labour (one long in coming, an election overdue);
  • A slap in the face for the Lib Dems (a protest to the shenanigans of the Lib Dems in Westminster);
  • A door slammed on the face of the Tories (not enough to boot them out in the last few elections, but now a fence is being erected to keep them at bay);
  • Resulting in the SNP being welcomed in for a seat by the fire with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (dare I say, an indication that conditions are becoming favorable for a true divorce from the Union).

With the Tories mucking up the whole country in their usual heavy-handed way, the Lib Dems lending a hand, and Labour mewing pitifully in the corner, the SNP have mopped up all the dissatisfied and disenfranchised votes.

Now, if only the SNP could do something about the new Home Office limits on the number of academic visas, I’d brew them a whole pot of tea.

The Currency of Aggravation

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While waiting for my crappy work PC to copy some Excel data onto a Google Doc spreadsheet (why does it take you so long, crappy PC?), I like to browse through the 1000s of unread blog posts on my RSS reader. And sometimes, I get to read more than the headlines before the crappy PC hangs. And today, I came across a line that just seemed so appropriate for Crappy Thursday Evening Traffic* on the westside in LA that I had to share it**.

“It’s a currency of aggravation that gathers value with incredible ease.”
–A Customer Service Assistant on the London Underground (via the Going Underground blog)

So true. So apropos.

*TM City of Los Angeles, home to many other crappy times of traffic, but especially on Thursday evenings.

**What do you do when you come across an interesting quote on the interwebs? Bookmark it? Stick it on del.icio.us? Blog it? If it’s on my RSS reader, I’ll star or tag it, but that doesn’t cover non-RSS feeds. I used del.icio.us for a while but gave up when it kept making me re-logon on my crappy work PC.

Who needs another reason to drink whisky?

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We interrupt this lack of bloggage to bring you this piece of breaking news:

Speyside distilleries will now be burning whisky waste, aka draff*, to fuel their operations.

While the case for biofules is still in debate, with naysayers warning of famine being a result of farmers switching over to more profitable biofuel crops, it’s still a step in the right direction, methinks. Without continued experiments and innovation, how are we supposed to find an alternative to our dwindling resource of fossil fuels? Sure, all the alternative energy methods at present have their flaws, some social, others economic, and some even environmental. But all these paltry attempts to use solar, wind, tidal and agricultural sources to power our thirst for energy-sucking devices will one day pay off. Hopefully before we run out of pressurised fossils.

*And before anyone jumps in with the point about the allegedly waste draff already being used to feed livestock, I acknowledge that some research is needed into how much draff is actually used as feed at the moment and whether the draff going to the power plant is truly surplus to requirements.