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...and a new one just begun.
I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year! We started off by trying a new place to eat here in South Bend (Brothers Bar & Grill at Eddy Street Commons by Notre Dame...decent food, reasonable prices, and a fun sports bar atmosphere), where we watched Illinois win their bowl game. Then it was off to watch Notre Dame beat Boston University 5-2 in hockey. Yay! After that, we headed over to my sister’s house, where her and her husband were having a small family party. A few of them had already broken into the champagne, and it was kind of funny! There was some dancing going on in the kitchen, and some Rock Band going on in the basement.
At midnight, we all did the countdown, hugged and kissed and wished each other a wonderful 2012, then Diana (my sister) herded us all outside where she set off a firework that had the neighbors cheering. A couple of minutes of multiple starbursts that covered the sky over their back yard. I don’t know where she got it, and probably don’t want to know, but my pyromaniac sister really outdid herself with that one! Wow!
It was a low-key celebration, but lots of fun. Well, low-key other than the pyrotechnics going on in the back yard!
We didn’t need to go anywhere today, so we just slept late and were semi-lazy. We’ve got a winter storm on the way, so it’s good to know that we can just hunker down for a couple of days and not worry about going anywhere or getting anything.
A new year usually prompts people to think about resolutions, or what they’re planning for the year, or what they wish for themselves or for humanity. I don’t really do resolutions, at least not merely because it’s a new year. If I need to, I’ll do them throughout the year, and I’ve pretty much been doing that. We’re working on some plans for the coming year, and have a reasonable hope that they will work out. As for myself and my loved ones and my friends, I wish us all good health (Isn’t it odd how you start to think about that more and more as you get older, and start to understand the frailty of human life?) and happiness. For the world, I hope we can continue to work towards peace, safety, and health for all. I hope for an end to fear-mongering and hatred, no matter what it is based upon. (I reserve the right to despise someone for the hateful philosophies they espouse, or for the mean-spirited actions they exhibit. Condemnation is not the same as hatred.) I hope for a renewed purpose in our own country that is based upon building up the country and its citizens rather than destroying an opponent. I won’t ‘resolve’ these things, because most of it is beyond my control; I won’t pray for these things because it is within OUR control.
I raise my Mimosa to you all, and wish you peace and success in your endeavors in the coming year.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas!
We spent a very nice evening with my family on Christmas Eve, then opened our presents for each other Christmas morning, then spent that evening with Ken’s mom. It’s been festive, but kind of tiring, too! We’re still getting plenty of R&R, though, watching lots of football, “Dexter,” and getting some things done around the place.
I got lots of books, so that should keep me busy and out of trouble in 2012! Also some good movies to watch, and some super cute I Love Lucy car mats. One of my favorite things of all was from Ken, and is an original work of art by a guy named Chris Piascik. You send him a picture of your pet, and he does a drawing of him or her as a superhero! How cute is that? I can hardly wait to get a frame for SuperSheeba. If you’re interested, go to Pets Are Superheroes to find out more. It really is a cute gift for anyone who loves their pet as much as we love Sheeba!
I’ve been keeping busy with my reading. I finished Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All by Dr. Paul Offit. Another excellent book about the utter and complete folly of the anti-vaccine movement. I seriously want to punch Jenny McCarthy in the face. “My son is my science.” No. No, he is not. A PERSON is not science. Science is science. The gloves are off when it comes to these idiots. Just a word of warning.
Anyway, then I moved on to The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, and I’m about a quarter of the way through it. That will make book #55 for the year...I decided to go for the double nickel, good buddy. I’m familiar, of course, with the scifi movie from the ‘50s, but the book is a whole different ball of wax. It delves into the psychological impact of what is happening to Scott Carey, and it’s really quite sad. Fighting a black widow spider is one thing...trying to make love to your wife when you’re the size of a grade school boy is entirely another. It’s much more complex than I remember from the movie, and I’m liking it very much.
I’ve also been doing really well with my workouts, doing six days a week, for at least an hour, sometimes more. My endurance is already up and I’m feeling really good about what I’m doing. I hate that sluggish winter feeling, and this is helping to counteract it. I’ll take a little bit of soreness over sluggishness any day!
The Notre Dame-Florida State bowl game is tomorrow night, we’re planning on seeing “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” on Friday, we’ve got tickets for a Notre Dame hockey game coming up on Saturday, followed by a New Year’s celebration at my sister’s (so happy that our niece Jen is in town from San Diego!) and some further festivities the following weekend. A busy time, but lots of fun. Oh, and I’m still paying attention to politics and the upcoming Iowa caucuses, but I find that I don’t want to write about it a whole lot because it has just become laughable to me. These people are pandering to the religious right at the moment, and people like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin are hinting that they still might jump into the race. This liberal is having quite a laugh at the whole thing, but I will not take anything for granted. I’m looking forward to seeing who will be going up against the President when the Republicans finally finish sifting through this bizarre lineup of the certifiable and the ridiculous. Call me when you get it straightened out, okay?
In the meantime, I’ll keep on having happy holidays, and I hope you’ll do the same!
I wish I could write a very sweet entry about the holidays and about the goodness and kindness of humanity. But I’m very bothered by something right now, and if I don’t get it out, I’ll regret it. I’ll enjoy my time with family tomorrow and Sunday, but tonight, I’m feeling an anger that I need to write about. (I suspect that some of you will understand about writing as a form of therapy.) I promise not to get too angry in what I write here—I’m more disheartened and disgusted than angry, to tell the truth—but if you don’t want to be sullied by any negative emotions at this time of year, feel free to skip this entry. I would totally understand.
This goes back to my recent entry about ‘haters,’ specifically my mention of the death of Christopher Hitchens, and how there were quite a few people who claim to be Christians who seemed to find some sort of perverse joy in his death. Last night a name popped up on Facebook; it was a person who dated back to my early days of blogging. Although I had stopped reading their blog some time ago, and had hidden their Facebook posts (I can only handle so many kid pictures), I hadn’t defriended them, and I thought I’d click through to see what they were up to.
As I scrolled down, my decision to hide their posts was confirmed. Then I came across this status update: “Christopher Hitchens is dead. Enjoy the heat.”
I wrote in that previous entry that no matter what you think of Hitchens, he was also a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and a friend. To see this sort of post from someone who claims to be a devout Catholic made me beyond disgusted. It sort of made me hate people for a very brief and disturbing moment. Obviously, not all people and not all religious people are like that, so I refuse to fall prey to such generalization, and I will not judge an entire group of people based on the remark of one big creepy jerk.
But I’ll say this: I find it appalling that anyone could find such malicious glee in the death of another human being. The gloating attitude and smug assurance that Hitchens was burning in a hell that many of us feel is nothing more than a manipulative ploy on the part of religion to foster fear, dread, and guilt in humanity is quite unattractive, and it’s one of the main reasons that so many of us are leaving religion behind. Why would I want to be around someone—or a group of people—who find a sick vindication at the thought of someone suffering eternal torment, or who think it’s perfectly fine to judge others and condemn them to the Fiery Pits™? Although I don’t want to generalize, I’ve seen far too much of this to think it is an isolated incident or the irrational hatred of just one snarky person.
Instead of offering condolences to the man’s family and friends, they just had to post about Hitchens burning in hell. Why not just say nothing? It’s actually kind of laughable, because it only serves to solidify the feelings and opinions of myself and my friends who happen to think that Hitchens was onto something. If he were still lingering about and able to see this sort of thing, I’m sure he’d laugh and say, “Typical! I’m quite unsurprised.”
The person who wrote the remark? Defriended. I don’t feel one bit sad about it, either.
Now, on to Christmas! I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and happy this holiday season. No matter what you do or don’t believe, I hope that you enjoy yourself, and feel a love and compassion for others. That’s what I try to focus on. I wish you all happy holidays!
I did it!
I track my book-reading on Shelfari, and probably around this summer, I noticed that with the number of books I’d read, I was “ahead of my pace” for last year. I did a quick calculation, and wondered if I could not only double my reading output, but try for a book per week.
As I was working out today, I met my goal, and even started to go beyond it when I started one of Bill Maher’s books.
Were all of my books this year works of literary art? Not hardly. But the important thing to me is that I made the time to read actual books, not just online articles and content. Don’t misunderstand me...there is plenty of good content out there, but reading an actual book is different, and I made a conscious choice to focus a little more on my reading and cut down on my online time. That means that my ability to keep up with blogs suffered, but it was the right choice for me.
This past year, I read a wide variety of things, including political books, biographies, science books, and thrillers. For sheer pleasure, my favorite was probably Stephen King’s latest, 11/22/63. When it comes to science, my favorite was definitely The Panic Virus, about the anti-vaccine boondoggle. Then there was Keith Richards’ Life and Patti Smith’s Just Kids. I loved Matt Taibbi’s books, and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Some were memorable, and some I’d like to forget. But all in all, it was a very good year, and I don’t think it’s wrong to take a little pride in this particular accomplishment.
Of course, next year, I could very well get an admonition from Shelfari saying “You are behind your pace of last year.” Get off my back, Shelfari! Just back off, man! Although I would like to keep to the book-a-week goal, it might need some modification, because I want to get back into the Modern Library’s Top 100 list. Unfortunately, the next book in line is a James Joyce book, Finnegans Wake, and I’m kind of dreading the James Joyce stuff. So some of those on the list could take longer than a week to read. But our friend Kim in San Francisco has made a deal with me that we’ll both read Finnegans Wake this year. I appreciate the challenge and that will help me get it done.
Do I have other goals for the coming year? Definitely! But for the moment, I’m going to let myself be proud about accomplishing this one. It might not be the loftiest of goals, but it’s something that was important to me, and I feel very good about it. Onward and upward, and many more books to read!
Long may you rock.
You might think that this time of year, when people usually think about peace and family and Coke-drinking polar bears and all things squee and squishy, we’d get a little break from the hate. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
Oh, the majority are definitely not hatin’, but it seems like it’s the exceptions that always stand out. I really started noticing it the other day when one of our local TV stations posted the Obama family’s Christmas picture on their Facebook page. It’s really a nice picture, with everyone smiling and holding hands, and the girls look so sweet and they’re getting so big. However, knowing my community and having seen some of the comments that have been posted on the station’s page on other topics, I had a feeling that it was going to get nasty. I tried a preemptive strike with this comment: “It's a great picture of a lovely family. It would be nice if people could focus on that during this holiday season.” Of course, it did no good, with attitudes ranging from apathy to rage; a couple of people took the opportunity to disparage the President for his upcoming family vacation in Hawaii; one person called him ‘evil.’ There were a handful of comments similar to mine there, and I took some heart from that.
Then Christopher Hitchens died. The atheist community is in mourning; whether or not you liked the man, he had an incredible intellect, and his writings will be greatly missed. He was also a son, a brother, a husband, and a father, as well as a good friend to many. The response from some on the Christian right was not unexpected, but I was still taken aback by the sheer ferocity of the hatred. The horrid Bryan Fischer predictably said that Hitchens is in Hell, then went on to say that it was because “God loves him.” Whatever. Apparently irony is beyond the guy’s limited grasp. One of Hitchens’ books is titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, so some folks on Twitter started the hashtag GodIsNotGreat. That didn’t go over well with some, and whoever started the hashtag was told to commit suicide and threatened with death. That seems to be a bit of an overreaction to me, especially when you’re proclaiming God’s awesomeness while simultaneously writing that you’re going to beat the shit out of the person who dares to disagree, or shoot them in the face.
Today, I read an article on a Catholic website stating that the atheists who had the audacity to file a lawsuit over a government-declared Day of Prayer in Arizona were whining, pathetic cowards. It included this memorable quote from author Mary Kochan: “Yes, you are outsiders. Go start your own damn country. This one was started by Christians, you puerile dimwits.” Gosh, I’m just overwhelmed by the sheer outpouring of Christian love! The broader issue here, that of the constitutionality of any government promoting religion, is beside the point. I was rather stunned at the rage emanating from this woman because someone dared to challenge the easy assumption of the Arizona government that everyone embraces Christianity and is perfectly fine with the government promoting prayer. Her level of anger seems a little out of proportion for a matter of people simply exercising their right to challenge such a declaration. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t exactly make me think, “Wow, I’m going to get out of bed tomorrow morning and get to church bright and early, so I can meet people just like Mary Kochan!”
I’m pretty mellow this time of year. I can still get fired up about things, and often do. (Ol’ Mary might still get a comment from me on her article...I’ll be respectful, though. Kind of. In my own special way. Heh.) But I tend to let things slide a little more, I do my best to not take offense at statements that would normally start my chainsaw roaring, and I try to spread a little good cheer and good will. Sometimes it’s a matter of getting someone a gift that I think they’ll really like, and other times it’s as simple as smiling at someone who seems to be having a hard day. (At the grocery store the other day, I exchanged a smile and a few kind words with a woman whose little kid was screaming his fool head off. Wasn’t that better than making her feel bad by giving her a dirty look? I think so.) Tolerance is maybe one of the best gifts we can give, not just this time of year, but year round.
So I guess if you want to go after me for something I’ve written or done, now would be the time to do it. Just remember that I may be a little more mellow and tolerant at the moment...but in a couple of weeks, it will be a brand new year. And then all bets are off. [big grin]
Where the heck did the day go?
As I think back on it, I realize that I got quite a bit done. I got some final Christmas gifts, did the grocery shopping, did my workout like a good girl, got some dishes washed, did a load of laundry, and no, I didn’t sit on the couch and flip channels while drinking beer...but it seems like there’s still so much I need to do. I’m a little bit lost in Electronica, because I’m almost halfway through Book #51, and we also got ourselves some smartphones, so I’ve been messing around with that.
I think what is weighing on me is that now that we have the tree up (Yes, it’s artificial, yes, it’s a CHRISTmas tree but we don’t go to church...so sue me! Ha!) I know it’s time to start wrapping. I had intended to start that today, but despite the other things I got done, I procrastinated about that particular task. I’ve written before about how I don’t enjoy wrapping. I’ve tried fun Christmas music (I’m partial to the Rat Pack, and the Brian Setzer Orchestra), I’ve tried beer, but nothing makes it especially enjoyable for me. Part of it is because once I start, I don’t really want to stop until I’m done with it. So I spend an entire afternoon doing nothing but wrapping.
It’s enough to drive anyone stark raving mad.
So maybe I’ll change it up a little bit this year. I’ve got a couple of weeks before Christmas, so no one but me is dictating how much time per day I spend on it. Why not do a couple of hours, and then be done for the day? That will make my psyche AND my back happy. And maybe I’ll sip on Greyhounds as I wrap, so that I get some Vitamin C while I ease the pain. And instead of listening to Christmas music, maybe I’ll pop in a movie that I really enjoy or a guilty pleasure movie, like “Psycho” or “Road House.” (Although I just watched both of those recently, so I should find something else. “Footloose” is a definitely possibility.)
As far as I know, there isn’t some sort of Christmas Rule Book that dictates what constitutes a proper Christmas. My family hasn’t done the traditional little cottage Christmas in the little village for some time now; for several years, we did Christmas Bingo, where we all contributed fun little prizes and Mom and Dad contributed envelopes of money (anywhere from $1 to the rare $50 prize), but we all finally agreed that we just had too much “stuff” (miss you, George Carlin!) and stopped doing that. Last year, we all gave to the charities of our choice. Our family Christmas dinner is usually lasagna, but this year there is talk of a taco party. Ken and I have mimosas while opening presents. I think we’ll stick with that particular tradition, because it’s a delicious one.
I’m all for whatever works for you and your family. If you’re into the whole traditional Christmas thingy, knock yourself out. I think I’ll just make my own kinda music, sing my own special song, which might be something by the Stones rather than Bing Crosby...and I think that we’ll manage to have a good time no matter what. Life is funny—and fun!—that way.
...and a new one just begun. 
