Happy New Year

Take twelve fine, full-grown months; see that these are thoroughly free from old memories of bitterness, rancor and hate, cleanse them completely from every clinging spite; pick off all specks of pettiness and littleness; in short, see that these months are freed from all the past—have them fresh and clean as when they first came from the great storehouse of Time. Cut these months into thirty or thirty-one equal parts. Do not attempt to make up the whole batch at one time (so many persons spoil the entire lot this way) but prepare one day at a time.

Into each day put equal parts of faith, patience, courage, work (some people omit this ingredient and so spoil the flavor of the rest), hope, fidelity, liberality, kindness, rest (leaving this out is like leaving the oil out of the salad dressing— don’t do it), prayer, meditation, and one well-selected resolution. Put in about one teaspoonful of good spirits, a dash of fun, a pinch of folly, a sprinkling of play, and a heaping cupful of good humor.

Anonymous

in the end, only kindness matters
Jewel

I hope 2007 will be healthy and peace-filled for all of us. Everyone stay safe over the holiday weekend.

Rest in Peace

Former President Ford dies at 93

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

With all the trips to the hospital he's had in just the past year, it's not very surprising he's passed away.

Full Coverage: Gerald Ford, 1913 - 2006

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum

It is Friday

and I have no pictures for you.

The Donald and Rosie both need a new hobby. Even the Aussies are talking about this stupid feud they've got going.

Oh, and Rosie? He's been married three times.

"You know, it really doesn't matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass." Donald Trump. Always a class act.

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Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

I'm outta here until after the first of the year, I think. I might pop in between now and then. So have yourselves a Merry little Christmas and a Happy and safe New Year.

Monday Fun and Games

You are 90% knowledgeable regarding Christmas culture.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU DID IT! YOU PASSED! Now you're ready to go on to gotoquiz.com/how_christmas_are_you Have a blessed Christmas!

THE CHRISTMAS QUIZ
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Chapman Lake, actually.

You are 83% Scranton!

Pretty Good! You probaby live somewhere in NEPA, maybe Wilkes-Barre or the Poconos. Or maybe you are from New Jersey and and graduated from "Da U." You know enough to get around and have some fun, but there's still lots to learn about Scranton.

how Scranton are you?
Quizzes for MySpace

My Mother grew up in Scranton.

Fun quiz - dang, looks like nothing has changed since I was a teenager.

War of the Worlds

There's no revolution in Belgium. Really.

What moron thought this would be a good idea?

Even the Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister from neighboring Luxembourg, was angry and let it be know at the opening of the European Union summit. "This is not the kind of issue you play around with," he said.

The RTBF's phony newscast reported that the "Flemish parliament has unilaterally declared the independence of Flanders" and that King Albert and Queen Paola had left on the first air force plane available.

I can't even begin to guess, off the top of my head, how many Heads of State have actually had to flee for their lives because of a coup just in the last 100 years. Constantine of Greece, Michael of Romania... this shit isn't funny nor is it a way to spark a debate. It's a good thing for the morons at RTBF that His Majesty can't have people flogged for this. Hell, I'd feel this way if NBC pulled this stunt saying Bush was leaving the Office and the White House on Marine One. If it isn't true, don't put it on the news!

The RTBF's phony newscast reported that the "Flemish parliament has unilaterally declared the independence of Flanders" and that King Albert and Queen Paola had left on the first air force plane available.

The broadcast showed jubilant demonstrators waving the yellow-and-black flag with the Flemish Lion outside the legislature. A small crowd of monarchists rallied outside the royal palace waving the Belgian flag.

Reporting that the royal family fled did not go down well at the palace, which said in a statement the hoax was in "bad taste."

This isn't bad taste, it's sheer stupidity.

About the only people who enjoyed the program were the separatist far-right Flemish Interest party. It wants to get rid of the king and thought it could see a flash of its future in an independent Flanders.

"I want to congratulate the RTBF for this daring show," said Flemish Interest leader Filip Dewinter.

Moron.

So This is Christmas

Senator Tim Johnson Is in Critical Condition

A Republican appointee would create a 50-50 tie, and allow the GOP to retain Senate control.

This is what the media is talking about. I'm thinking about his family. Dad's not much past that age and after two ocular strokes this year, well... let's just say I feel worse for that family than I do for the US.

~ ~ ~

Judge Upholds Detainee Rights Terror Law

"This is the first time in the history of this country that a court has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no law applies," said Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has handled many detainee cases.

Bush got what he wanted for Christmas.

~ ~ ~

Sudan dismisses Darfur 'threats'

However, the BBC's correspondent says that, while Mr Natsios said the talks had been productive, there is still no sign that Sudan's government will agree to a UN force.

There is a growing sense of frustration and urgency in Washington over the situation in Darfur, he says.

I'm not quite clear on what a No-Fly Zone or naval blockade would do to ease the horrendous situation in Darfur. George Clooney is in Eqypt appealing for help after trying to talk the Chinese into backing the UN plan to send in more troops - which Sudan would consider a threat to it's sovereignty and therefore is unwilling to accept. I wish him and everyone else trying to end this disaster well and hope they succeed soon. You can read more about Sudan, Darfur and the nightmare there on the BBC site: Sudan: A Nation Divided.

AmeriCares
Disasters Emergency Committee
Heifer International
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Oxfam

It's a dark and dreary Wednesday

Hat Tip to Lynn Hayes for point out Michael Lutin's article in Vanity Fair entitled Special Alert: Horoscope U.S.A. I've enjoyed Michael's writing for years and this article is an excellent example of his style and depth of knowledge.

~ ~ ~

Interesting article on Truthdig entitled Was Nixon Worse?, which gives a rough overview of the two Presidents.

This comparison of war casualties in Vietnam and Iraq has one flaw: The war in Iraq is not over. Bush says he has no intention of ending it promptly. He wants U.S. forces to remain until “the terrorists” are “defeated.”

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The Nightmare Scenario will not leave you with that warm holiday feeling.

Moscow views the new U.S. drive for military superiority and nuclear war-fighting capability in the context of a geopolitical full-court press against Russia, aimed at reducing her influence in the post-Soviet space and attaining maximum control of hydrocarbon resources in the area. Recent U.S. interest in possible deployment of ballistic missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic is seen by Moscow as proof that NATO’s eastward expansion is motivated, among other things, by the American determination to undercut the Russian strategic deterrent. The Bush Doctrine of “democracy promotion” by means of fostering regime change in countries considered adversarial has exacerbated the sense of heightened insecurity in the Kremlin: The Putin regime considers itself one of the targets of this policy.

By the way, did you see Israel actually admitted it has nuclear weapons? And, hmm... seems the Saudi Ambassador has left DC. Georgie's got more problems than you can shake a stick at.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, really, it's not.

Yeah, it really is!

I swear I'm bi-polar.

I love the season, the lights, the decorations, the baking, the music - I loathe the shopping, gift receiving, make-nice-to-relatives-I-don't-like parts.

I'm half Scrooge, half Martha Stewart this time of year. Thank the beybey Jebus for rum punch and the internet for shopping ~ or am I'm supposed to thank Al Gore for the internet? Well, thanks to whomever came up with online shopping. You deserve a Nobel for that. If I have to step foot into a store between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day people will die. Slowly, painful, damning commercialism, Santa Claus and me to Hell in the process.

Not that I would care. Hell, I'd probably love every minute of it.

My sister has organized a cookie baking soirée for Saturday night. My contribution to this cookie extravaganza will be my peanut butter cookies and cherry and white chocolate chip cookies (see below). How all six of us, the draftee's, are going to do this in a two oven kitchen is beyond me - we're usually more spread out. As long as there is rum punch and my Kitchen Aide I really won't care too much.

The Italian tradition of baking a gadzillion cookies each December, just to give them away in anticipation of receiving the exact same cookies from someone else, was new to me in the early 90's after Dad had remarried. Bizarre, even. I love to cook so I was willing to join in even though this whole process didn't make a lot of sense to me. If you are going to get the same type of cookies back, why not just keep the one's you've baked? That is not the point, however.

The difference between the Anglo-Irish families and Italian families is a lot like the differences between cats and dogs. Cats are aloof, cold, independent creatures. Dogs are affectionate, familial, pack creatures. The Italian stepfamily, also known as La Familia, is an extremely large pack of friendly dogs. Being one of the Cat People I found this pack of dogs to be very strange in the beginning. But there are cats who actually like dogs, who will elect to spend some of their time in the pack, though usually only on the fringes, with the most cat-like dogs available. That's me. La Familia, being of the accepting dog nature, let me do this. I weave my way in and out of Familia gatherings, sticking to the fringes, only to disappear from time to time. There's only so much affection and attention a cat can take, afterall.

So this Saturday night will be one of the nights I choose to participate. Cookie baking with my sister, Mom, one sister-in-law (who is Irish and was just as floored by this family as I was) and three of my nieces. The numbers are dwindling each year. In the past there were several kitchens around Fairfield county baking like crazy and the people in them telephoning each other with comments and questions on recipes. I think the phone rang more often than the timers went off. It also used to take all night but now it's just around six hours. In between mixing ingredients and getting trays in and out of the ovens we decorate the house to the sounds of Christmas music. Dad, being a Cat Person as well as a Scrooge, hides on the porch watching CNN and reading and hollering every hour or so "aren't you done yet?"

"We'll be done when we're done, you grumpy old man", I'll bark at him.

Mom will enquire if he's tired, if we're too loud, if he needs anything and generally just fuss about him like he's Santa Claus or the beybey Jebus. She'll tell us to quiet down, hurry up, then ask Dad, again, if he's okay, does he need anything... not that he answered her the first time. She'll make him some tea and bring him some cookies and he'll complain about how long this stupid process is taking and I'll tell him to shut his gob and eat his damn cookies.

And Dad will smile and eat his damn cookies and complain to no one in particular what bratty kid he's got. Mom will respond, "Well, your Mother always said she's just like you."

La famiglia è il mondo intero.

Cherry and white chocolate chip cookies:

For this recipe you will need a very sturdy hand mixer or a Kitchen Aide.

The ingredients are:

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups of flour, well sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 package of white chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of dried cherries
1 cup of cashews, coarsely chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line up your baking trays and line them with Silpats if you have them.

In a large bowl, place the butter, both sugars, eggs and vanilla. Cream the ingredients together using either a hand mixer or a Kitchen-Aide at a medium speed for several minutes. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda and mix them together well. Slowly add the add flour mixture to butter mixture until both are well combined. Next, stir in white chocolate chips, the dried cherries and the cashews. Spoon a tablespoon of cookie dough into your hands and roll into a ball. You should get 16 small balls on each baking tray. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are a light, golden brown. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack quickly. This recipe should make about 4 dozen cookies.

Favorite Things

School shuns tech, teaches fountain pen.

How cool is that?

Okay... I have several fountain pens so of course I think it's cool. They sit upright in a old Waterford cream pitcher next to my computer at home.

"The pens improve the quality of work because they force the children to take care, and better work improves self-esteem," principal Bryan Lewis said. "Proper handwriting is as relevant today as it ever has been."

"I don't see fountain pens as old-fashioned or outmoded. Modern fountain pens are beautiful to use; it's not like in the old days of broken nibs and smudging," Lewis said. "We have a particular writing style and we have developed it very carefully and found a way that allows left- and right-handed people to write without smudging."

I'll preen a tad and admit I've always been complimented on my handwriting ~ it's even better when I use one of my fountain pens. I have one Montblanc (my parents picked it up for me in Europe a couple of years ago) and the rest are Waterman's. The pens I've bought for myself I have found at eBay.

Man I feel sorry for whomever has to clean up after me when I'm dead. I've got the oddest assortment of stuff in my life: fountain pens, mis-matched Waterford crystal, colored glass collection, gemstones, Christmas ornaments, Spode, Lladro, Wedgewood, Royal Doulton (no hand-painted periwinkles however), tons of needlepoint and cross stich, quilts, hand-made pillows, lace work, and several lambs worth of yarn... and this is after two tag sales and giving stuff to family!

Do you collect anything? Do you have too much stuff in your life?

~ ~ ~

Forgot to add that I won US$24 in poker on Saturday night.

Oh, and no one died from eating the cookies.

Peanut Butter Cookies

For YaYa poker night my sister has asked me to bring my infamous heart attack on a plate cookies. I'm cheating and uploading my recipe (and story) from another site I posted it to a while back.

This recipe originally came to me from my maternal grandmother. Back in the day, she mixed this by hand, with a wooden spoon, in the large yellow bowl I inherited from her. The first time I made the recipe by myself I marveled at upper arm strength of that little lady. I couldn't make the dough budge! I needed a electric handmixer, which burned out by the time I got the dough together. As a result, I didn't make these cookies very often. Having to buy a new handmixer everytime I made these cookies made them too expensive.

Three years ago my parents gave me a Kitchen-Aide standmixer for Christmas. I was floored! I couldn't believe they would get me such a cool, and expensive, gift. The first thing I made in that mixer were these cookies. My stepfamily had never had them because they were just too expensive to make. Everyone loved them and they've become a staple of our Christmas cookie baking tradition.

Ingredients:

2 cups shortening
2 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs, well beaten
1 jar of peanut butter, 18 ounces **
5 cups flour, well sifted
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

** Find the cheapest peanut butter you can. Generic works well. The brand name peanut butters on the market do not give you enough peanut butter flavor, in my opinion. Organic peanut butters work well, if you don't mind mixing the peanut butter together first. Don't skimp on the vanilla extract. If you can afford it, get the best extract you can find.

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Line up your baking sheets and, if you have Silpats, line your baking sheets with them. With the amount of fat and oil in this recipe, the cookies don't usually stick to the baking sheets, but using Silpat just makes clean up easier.

In a small bowl, crack your four eggs. Beat them well and then set them aside. In the largest bowl you have (five quarts is just big enough for this recipe) put in the shortening, sugar, peanut butter, extract and then add the eggs. Mix these ingredients together until creamy smooth. In a sifter, place the flour, baking soda and salt; slowly sift in the dry ingredients to the creamy mixture. Sift in about a cup at a time, mixing the dry into the creamy between cups. By the time you get the last cup of dry ingredients into the bowl, you will have either a sore arm or a burned out mixer.

I don't usually chill the dough before I begin baking. The choice is yours. I use a measured tablespoon to place the dough on the baking sheets. They are half round and I then use a fork to flatten them out, making the traditional cross-hatch pattern on the dough. I can get 16 cookies on a baking sheet this way. The entire recipe makes roughly 90 cookies. I say roughly because we eat the raw dough as we go, so I don't know, exactly, how many cookies this recipe is supposed to make. Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes and place on a rack to cool.

If you have a heart condition and eat these cookies, I will not be held responsible.

Art Appreciation Friday

For Art Appreciation Friday I thought I'd share some of my favorite works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.



St. Francis in Ecstasy




The Musicians




Bacchus




The Cardsharps

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Another YaYa Poker Night tomorrow. Looks like we're only going to have five people this time.

Back to the Moon

I'm not sure how I feel about the plan NASA has to take us back to the Moon by 2020. I'm on the fence because both arguments have merit. I want human beings to go back to exploring the universe in a more concentrated, intensive, way and I'm not sure having a Lunar base will aid the investigation of the cosmos. More than likely it will get bogged down in politics slowing the process of discovery.

Just an FYI: Space Shuttle Launch Visible Across Eastern US Thursday.

It's one of those days

Puking rain outside.

My computer is toast. Burned toast.

I'm working on a slower, inferior machine and I hate it. HATE IT!

All my bookmarks are gone and I'm trying to remember passwords and shit. Damn it, I'm 41 years old, I need technology to remember shit! It must work at all times or I am SCREWED!

sigh

Like I said, it's one of those days.

But I'm alive and well and sorta sane; I'm inside out of the rain; I can still feed my addictions to both coffee and the internet.

It ain't all bad.

I guess.