Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Jay: For the Record Again
The server, Degoya, that hosts neatlytangled.com, bizosphere.com, streamalum.com, geekpractitioners.com and welcometohelp.com is down again. Yay.
Jay: Pictures
Imagine, if you will, a post filled with pictures of the kids at Christmas and before, in this space, if only we didn’t have to go “do Christmas” today. That would have been a good thing to work in even if mainly relaxing and trying not to be sick.
Jay: What a Start
To the post-Christmas season. I was thinking “yay, Christmas is over” and imagining being out of the gate like a shot this morning, given the errands and juggling to be done, the everything associated with generating money to be done (though frankly I’m as happy to defer any revenue I can to next year at this point), and given that I could put in steady eight hour days of work, directly generating of money or not, [pause to answer the phone call from my mother, wanting us to drop everything and come there to “do Christmas” today because she forgot a whole bag of stuff Sunday, or wanting to come here, neither of which are appealing or particularly viable, pretty much leaving us irritated] for months before coming up for air. [Deb proposes going right now to get it over with, putting on whatever dirty clothes we must, which makes some sense.]
Insert some text about all I need to do here.
Insert some text about waking up after 10:00 and sick (which has been coming on for a few days) and miserable being a crappy way to start the Go Go GO post-Christmas season ramping up to getting fully engaged next week so we don’t go on a serious crash diet in a few weeks.
Insert some text resigning myself to today being a lost cause even before my mother interceded.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To photographer friend and former colleague Paul Ruggeri.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my old artist friend Jennie Drysdale.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Jay: Lifetimes Ago
At this time four years ago I was somewhere over the middle of the continent on my way to Fresno.
It’s been over an hour since I typed the above, as I went on a spree of going through archives, remarking at my better writing and things I’d forgotten from then, and then going back to my BlogSpot blog and making sure I had full access to it after learning that an anonymous BlogSpot blog we flirted with briefly was hijacked, for what it’s worth.
Where was I? Meeting Deb in person by flying to Fresno.
Tonight marks the start of what is more a series of anniversaries than merely one discrete anniversary in the form of January 2nd. It’s cool seeing all the comments from the readers we used to have. Not that we don’t love what readers currently exist, but it really has been a long slide down from the relative blog stardom of my first year. Speaking of anniversaries; we’re coming up on fifth blogiversary this winter.
But this was the ultimate day that kicked it off. Even if it was after midnight local when I arrived, we think of Christmas as the big day. What a crazy leap to make. It’s great it worked out so well, but wow.
Jay: Merry Christmas
This year’s card, scanned in, for those who didn’t receive one. We’ll probably be happy to add more of you to next year’s list, long as we have addresses to use. Click for bigger, on which the text is readable.
Jay: Merry Saturnalia
A Brief History of Christmas is a cool article. I knew the basics but not all the details before.
Via Rob Sama
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my cousin’s son, my first cousin once removed, Ruben, who is 16 today.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Dave Schuler.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my cousin, Larry Hennrich, who is 54 today. He has the distinctions of being the oldest of the first cousins in my generation on my mother’s side, of being in Germany, of having been long unknown to us, and of having never been met in person by all or most of us.
Jay: Ugh
I feel like I’ve been thoroughly beaten.
Jay: Sleep
It struck my like a brick wall about 2 minutes before Sadie came to join me on the floor of the office, crowding me out of my spot more assertively than usual.
Hours before that it was ready to strike, but we had to get the kids bathed and ready for bed and stuff, which turned into a more than three hour ordeal that was finalized only by Valerie earning a convincing spanking. The urge was held off artificially.
I went in Sadie’s bed, logically, and couldn’t fall asleep there. Too hot. Inexplicably uncomfortable. And apparently the warmth makes the smell of the air bed worse, or perhaps it was just an ongoing bout of the scratchy dry throat I’ve been having. I sure miss the newfangled Hall’s pectin fruit drops. We ran out while I wasn’t looking, and price-wise they are in the class of “buy these, or just keep sipping water and keep the kids in milk?”
I ended up at the computer. in that odd, almost sickly feeling state of not awake but can’t be asleep but will drop any second without it. I generated an entire list of relevant (mostly) birthdays for my father and stepmother, which was a fairly substantive project. It’s 2:55, which means unless she has a good night (counting good as sleeping through, ignoring being absolutely heinous about going to bed), Valerie should be screaming and wandering out of her room any time.
I’m still too hot. I’m sitting here sweating, because the temperature outside dared get into the forties.
I’ll maybe try fitting in beside Sadie. She may have moved enough to allow it.
Nights need to stop being so rough around here. The norm is for me to stop whatever I might be doing between 4:00 and 5:30 to start making supper. From that point on the day consists of making supper and any preliminary work to make that possible, fighting with the kids over staying out of the corner by the stove in my way and dangerous particularly, and the whole stretch of kitchen adjacent to the counter more generally, eating, bathing the kids, then engaging in the battle of drying and dressing and getting them into bed and asleep. By the time that’s over, I’m lucky to be awake enough to do anything mindless, and we end up sometimes with bounces as soon as an hour or two in.
In the morning I’ve gotten out of the habit of being up before them enough to start drinking coffee, catching up on stuff online (general surfing, but also industry news), and posting in what is often my most creatively fired time of day for it. They can be a bundle of needs first thing in the morning, but then they don’t stop all day either. It feels like we need a third adult, often as not, and that’s with both of us here and able to devote reasonable time and attention to the kids. It’s very hard to balance the need to be “at work” several hours a day against the impossibility of one person handling them without requiring help or going stir crazy. The effective working window during the day is remarkably short. That can’t be the default. If only because certain things can’t be done in short. If only because I could spend several hours a day for a surprisingly long time just countering entropy and unloosening ends, even where no new revenue was involved. I used to be able to do some of my best work late at night, but I’m always too exhausted now.
But I digress. It’s 3:26 AM as I write this sentence, and except for two or three drift off for a moment or two instances, including in this very chair when we got home from the family Christmas gathering, I haven’t been asleep yet. I’ll feel guilty if it’s after 9:00 when I wake up again, even though I didn’t make up yet for the two nights ago up for the day at 5:30 AM and awake for the next 20+ hours fun, and even though, well, 9:00 is less than six hours hence, and even though it’s the 24th.
Okay, let’s see about sleep now…
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my cousin Brad, who is 50 today.
Yep, so hectic today I didn’t have time to post this in the morning or, indeed, until now.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Jay: One Blue Christmas
|
You Should Have a Blue Christmas Tree |
 For you, the holidays represent a time of calm, understanding, and peace. You avoid family fights, and you don’t get too stressed out - even when things are crazy! You like to make Christmas about making everyone’s life a little bit better. You don’t get caught up in greed or commercialism. You’re too sincere for that. Your blue tree would look great with: Lots of silver tinsel You should spend Christmas Eve watching: It’s a Wonderful Life What you should bake for Santa: Chocolate chip cookies |
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