WPIX's Yule Log, which is 40 years old this year, is now downloadable as a podcast.

I'm amazing my mother this morning with my adroit use of The Google. Watch me bring up weather information! Use the Back button! Watch me click on a link to a NYTimes story about Jews celebrating Christmas! Boy, is the bar set low here....

All my presents are wrapped now and under the tree for tonight. Finally found luminaria candles: the last two boxes at Albertson's, which is just unheard of. What is wrong with people? Another bad sign: no whole cranberries to be found. The produce guy said people had been asking all week. It's Ocean Spray, people. This is kind of out of the way, but it isn't podunk! (Actually, I wonder if the storms might be responsible for this sad lack.)

My parents are out doing last-minute errands. I demurred, mainly because I did not care to deal with the likely grumbles when they encounter the rest of the hoards. Mom will handle it fine (she loves a bargain, and last minute often equals bargains) but dad ...well, we parked him at B&N yesterday and that was a very good call.

Theo, while my parents can google, I'm afraid they are mystified by this whole non-email internet communication/community thing. I've tried explaining that I get updates and convo from even some of my closest friends via message boards and bloggy things like lj, but I suspect it still falls into the realm of somewhat foreign to them. Ah well, they'll hopefully meet some more foreigners soon.

It's probably cooler here than back east, but I can go outside in a light sweater, jeans and flipflops and it is quite comfortable. Maybe even a little warm, if there is any activity (which reminds me, I might change before diggging up the backyard for the luminarias.) Bless solar radiation at 4000 ft and a southerly latitude!

Interesting story from Haaretz:

Antiochus' decrees - a figment of Hasmonean propaganda? Or maybe he was being manipulated by secular Jews ("Hellenizers).

[link]

I think I got spam that should have been sent to someone here: Subj: Justin Timberlake as King Arthur?

Ooookaaaaay...

hee hee hee

OMG, I forget how amazing Target is. I got that thing where people from the third world come to America and they see they must choose from 45 types of toilet paper and it's all so overwhelming and stressful they start crying in the aisles? Well, that was Arizona's biggest Target for me today. I spent WAY too much. And then there was In 'n Out for lunch. Now I have a big pile of presents next to a big pile of wrapping paper on the living room floor and I'm hoping that by sitting here and catching up on b.org they'll spontaneously mix together. I've read up on quantum physics, it can happen.

Hah! I remember that feeling when I got back from europe and was faced with a regular old US grocery store. The bread aisle overwhelmed me with all the choices, none of which I wanted.

I found my dad's Space Child's Mother Goose (by Winsor and Perry, 1958)

For philosophers:

Russell and Whitehead and Hegel and Kant!
Maybe I shall and maybe I shan't.
Maybe I shan't and maybe I shall.
Kant Russell Whitehead, Hegel et al.

And : Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

Off to try one last place for cranberries, which may very well be like the black hen's eggs.

Good things about today:

The DH is making a brined, butterflied turkey on the grill for dinner
Trader Joe's was remarkably uncrowded and I got dark chocolate covered raisins to snack on at our movie day tomorrow

Bad things about today:

A Christmas Carol is not on televison anywhere. Not the perfect Alistair Sim version, nor the 1938 or George C. Scott TV one nor the Albert Finney musical nor the Mr Magoo cartoon. This is NOT RIGHT.

Robin, it's on at, like, 3 AM on TCM. (The 1938 version.)