A Curious Statistical Anomaly

It’s now December. That means Christmas is just on the horizon (23 days from today — yikes). I’ve got my December cup. Isn’t it beau-ti-ful? I saw it in October and fell in love with it. To me it screams December/Christmas with a bit of Dr. Seuss thrown in for giggles. So, hopefully this cup will see me through all the stress and strain of the holiday season.

I love Christmas with all my heart. Not the commercialism of Christmas but the spirit. The love that just seems to come out at Christmas time. Though after the stampedes on Black Friday and the resultant deaths — its seems that the spirit of Christmas has been lost in the greed of Christmas. Maybe the reading of A Christmas Carol should be mandatory for everyone during this month.

I love that story and the movies made of it. I think I own at least four variations on the story. Believe it or not, The Muppet Christmas Carol is actually the closest to the book.

I’ve heard too many parents who are convinced that the only way to show love to their children is to spend, spend, spend. Too many children equate how many gifts they get (and how much they cost) with how much their parents love them. And everyone is trying to keep up appearances with some mythical family named Jones.

Love can’t be measured in money and things. It springs from the heart and is best measured in time — time spent listening, time spent together. Gifts are fine but they don’t replace or represent love. A gift is a thing, a possession that will in time break down, fall apart, stop working, or be outgrown. Love only grows stronger as time goes by (probably why it makes such a nice song title).

Our Christmases have always been sparse on gifts. At first because I was a single parent working two full-time and one part-time job while going to school. Luckily most of my jobs were late evening and night, so I could spend some daytime with my son. But Christmas was a time to open our gift (that’s not a misprint — gift, singular) have a good meal, watch Christmas movies, play games, cuddle up with hot chocolate and have me read to him. As time passed things changed, but Christmas has always been a time to spend with family — visiting, talking, laughing, just being together.

So, in these economic hard times, think about purging your Christmas gift list. Keep it to immediate family. If necessary eliminate the adults or draw a name out of a hat for the adults, and buy for the children. Set a monetary limit you can afford and stick to it. Have a contest to see who can make the best gift from found items or under a certain amount.

Decide if traveling over hill-and-dale is worth it. Is it now time to start your own Christmas traditions in your own home and phone/ICU/IM family to wish them happy holidays? We stopped the holiday visits to those outside the nuclear family when we moved out of state and found they still expected us to come to them. Now we have our own traditions of Christmas. We cuddle up and watch Christmas movies while dinner cooks or admire the tree and spend time being together. Of course, Christmas is now just the two of us (son stays in Rhode Island for that holiday).

The trick, especially now, is forget what you’ve done before. Don’t spend more than you can afford — and that means limit severely the use of credit cards. Try to think of interesting ways to make the holidays fun for the family that don’t cost a lot of money. Visit some of the free events in the area — here we have many Festival of Lights places that take donations per carload. Some places are free. Many museums have Christmas displays — take the family. Maybe a local theater is having a production of A Christmas Carol. Talk with your children about the changes you want to make and ask for their help and suggestions — you may be surprised by their response (positively surprised). Children are more aware of what’s happening around them than most people give them credit for and if you ask for their input, they just may be willing to understand and help.

Anyway, the object is to have a very Merry Holiday without going into debt or being trampled in a stampede, or worrying about that mythical Jones family — while many people may have the same last name, I don’t think they exist.

Here in the United States it’s Thanksgiving Day. This is a day to gives thanks for all the wonders and joys in our lives. Families get together and spend time together, though if you watch the commercials you’d believe it’s to watch football and not talk and then to finish it all up by shopping.

My son is here for the holiday, he came in on Tuesday and flies out again tomorrow. We haven’t seen him since July (He lives in Rhode Island). So, that makes today and this holiday extra special since he doesn’t make it down for Christmas. Paul (aka Hyperion) has had these days off and so we’ve been able to spend time together mostly joking around and talking.

I came across this version of Amazing Grace, and it is one of my favorite songs. I love most versions and thought this one was most appropriate for today.

Even if it is not a special day of thanksgiving for you, enjoy the video, and be especially nice to all the people who add joy, love, and laughter to your life.

Today is November 14th, and it’s my birthday. Not a great event in the scheme of things but it is a time when I usually reflect on what I’ve done over the past year and think about what I plan to do in the coming year. To me birthdays are more like new beginnings than New Years Eve.

Looking over the past year, I’ve done a lot. The acupuncture has helped in reducing my pain so that I can function almost normally. I still have trouble concentrating at time and I certainly couldn’t do a standard nine to five in an office. I need breaks, lots of them and working from home fits that bill admirably. The problem of working at home is motivation. I’ve tried various methods of staying on track and keep refining and tweaking and hopefully will get even more focused and efficient over the coming year.

I’ve fallen behind on the NaNoWriMo word count. Don’t know if I can make up the difference by the end of the month. However, I have learned that if I push myself I can keep from fiddling with what I’ve already written. I hope to push through on this book even if I don’t make the end of the month word count. It’s been a good experience so far and I may do it again next year.

I’ve a lot to be thankful for. I’ve made some great friends over the past several years. One of my failings is in not expressing just how much people mean to me and how precious they are. My goal is to be much better at keeping in touch and following up with friends and family.

I’ve got unfinished projects all over the house: three pairs of socks, two sweaters, three spinning projects. I’ve somehow got to manage to schedule time for these. Lately, I’ve been working on one of the pairs of socks while watching movies. I did manage to start these socks on circular needles knitting both socks at the same time. I’m feeling pretty chuffed about that. When I’m done I’ll be done with that pair at least. But I still have a ways to go to get to the heel (toe up by the way).

So another year older, maybe wiser, maybe not — but working on acquiring knowledge — knowledge of myself, the world (its people and cultures), and just about everything else that strikes my fancy.

Well, it’s been a wonderful day for me. I stayed up last night until after Obama gave his speech. I thought it was extremely well said — spurring the nation on to the work that must be done over the next several years. McCain’s concession speech was also very well done — I think if the tone and sentiments of that speech had been the same throughout his campaign there might have been a different result last night. But I’m happy with the results we got.

On another note, I haven’t done a knitting post in ages and ages. I’ve got about four projects just sitting in their corners waving their needles and whining piteously when I walk by. I really got to get some time to sit and knit. But since I haven’t I’ve been feeling a bit at loose ends. My wonderful husband reads online comics and this evening had me read Questionable Content, it was a knitting related comic today.

I’m trying to imagine a nine-dimensional hypercardigan — hmmm. If one of those dimensions is time does that mean you could wear it from the moment you cast on or from the moment you think of casting on instead of waiting until it’s finished. It made me giggle anyway so thought I’d share.

I’m also coming down with something. I haven’t got it but I’m on the edge of getting it — cold or flu or something. I’ve got this wimpy cough — sort of a cross between a polite throat cleaing and a hack. It sounds so fake it bugs me but I can’t help doing it. Got a big jug of orange juice and some tea with echinacea. I’m hoping to get over this whatever sooner rather than after it gets worse. This will teach me to skip getting my flu shot

Wow, it’s the first of the month and I actually have the picture of this month’s coffee cup ready. For this month, I chose a very fall-ish cup. It’s in shades of brown and you can see that the interior of the cup has the same coloration. There’s a handle that’s more like a twig and a cluster of leaves with acorns. I’ve used it all day and it’s comfortable to hold and drink from.

I actually picked this one up last month at the same time as I spotted my December cup. I’ve been picking the cups up in various places, but November and December are both are from Home Goods. They tend to have some interesting household items for not much cost. At least their coffee cups are cheaper than the same old/same old ones in the grocery store and discount stores.

Mostly, the changing cups of the month gives me a lift and keep my spirits up.

November 1st is also the start of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. You sign up and then try to write a novel in a month or 50,000 words. I’ve set myself a goal of between 2,000 or 2,500 words per day. I think I might have to take a few days off because my son is flying down for Thanksgiving, so I’m hoping to get ahead a bit. Today, I managed 2,163 words.

I’ve got several starts on novels in my writing folder. The rules say you can’t work on anything you started and I’ve had this idea in my head for a while. I have a few scattered scenes and today I managed to write up two of them and then it just flowed into the next one. I’m hoping I can keep going. What I’ve promised myself is that each day, I’ll just keep going. I won’t look back. I won’t worry that it isn’t perfect. I won’t even care if I switch point of view because that will all be fixed once the novel is written and I go over it to bring it into shape and closer to a finished novel.

Right now, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve done.

To top off the day, I got the dining room table mostly cleared off. [Hyperion: And I helped!] Remember — company for Thanksgiving, sort of need the table for that. It could take me all month to completely clear it off but today was a good start. Also, finished one of my books I’m reviewing for December, I’m hoping to write that review up tomorrow — if I can manage it.

Looks like November is going to be a very busy month for many, many reasons.

Halloween isn’t really my favorite holiday — that honor goes to Christmas (well Christmas spirit, not the commercialized nightmare it has become). But I’m a sucker for candy corn. In fact, it’s about all I can do to keep myself from buying pounds of it each year during the Halloween candy extravaganzas.

Resistance was more difficult than usual this year since all the grocery stores had those scoop things set out so you could fill a plastic bag with as much candy corn as you wanted and it would be weighed on check out. We had to really look to find the small one pound bag you see in the photo. It’s a limit, I can live with — 1 bag per year.

You see it’s not widely known but candy corn is addicting. Really. I bet you don’t know anyone who likes candy corn who can eat just one handful if there is more in the bowl. I mean you could be lying on the floor in a sugary stupor barely able to lift your head without getting a full-on sugar rush and you’d still reach into the bowl for another hand full. It’s insidious. So, the limit is only one bag of the stuff comes into the house. One. Just one. Then no more for a full year.  [Hyperion: It’s actually worse for me.  I’ll eat so much that I’m sick to my stomach, in physical pain, wondering if I’ll be able to get to the bathroom in time, and my hand will still be reaching into the bowl for more.]

We don’t buy candy for Halloween. We live on five acres in the woods down a dirt road. Our neighbor with children goes to parties so there’s no one to give candy out too. This year we’re skipping the Halloween Party since the zines go live at midnight and while I’ve done my part, the web guru is now doing his, so I think we’ll take a break and watch a scary movie and enjoy our candy corn then to sleep to dream of swimming in pools of candy corn.

Tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo, so I’ve got to limber up my fingers and check on the website again since I couldn’t get in earlier and I’ve been too busy since then to check back. November is going to be a month filled with interesting new experiences.

I was perusing the news this morning and ran across an article about a walking house. Well, the article seemed so far-fetched and weird that I looked up the N55 Collective to find out more about it and found this manual about the walking house.

I’m flabbergasted by it. All I can think about is Howl’s Moving Castle. It was a very good anime film based on a YA novel by Diana Wynne Jones. But, watching the film I was entranced by the castle which moved about the landscape from country to city to lakeside — where ever it wanted to go. Imagine having a home that you could move about the countryside in. Suddenly you’ve not limited to one plot of land — you become nomadic.

The houses can move on their six pneumatic legs. But they’re built to have a very small environmental footprint. They have a water capturing system, solar panels, a small windmill, composting toilets, a energy-efficient wood stove, and there’s an option for a greenhouse so you can grow your own food. The living space is very small — kitchen area/living space with toilet and sleeping loft. You’d need to really, really, like the person you chose to live in the walking house with.

But think of the ability to move with the seasons or the sun — to get the most efficiency out of the solar panels, solar water heater and wind generators. Think of being able to move and take your house with you without being in a gazillion dollar RVTrailer. Nomads without tents — while now most are nomads with RVs.

However, living in small spaces takes a different mindset than most of us are comfortable with — though we could learn. For me, the hardest part of moving to a very small space such as this would be giving up my books. But the current technologies in ebooks and the Kindle could make that much easier than in years past. But still, I’ll be interested to see if this walking house takes off as more than an oddity, seaside vacation home, or hunting hut. It has potentially some very good uses and I wonder if they’ll be realized or this will just disappear as an interesting idea with no takers.

One of the wonderful things about conventions is that you meet so many new people, make some friends, talk with people you haven’t seen for a while, and stay up late and get up early. The problem with conventions is that you get too little sleep, meet lots and lots of people and in the process of talking, shaking hands, and giving hugs of welcome — you all share germs. So after the convention you get what is called “con crud”.

Really, it’s an official term. It’s that run-down achy feeling you get — sometimes with a cough, fever, or cold — after spending time with a bunch of people from areas other than yours. You see people get used to the germs around them where they live. When I worked at a college we all knew that everyone would be sick as soon as all the students came back from vacations because they’d go home get whatever germ/illnesses were being shared around at home and them bring them back to share with roommates, classmates, and the faculty and staff. Conventions do the same thing only on a smaller scale.

So, since I got home Sunday, I’ve been resting and drinking lots of juice. I even love the pictures of citrus fruits. I wonder if just looking at the vitamins in the raw, fruity form can help me feel better. And, I’m the lucky one. Hyperion has a slight fever and a cough and chills. Of course, he’s now sharing the joy at work since he has to be there. Luckily, I work at home — yes, I know I’m lucky. I get to take naps and bundle up in a blanket when I get the chills or get too run down to think straight.

I don’t care there — I still had a great time this past weekend and wouldn’t have missed it for the world.