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MOAR RUM PLZ

Preparing the glaze for the rum cake. A 4:2:1 sugar/rum/water mix with a butter chaser :-D

And now I am an iPad owner

Julie Anne really outdid herself this year!

Visions of sugar plums

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Christmas morning in Lower Queen Anne

Family and friends just gathered. The tree is beautifully lighted, “fire” is crackling merrily away, coffee steaming and breakfast in the oven.

Doesn’t get much better than this.

Merry Christmas :-)

May you enjoy the company of family and friends, and the best of success for the new year.

Pie time

Julie Anne’s scratch-made pumpkin pies.

For the record, this wasn’t a total Martha Stewart endeavor. Julie Anne did not make the pie dishes herself. She bought ’em. And she feels a bit terrible about that. ;-)

2300 lights

Twenty-three strands of 100 bulbs apiece on Julie Anne's tree this year.

And the lovely Yule Log fire on TiVo! :-D

Bruises I can’t explain, and other bits about last week

Last week was good! Fairly normal work week, random signs of injury I can’t recall, absolutely smashing good weekend!

So then.

I think it must have been... Tuesday? Wednesday, actually, now that I think about it. Anyway, when I noticed on my right forearm a large(ish) bruised area, maybe two inches wide. Hurt a bit when I pressed on it, that first day, but the second day nothing but discoloration.

This is one of those bruises I cannot for the life of me figure out how I got. I don’t recall slamming my arm into furniture or bouncing hard off any walls. Nothing fell on me or hit me within the last 10 days, and I haven’t been in a physical fight in well over a year. The bruise’s shape gives no clue to its origin—there are no faint outlines of baseball stitching or backward sports-equipment logo typography embedded in my arm.

But the highlight of the week was a weekend jaunt to San Francisco with Katharine and Julie Anne to attend a live-album recording show by my favorite singer/songwriter, Vienna Teng, and her frequent collaborator (and producer of her last album, Inland Territory), Alex Wong.

Fantastic time. We had VIP tickets for the Sunday evening early show at The Independent, got us some face time with the musicians while they were doing their sound checks. Also I’ve a newly signed poster I need to get framed at some point. It was a fascinating crowd, too, all ages (21+ only) and just about every type of person you could imagine, all clearly fans of the music and really into the show.

No idea when the album comes out, but I’m hoping to hear my voice among the whoops and hollers from the crowd. Maybe it’ll list where each track was recorded as well so I won’t be one of those fools who says, “That’s me clapping first,” only to be told that song was taken from a recording made in New York, where I’ve never been.

San Francisco was lovely otherwise. We flew in Saturday morning, took BART from SFO to Powell Street Station, checked into our hotel with no fuss (our rooms were available even though check-in time was still 4+ hours away), and were out wandering the city a little after 10:30. Spent the afternoon at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, marveling at the planetarium show and chuckling at the penguins’ antics and bemused by the free-flying butterflies in the rainforest globe. Beautiful building, they pack a lot into a relatively small space, but it isn’t at all claustrophobic—the exhibit spaces are thoughtfully laid out with plenty of room for people to move around, and the exhibits themselves are an engaging mix of old (dioramas, animal enclosures, blocks of descriptive text on wall signs) and new (Surface-style computer-driven information about the California coast and such, an all-digital planetarium with a 75-foot projection dome, a state-of-the-art living roof, the works).

We flew home this morning, allowed an hour for bag check and security screening and barely made it onto the plane for the 09:20 departure—and, as it turned out, only because the TSA agents handling the lengthy security lines were canvassing the crowds for departure times 40 or so minutes away at any given time. The bag-check agent had claimed a 45– to 60-minute wait in security; if we hadn’t jumped the line at the TSA agent’s behest, we would have missed our flight, and we had a bit over 60 minutes from bag-check finish to our entry into the security line.

The flight back to Seattle was packed tight. The Alaska Airlines check-in kiosk had even asked us if we would be willing to accept booking on a later flight (with a travel voucher to be used in the future) because our flight was overbooked, and the crowding aboard clearly indicated it would be a busy travel day all around. I think we ended up among the last half-dozen or so passengers to board, which meant that my laptop bag flew home overhead row 18 while our seats were in rows 23 and 24 (in a 27-row 737-400, oh joy).

We did get to enjoy the log-sawing stylings of the Western Conference Champion snorer. This guy could go pro, probably get taken high in the second or late in the first round. He had snorted himself awake five times before the plane was even off the runway at SFO, and several times during the flight—each time, his rowmates would all flinch with the surprise of it.

Sometime during this flight I also noticed the couple of bruises on my right upper arm, a couple of little quarter-inch dark spots on my biceps.

Seems parts of me were beaten senseless over the last several days and I’ve no memory of it.

Anywho. Back home now, all is good and I have a two-day work week because of the Christmas holiday—we get both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, for some reason I absolutely am not questioning aloud but still wonder about frequently. Bag is unpacked, cats won’t leave me alone, the wind is rattling my balcony door, and the weather forecast calls for rain and chance of snow tonight and tomorrow.

Just as things should be for December in Seattle. :-)

So how was your week?

For your holiday pleasure: Lighted boats on the weekend

Since we live in one of the more nautical corners of the planet, it’s almost considered mutinous not to watch a parade of brightly decorated boats every December. You have multiple chances to join in the salty holiday spirit this weekend.

View the full article on the Seattle Times site: Lighted boats will buoy up your holiday spirits

2600 in 6

Twenty-six strands of lights and the entire ornament collection all in six hours, to the accompaniment of the “Christmas favorites” iTunes playlist and a lovely dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers. Oh, and a brief pause to watch the lighting of the Westlake tree, the Space Needle, and the KING5 broadcast tower atop Queen Anne Hill.

Been a busy day!

Lighting in progress

Last year Julie Anne had 28 strands of 100 lights each on her tree. This year she’s about a third of the way through stringing the lights and just put strand No. 10 on the tree. Right on track!

Must be the holiday season?

This morning we stopped at Starbucks for eggnog lattes and at Target for Christmas lights, candles, and a wreath and hanger.

Now back at Julie Anne’s discussing the particulars of her holiday decorating plans before we retrieve the dozen or so Christmas boxes from her storage unit, all while she’s mixing up a batch of home-made bread and Christmas songs waft from the living room.

Definitely that time of year!

Happy holidays :-D  

Closer

Closer
Flickr: Don NunnClearly the several-feet-away garland view wasn’t quite enough. ;-)

Winter garland

Winter garland
Flickr: Don NunnJulie Anne’s balcony decked out for the season, the snow adding to the holiday air.

Julie Anne’s tree 2008

Julie Anne's tree 2008
Flickr: Don Nunn292 years until the calendar matches the number of lights on the tree, same light count as last year.

Holiday joy

Holiday joy
Flickr: Don NunnSeething masses at the Fred Meyer in Ballard.

Space Tree

Space Tree
Flickr: Don NunnThe Space Needle's holiday tradition is back!

2007 in IM status messages

After the jump, lists of the custom “available” and “away” status messages I used in iChat in 2007.

They made it easier to extract this info from iChat in Leopard. You can now choose “Edit Status Menu” from iChat’s buddy-list window, select the item(s) you want from the list(s), and use the Copy command to get a comma-separated text list. Only problem for me is I use commas in some of my statuses, so it’s not a simple search-and-replace function to get the list into a usable format, but it sure beats having to fire up Property List Editor and extract the list that way. Minor trade-offs, I suppose.

Anyway....

Can you see the snow?

Can you see the snow?
Flickr: Don NunnHeavier volume but tiny flakes, and it’s not sticking :-(

Evidence of Christmas

Evidence of Christmas
Flickr: Don NunnRandom wrappings, recycling box, new mugs, Oregon State Beavers checkers.

Snow in Seattle

Snow in Seattle
Flickr: Don NunnYou’ll have to take my word that there really are flakes coming down....

Merry Christmas. :-)

Season’s greetings, happy holidays, and all the other salutations of the time.

Quoted below, one of my all-time favorite songs, and it happens to have a Christmas relevance: The Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng.

Hear the song:

it’s the season of grace coming out of the void
where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
it’s the season of possible miracle cures
where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
where time begins to fade
and age is welcome home

it’s the season of eyes meeting over the noise
and holding fast with sharp realization
it’s the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention
you are safe here you know now

don’t forget
don’t forget I love
I love
I love you

it’s the season of scars and of wounds in the heart
of feeling the full weight of our burdens
it’s the season of bowing our heads in the wind
and knowing we are not alone in fear
not alone in the dark

Gorgeous centerpiece

Gorgeous centerpiece
Flickr: Don NunnAbsolutely amazing holiday centerpiece just delivered to Julie Anne from Nancy.

2300

2300
Flickr: Don NunnTwenty-three 100-light strands on Julie Anne’s tree this year.

Links for 2007-12-15

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Under The Needle: Candy Cane Lane’s conscientious objector
  Holdout neighbor in the Ravenna area known for its ostentatious Christmas decorations each year
  (tags: christmas holidays seattlepi seattlepostintelligencer news neighborhoods ravenna)

On Vox: QotD: My Current Top 10

According to Last.fm, though this doesn’t take into account my iPod listenings (I haven’t found a reliable way to ensure iPod play counts are reflected in Last.fm stats):

1. Providence — The Fat Lady Sings
2. Here’s Where the Story Ends — The Sundays
3. What About Everything — Carbon Leaf
4. Be Still — The Fat Lady Sings
5. Gravy Train — The Fat Lady Sings
6. Lonely Stranger — Eric Clapton
7. The Boxer — Carbon Leaf
8. Summertime — The Sundays
9. How You’ve Grown — 10,000 Maniacs
10. The Atheist Christmas Carol — Vienna Teng
11. Songbirg — Fleetwood Mac
12. Arc of a Diver — Steve Winwood
13. Signe — Eric Clapton
14. Twist — The Fat Lady Sings
15. Never Going Back Again — Fleetwood Mac
16. Arclight — The Fat Lady Sings

Sixteen items in my Top 10 list because of ties. A list in the style of TopFive.com’s Top 10 lists. ;-)

Answering:

What are your top 10 most-played songs currently?

Originally posted on donnunn.vox.com

Tuesday music

For most of the time I was home today, I had iTunes feeding my living-room and bedroom stereos via AirTunes. Makes for good audio distraction when I try to sleep in the afternoons on weekdays, I’ve found.

Tonight I thought, hey, I wonder how many songs played today, including while I was using my iPod at work this morning. So I created a Smart Playlist to show me all the songs played today, scrubbed the list through Excel to make the formatting prettier (all hail the CONCATENATE function), et voilà.

More than 12 hours of music, about half of which I slept through, listed in play order.

Song — Artist, Album

Katharine remembers the animal companions that have enriched our lives

Katharine’s recounting of the dogs and cats that have added to our experiences over the years.

On Vox: QotD: But It Tastes Good!

When I was a kid in Salt Lake City, we had Winder Dairy home delivery service for milk once a week. At the holidays we would order egg nog and chocolate milk and various other products specific to the holiday season. One of our big indicators for the holidays was when the Winder Dairy truck started leaving more than just the standard gallon-size bottles of milk behind and sometimes the deliveries would go from once a week to twice or even three times depending on what we were ordering.

I was a major fan of their chocolate milk. It was thick and rich and way too strong to be drunk straight from the bottle. I usually thinned it about 1:1 with regular milk and even though it was cold at the end of November and through December, it didn’t matter, because the yummy chocolate flavor warmed up the world.

So one year when we had a holiday party at the house, we kids were just floating around being inconspicuous (we were good at that) and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen because that’s where the chocolate milk was. Turns out it was also where the sweet pickles were, and so my meal that night consisted of miniature sweet pickles and chocolate milk.

Heavenly. I got a lot of weird looks when people wandered in to get more ice or whatever but I didn’t care. It was a flavor and texture and temperature combination that brought the entire holiday season into specific physical reality and it rocked my world.

Now of course the very idea of it makes me cringe a bit and I can’t think of anything weirder than that in the years since.

Answering:

What are your favorite weird food combinations?
Submitted by Dulce.

Originally posted on donnunn.vox.com

Songs grouped “Fave”

All of the songs in this playlist are tagged Fave using the Grouping field, another attempt to allow greater flexibility in my iTunes Smart Playlists.

These are favorites for many reasons. Some of them I like because they remind me of friends and family, or of good times over the last 20 years or so. Others I like simply for the songs themselves.

Listed in the order they’re shuffling through my headphones right now:

About music sharing

Music I’m willing to share is linked directly from this page. No link, no sharing—don’t email asking for files.

Song — Artist, Album

1. Spirit Voices — Paul Simon, The Rhythm of the Saints
2. Windmills — Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dulcinea
3. Signe — Eric Clapton, Unplugged
4. Always — Steve Winwood, One and Only Man (CD single)
5. Here’s Where the Story Ends — The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
6. Jezebel — 10,000 Maniacs, Our Time in Eden
7. Homecoming (Walter’s Song) — Vienna Teng, Warm Strangers
8. Snow — Grey Eye Glances, Eventide
9. Wall of Silence — October Project, October Project
10. Anna Rose — Vienna Teng, Warm Strangers