duck-shaped pain

Today, I started doing some planning for my yearly Christmas cards. Making and sending cards is probably my favorite part of the holiday season � much more relaxing and enjoyable than shopping for gifts, cleaning the house and flying to distant houses. Some years I just cop out and buy my cards, but the last couple of years I've made genuine attempts to create my own cards.

The ones I made last year were cool � I created this odd living room scene with people looking festive and conversing with each other. The only odd thing was the bodies of these people were cans of baking soda, tubes of toothpaste, bottles of Kitchen Bouquet and any other odd product picture I could find in my hoard of old magazines. I put normal-looking heads on the products and tried to arrange them to look "natural" sitting on chairs.

Those of you who know me in real life are probably thinking, Hey, that sounds like an interesting card. How come I didn't get one last year? The answer is that after I put an enormous amount of effort into making the cards, I lost them. Sorry. I was pretty bummed, too. I think one person got his (Z.) and that's because he came over right after I made his�.

This year, I'm going to try and do better. I already have a couple of ideas swimming around in my head and I went to the Enormous Unpleasant Craft Store [1] to see what kind of materials I could have at my disposal if I wanted. I'm still compiling the list, so if any of you out there want an exciting hand-crafted card, let me know. [2]

I made white beans with sage, sausage and onions tonight. Despite 14 hours of soaking and two hours of simmering, the beans did not get done. We ate them anyway, though, but with slightly diminished levels of excitement involved. I'm not sure what the problem was � they were fairly new beans, bought at the natural food store where the legume turnover is fairly high. I believe the problem to be altitude � I'm only at 4,800 feet, but that's still high enough to wreak havoc on bean dishes. I should learn to listen to the small voice inside me that tells me to use the pressure cooker � which I didn't use because it was dusty and I was much too lazy to clean it.

Things that are good, things that make the day not suck: listening to Neu! on the way in to work and Television on the way back home; extended holiday shopping hours (now I can actually go to stores at 11 p.m., like I usually want to), the cheap merlot that is keeping me warm as I write, black turtlenecks, finding a new favorite journal and Bosc pears.

Things that make you disappointed in mankind as a whole: the US government's possible raw-milk cheese ban. No more Parm-Reg would make me a very grumpy, snarly unpleasant person to be around.

[1] Both words in its name rhyme with "slobby."

[2] I'm serious. This offer also applies to people I know in RL who have new or previously unknown addresses. Everyone else will get theirs.

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