Great things about Christmas

Get to dust off Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas cd.

Dog likes to fetch; I like to throw. Match made in heaven. I throw until my arm is good and sore, and dog collapses so that we can watch movies.

Cookies!

Fudge!

Turkey, Ham and Lasagna!

Mom doing laundry!

Joey got new shoes.

so I land at Midway

I had grabbed my brothers old guitar at my Mom's. Once upon a time I had a sweet little guitar, but I quit playing when I hurt my hand. However that's gotten better, so I grabbed my brothers since mine is nowhere to be found. I imagine my niece annihilated it years ago.

As I waited at the luggage carousel, the cell phone wouldn't work. I guess ATT mobile went down big time yesterday. And the guitar was nowhere to be found. The Frontier luggage service was closed. Bummer. But then the phone started working, and I saw the guitar off in a corner. I guess it was an odd size and had gone down a different shoot. It also had a little tag in it informing me that the TSA had searched it. I imagine that a drug dog must have taken one whiff of that thing and gone bonkers. It gladdens my heart to think about the dedicated law enforcement folk opening that old thing to discover... nothing but memories of dope enjoyed long ago. HAH!

What does "they're offering nothing " mean to you?

Blago is plainly heard on tape saying that Obama's people are offering nothing but appreciation. But yet we still have folks out there picking apart every nuance. Not so much looking for a scandal, as trying to conjure one out of nothing.

The guv and the football

This from a guy who knows a guy who guards the guy: Blago supposedly spends 20 minutes a day on his hair. He has a setup in his house, a large mirror, before which are arrayed several brushes. And he is rumored to keep a particular brush with him at all times. This brush is designated the football.

Ah ye old DailyHowler. Can the corporate press be any dumber? 

Obama says he's going to delay a report on his staff's contact with Blago at the request of the prosecutor. The press wonders what he's hiding, as if not hearing the second part.

Obama says his people had no inappropriate contact with Blago concerning the open senate seat, and the corporate press seems to have missed the word inappropriate, instead acting as if he said no contact whatsoever. 

Anyone heard the following on any major, corporate news outlet:

Democrat Emil Jones had pushed through an ethics bill in the Illinois Senate over the veto of Blago.

Mike Madigan, who leads the other house of the Illinois legislature, has been at loggerheads with Blago for years. 

Jesse Jackson Jr. threw Blago out of the third airport project in Peotone, Il, near Chicago.

Years ago my great aunt Lillian travelled to Europe. When she returned she informed the family that we were Jewish. My grandmother was angry. She felt that her sister-in-law was just making trouble. Now the family pretty much embraces this. Strangely enough I have discovered also that Cervantes was a nuevo cristiano, a converted Jew. And that this is the adventure of Don Quixote. 

Well, nothing strange, though; after all, large numbers of people were converted in Europe, and likely a good number came here to America and left their Jewish heritage behind. The fact that today it seems to be a matter of little note is interesting. After all, being Jewish was a bad thing even in the last generation. I wonder what my father would have thought if he knew his wife was Jewish?