Mile-High Technology

So, I am typing this blog entry at some 39,000 feet in the air, flying between Minneapolis and Portland.  Not so unusual, except that the airplane has Wi-Fi (free for the holidays) so I am live on the famed "intertubes" -- this entry won't be uploaded later, after I've landed, but is going out to the world at this very moment.

This is so cool, at least to us later adopters. You still can't make a call from a plane, but you can Facetime!

The photos below are not intentionally artsy -- they are simply my laptop camera's interpretation of the light and surroundings on an almost packed plane with conventional turbulence.

I am flying to Portland for our annual Glänza party (after a skipped year in 2009) -- the household is reconvening today from Idaho, Minnesota and Oregon for two days of cleaning, an evening of festivities, and then another day of cleaning afterwards.  And yet, every moment of preparation and clean-up will be worth it.  This is likely to be the last Hoisting of the Glänsa, at least in this house, but we aren't talking about it.

Flash Mob, Canadian Mall Food Court

Another viral video making the rounds, this time a Flash Mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus in a food court at a mall in Canada.  (For those who don't know, a Flash Mob is "a group of otherwise unconnected people who assemble in a public place for a brief time, usually to perform something unusual." more here)

The comments on YouTube about this, range from people thanking our Lord Jesus Christ for inventing marvelous food court experiences (which doesn't fit my personal take on what a god would spend his time planning for), to people nastily criticizing the other commenters, and the Flash Mob, for Christian-centric thoughts and comments.  To be honest, as the song went on, I was aware myself that it was a long period of enforced praise for the Christian King of Kings (enforced if you were one those shoppers just sitting down for a yummy Arby's sandwich and curly fries, and not much of a singer).

On the other hand, named god aside, it is simply a marvelous piece of music.  What do you think?

Whew - where did that November go?

I've started to get guff for neglecting Cattus Dommus.  I apologize.  I have had ideas for blog entries, and even took some photos, but ... well, any explanation is just an excuse.

I'm not promising I will actually post any more often in the next four weeks than I've done in the last four weeks (which would be, none), but I will promise to try.

Here's an easy entry, ripped directly from Jennifer Crusie's blog, welcoming us all to the frenzied Christmas season.  The Muppets always bring a smile to my face, and I hope to pass it along.

Halloween, Minnesota style, 2010

Halloween, as you may or may not know, is much celebrated on Peaceable's block, where I am still living. The road is closed, and every house decorates their front yard.  Morris Dancers come and perform all evening. Hundreds of people meander through, children agog at the shear notion of so much candy, and parents at so much effort.

Peaceable and Mr. P returned only late morning from their visit to Washington, DC and the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear).  You can read their exploits on her blog. (I was going to link to a Rally reference, but it's more fun to tell you to google it.  The bloggers are talking about it, or decidedly not talking about it, and a few bloggers are talking about how the media outlets are not-talking about it.)

Anyway, this meant that there wasn't a lot of energy left to decorate.  After seriously discussing (and dismissing, for various reasons, mostly to do with too much work involved) Terror-filled Tea Parties, and Alice in Wonderland, and Scary Bed Bugs, they ended up on pulling out existing costumes from two years ago: Bees.

It's a wonderful costume -- amusing, particularly when you get a group of bees together, with a little satellite canine-bee alongside.  I am sure it was blogged in years past, but I can't find it, so no link.

Here's what they looked like tonight, though, just as sunset was settling in.  We have Fashionable (Peaceable's daughter) and her boyfriend as Queen Bee, Mr. Peaceable as a Killer Bee, and Peaceable herself as the Pet-Watching Bee.

Happy Valentine's Day

Sometime in the middle of January, I was overcome with the urge to make Valentine's cookies. I could taste them: the recipe would be "Aunt Mary's Sugar Cookies", (someone else's Aunt Mary) printed in a cookbook produced by the employees of The Texan's credit union, which are deliciously seasoned with nutmeg, and the icing is quite salty for a nice sweet-salt contrast flavor.  I could see them: heart-shaped, pink icing, with funny sayings on them like on the little candies one is always disappointed to receive on Valentine's Day.  I'd make some for my nephew who is laboring on his dissertation. Instead of Luv U, and Be Mine, they'd say things like Proof it! and Write On and PhD in Cite and U R Almost There.


So, early last week I made the cookies. I frosted the cookies. We moved everything in the kitchen to the dining room or basement, in jumbled boxes. We demolished the kitchen. In the midst of all this, I did pack up a box of cookies for the nephew, and as I was driving home from the post office, I realized I forgot to put the funny notes on them.  Ah well. He'll get a box of really good cookies to eat -- it will just look a little strange (I'm not much of a Valentine's giver in the normal way).

By the way, I was awed to see that I was visited by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which just happened to manifest itself amongst my heart-shaped cookies.  I reckon that was meant for the nephew too, for more power and get-it-doneness in the face of adversity (for who knows adversity better than the FSM?), so I sent that to him, too.

14th Day of Christmas?

As I drove up to pick up our weekly Friday Pizza tonight, I passed a house with a Christmas tree, in full twinkly lights and trimmings, proudly set still in the front window.  All our decorations were taken down by HomoDommi before I got home, except the lights on the porch (which we now simply don't bother to plug in) and the glansa.  It is so wonderful to have the glansa; in these dark days, it is bright and refreshing.  If I had my druthers, we'd leave it up until May, but it will probably be taken down while I'm gone again.

What marks the end of the Christmas Season?

PeaceableTate remarked, sighing, tonight, that tomorrow is Epiphany and the Christmas tree will still be in place.  Personally, I like leaving the tree up until February -- why not extend the festive season as long as possible?

The tree at PeaceableTate's complete many mementos of past Christmases, in particular 

the paper-doll chain cut by HomoDommi decades ago.

Our tree, looking falsely like a cheap 1950's aluminum fake. For once we got enough lights on it!

Last Night of the Decade*

My excitement of the evening was being exposed to a different world:  I met an old friend, BL, at a bar. I don't go to bars much, and never this kind of bar.  Most days, it's a "police bar" -- decorated with photos of our Brave Men (and Women) in Blue, and with the driver's side doors of police cars hanging from the high ceiling, often signed by the cops who drove in them.

On sports nights, however, such as last night -- when The Wild was playing at the Xcel Arena, and the Iowa State Cyclones were facing off against the Minnesota Gophers -- the place is decorated with scantily clad women in referee-striped halter tops and low-cut jeans.  They hold placards saying, "Buy Beer Here", and slowly dance around, go-go-girl-like on tables, to let the customers know where "here" is.  (You can see one of them behind me in both photos.)

After watching about half a game (with a table of Cyclone supporters, as they pulled ahead of the gophers), BL and I returned to the Peaceable Tate's house and we all watched an excellent truly French movie, A Christmas Tale. (Thus counter-acting, with intellectual entertainment, the effects of low-brow domestic brews and gyrating girls.) We drank champagne at midnight and thus toasted in the New Year.

*Personally, I don't believe the decade ended yesterday. The millennium didn't really begin until 2001, so how can the first decade have started in 2000, crossing millennia? However, the media have proclaimed the decade over (a good excuse to compile best-of and worst-of lists, I suppose), so I'll go with it.

Not to mention, the Noughts were a sucky decade, so I'm more than happy to put it behind me.  Here's to the start of a new year, and a new decade. May the Teens be an improvement!

A brief on the Idaho Thanksgiving

The Texan and I have travelled to Idaho for the long weekend.  Over the years, the Family has accrued a fairly large collection of Thanksgiving regulars (about a dozen, give or take on any given year), but the move to another state somewhat diminished available guests -- even so, one other friend and her son flew in for a shorter visit (they leave this afternoon, we on Sunday).  So we had eight people (three children) for the meal.

One of the "regulars" called yesterday to share the love.  An early question, "How many pies this year?"

"Six," said FemmeDommi.

"Six!  But you have eight people at the table!  This is unheard of!"

FemmeDommi agreed. "We consider it a temporary aberration. And as it happens, two of the six refuse pie (being under the age of 12), so in one sense we still have our average: one pie per pie-eater."


I took a photo, but forgot to bring the cable for transferring photos to my computer.  We had two pumpkin pies, a pecan, and an apple. We had two "surprise" pies (pies we haven't tried before, of which there is always at least one at each Thanksgiving).  The Black Bottom (reputedly a traditional southern custom) proved so delightful that it was even eaten -- with seconds -- by the non-pie eaters). The other, a Butterscotch Cream, hasn't been sampled yet -- we were all so full that it waits for the leftovers meal tonight.

Otherwise, nothing unusual to report in the menu, the conventional Thanksgiving feast with too much food, 90% of which the children wouldn't eat.  We started the afternoon with a long walk at Camel's Back Park, just a few blocks from here.  This park -- positioned at the curve where the plain of the city meets the low grass-and-sand covered foothills -- starts with a conventional playground and tennis courts, but it is the doorway to an extensive several miles of trails for hiking and mountain biking.  Our group split, the youngest staying at the playground (with parents) while the rest hiked a mile or two up to the top of the closest hill.

As I said, I don't have the cable for my camera, so I stole this photo from a post about mountain biking in the Boise foothills from the web.  This is actually taken from a point further than we walked -- we were off to the right by one hill, I reckon.  But we had the similar view of downtown, and our day was actually clearer, so we could see to the snow-topped (low) mountains miles away on the far side of the Snake River Basin valley which Boise is built in.

Halloween 2009

We jokingly report that our house, childless and HomoDommi-less (as a neighborhood parental mover and shaker), was shunned last night. Certainly, we got no trick-or-treaters until 7:00 p.m. on the dot, long after dark, and they stopped at 8:10 p.m., with at most 18 children in between. Last year, we had a steady stream from before true dusk until after 9:00.

The local news stations were reporting in advance that "children will not be trick-or-treating for fear of H1N1 flu", and giving guidelines for how not to catch the flu, or prevent the spread of it (e.g., drop candies into open bags, rather than letting the children run their bug-infested little hands through the basket). On the other hand, our house is next to a huge empty darkened church, across from a parking lot, not other candy-giving houses, and many of the neighbors on our block had darkened porches (opting out? Or off to parties?). So our few treaters are due, less likely to fear of flu, and more likely to lack of pickin's on the block. Certainly the next block over was a blaze with lights, spooky sound effects, and streams of marching, laughing children.

Report from Boise


Boise, apparently, takes Halloween very seriously. One of the major residential boulevards, Harrison (two blocks over from the Family's rental mansion, and the local equivalent of Summit Avenue in St. Paul), dresses up for the occasion in the way that Peaceable-Tate's block does, and has a similar parade of hundreds of trick-or-treaters. Rumor tells that houses that turn off their lights are considered open season to egg and toilet paper. So the Boise crew suited up and marched over the two blocks to Halloweenland (Family Man stayed behind with Mater Familias, anxious to keep the lights on at home).

Reports were mixed. On the one hand, one household hired actors to perform the Thriller dance, every 5 minutes throughout the night. Another household had a giant flame-breathing dragon threatening a damsel in distress. There was much to see and hear. On the other hand, in exchange for the spectacle, children were not given candy of any quality. This year, there were no surprise King Size Chunky Bars, as our kids have gotten down the street here in Portland -- in Boise they got little hard candies, and more irritating yet: stale candy that obviously was leftover from Easter. You would think if they could afford Thriller dancers for the whole night, they could afford fresh chocolate, too. (Although, the Damsel and the Dragon exhibit handed out gold-covered chocolate coins, which won Girl-Child's approval.)

Boy-child modified his annual ghoul costume with flowing blood this year, as is demonstrated in the video below. It's a marvelous gruesome grossout, capped by the sight of the magician behind the magic.

The Gruesome Ghoul

Halloween, 2008 -- Preparations

I've been really wordy the last few posts. Sorry. In an effort to make this a 30-second read, here are simply lots of pictures.

We decorated Halloween cookies last night. (The Texan made them from a great, tasty sugar cookie recipe, with lots of nutmeg. Ask if you want it.)

The whole set.

Ghost of the Mad Housewife.

Amputee Ghost

One Bad Apple

Gray Squirrel
(A reminder of the preymate Tasha brought me, last night.
Which I won't talk about.
Except to say, at least it was only a partial preymate. .)