We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from LadyPatsFan, DH, Stringz, Bob, Giggles, Princess, Daisy, Wolfgang, and The Outlaws - Wyatt, Jesse and Calamity.

EXTERMIKNIT! EXTERMIKNIT! EXTERMIKNIT!

Geeks and Knitters unite!

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Big Dawg has had this posted on his cubicle wall for months, possibly years. I thought it was some gaming reference (like, World Of Warcraft or something - "if not dead, increase strength").

Until we were talking about it Friday following the Punishment Lines Code Napkin Episode. And he muttered the phrase "What doesn't kill us....."

OOHHH!!!! I get it now. Yeah Big Dawg, it IS even funnier when you know what it means. :)

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Our IS department has a monthly lunch out together to celebrate that month's birthdays. Our end of the table had a couple of parents at it. After fielding my 32nd call of the morning from my 3 (home-from-school-on-xmas-break-can't-get-we-all-just-get-along) oldest children requesting mediation services, the conversation turned to punishment and redirection techniques. The non-parents among us (well, just Biz-P really) started taking notes. "Pit them against each other, not you." "Let them choose each others punishment." "Do not be afraid of the phrase 'death match'."

OoRah told us he had recently started making his girls write out the US Constitution. He'd give them an Article or Section and they'd have to copy it out. I piped up that we used a similar technique, but that our little offenders had to write what they did. "I will not kick my sister" 100 times each or "I will not start fires" 500 times each.

The conversation continued until a few moments later, when OoRah handed me this napkin:



Then all conversation stopped, as we were all laughing too hard. Only at an IS lunch could a joke like this go over so completely and so well.

However, I'm not sure which is sadder funnier:

A. That he actually wrote it down.

B. That I immediately declared that I had to blog about it.

C. That he realized he forgot to increment i and asked for the napkin back to fix the bug in his code.

D. That I let him fix it because leaving an endless loop would have bothered me intensely.

Even Reindeer Pause

I heard the funniest story at a Christmas party recently. What you have to understand first, is that this takes place deep in the heart of the Bible Belt region. The buckle of the bible belt, so to speak. A place where the populace is strongly religious, and for the majority of the parishioners, that religion is some form of Christianity. A place with all the stereotypes - the good, the not-so-good, the neutral - that go along with life in a very red state. A place were public displays such as one might see at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or the Castro District of San Francisco, or the Pride parade of Chicago, are completely unheard of and generally looked down upon. An area where churches outnumber grocery stores.

So picture if you will, a Christmas parade. Hundreds of men, women and children turn out for the festivities. Here comes the nativity from Catholic Church, very nice. Aw, there go the Girl Scouts - too cute. Now the float from Baptist Church. And the marchers from the Assembly of God. Another float from the Presbyterian Church. And now, here comes the float from [large department store chain]. Oh look, they've got a Santa! Hmm... who is that standing next to him? Kinda tall for an elf. A kid? No, still too tall. .... oh no, they didn't! (facepalm)

Santa's "Helper". Santa's young, nubile, attractive, adult female helper. Wearing an outfit even Victoria would keep secret. Santa is wearing a big grin, his hand placed firmly and unmovingly on her rear.

In the crowd, dozens of men start volunteering to play Santa next year. The women, shivering in sympathy, start covering children's eyes.

A 6 year old girl looks up at her Grampa and says "That is highly inappropriate."

I'm A Big Dog Now

Bad pet mommy. I'm a day late posting birthday greetings to my buddy Wolfgang. But since Wolfie is a rescue, and therefore his birthdate is a guess, am I really late after all? And if a tree falls in a forest with no one there to hear it, is Schrödinger's Cat really afraid of Virginia Woolf?


But I digress.


On Monday, Wolfie hit a milestone - One Year Old. Remember Wolfie? Cute little "Berner" puppy I adopted in February? The one that was going to turn into a lovely, big, lazy fuzzball? Well, Wolfie didn't get that memo. At one year old, he is a whopping 35 pounds of tornado destruction. Based on his size, shape, personality and energy level, I think he's more of a Mini Aussie. But, he's family, and he doesn't eat cats, so all's forgiven.


To celebrate his birthday, I decided to indulge in a little photo session. We started with the ultimate doggie torture - Peanut Butter!


After a rough start





Wolfie managed the Peanut Butter with a fair amount of dignity.







Daisy was not so lucky. She obliged me by providing some wonderful peanut butter faces.










I tried getting some comparison shots, but the dogs kept coming up to me instead of sitting nicely. So, I brought in my photo assistant. AKA Bob.








I really wanted some side-by-side shots to show off Wolfie's size compared to Daisy. But he didn't want to sit still. He tried.





And he tried.





But Captain Coordination got too excited and fell off the bench.






Happy First Birthday Wolfgang. Now that you are a big dog, maybe you'll stop chewing up all our power cords?





A girl can dream, can't she?

The Wicked Big Toddlah

First - show of hands. Who here thinks this is a book about a large, evil child of Satan written by someone in desperate need of spell-checker? Uh huh, yep, OK, you in the back - don't be shy, hmm mmm, yep, and you? OK. I thought so.

Those very few of you who did not raise your hands likely fit one of the following criteria: A. You were born and raised in New England. B. You lived a significant length of time in New Hampshire or Maine. C. You watched Saturday Night Live when Adam Sandler and/or Jimmy Fallon was on. Or D. You have talked to me in person for more than 5 minutes.

The average American living in blissful ignorance in any of the other 44 states doesn't realize that while Wicked can be an adjective meaning evil, such as Cinderella's wicked stepmother or the Wicked Witch of the East, in New England it is an adverb meaning very or extremely. "Oh man, that was wicked cool! Do it again!" "Ugh, I am having a wicked bad day." While Wicked can be paired with almost any adjective, it's raison d'etre is to be paired with Awesome. "Dude - did you see the Red Sox game last night? It was Wicked Awesome the way they pulled that out!"

Tuesday night, the boys had to attend a City Council meeting for one of their Boy Scout Merit Badges, so DH went with them while I took the girls to the public library 5 blocks over. Amongst the 6548 books that Princess picked out to bring home was this beautiful nugget. "The Wicked Big Toddlah" written by Kevin Hawkes, a Mainer. This was right up my alley. Or so I thought.

I grew up in a suburban-ized area of southern New Hampshire, and so the Down East accent was less prevalent amongst my neighbors than in, say, rural Maine. When asked what a "Down East" accent is, I describe it as a southern drawl mixed with a Boston twang, then demonstrate it by advising my audience that their destination is inaccessible from their current location. This has been the extent of my Down East experiences since leaving New England for warmer greener other pastures nearly 9 years ago.

After all this time living abroad (i.e., not in New England) it was much harder for me to slip into a Down East accent than I thought it would be. But, by the end of the book, I was doing ok and had regained most of my New Englander accent. Princess has requested this book nearly every night since, and each time, it's easier and easier to read the entire book in a Down East Accent.

Of course now, having returned to my roots, however briefly, the question of the day is this - how thick was my accent when I went back to work?



Today's quiz: phonetically render the following phrases:

An Arkansan or an Alabaman indicating that you are welcome to return at any time.
A Bostonian pointing out the closest vehicular decampment area.
A Mainer advising you that, in fact, Mapquest is wrong and your destination is unreachable.