Young nephew N has been playing with the Lincoln Logs today, only to discover several of them had play-dough stuck on them. He was unhappy about that. My twin and I have decided that the responsible party is elder sister G. She can deny it, but we've got two votes to her one, so it's settled.

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My sister and her family are driving up from Louisiana. They left Friday early afternoon, and had been planning on making it here to my Dad's place at 10 or 11 PM. Well, I last talked to them at 7 PM, and they were still in Virginia.

It's now almost half past one, but they didn't call saying that they were finding a motel for the night. So I assume they are pressing onwards, and will arrive heaven knows when.

Dad went to bed, because he's going to church tomorrow early to resume leading, er, "facilitating" the adult RE class. I'm staying up to greet my sister, lug their stuff inside, and tuck everyone in.

I killed time earlier cleaning house. Nothing like company coming to motivate a good Solstice Eve cleaning! I've got it good enough to satisfy me at this point; the hard floors are mopped, the cobwebs are gone, the porcelin is shining, and the carpets, well, the carpet's past hope of redemption. No vacuuming will restore the carpets to decency.

UPDATE: They arrived just before two AM. We hurriedly unloaded the car, and now we're going to bed.

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The University at Buffalo readmission committee decided that my time in the Marine Corps had not ruined me for academic life, and have welcomed me back to campus starting with the Spring 2009 semester. Which starts January 12th, so I need to get up to Buffalo and register for classes before the week is out. Also to do: apartment-hunting. The university suggested I could stay in the dorms, but I'm not sure that's a good idea at this stage in my life. I'd be the "Turn down that racket you call music!" guy. And no one wants to be that guy.

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1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Paper. I wrapped professionally for a while, so I flatter myself that my presents look very nice.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Artificial. I don't have a big car to be lugging a tree around. 

3. When do you put up the tree? Haven't yet. Guests won't appear until this weekend, so we've still got time.

4. When do you take the tree down? When I remember. Might take a while.

5. Do you like eggnog? Yuck! That stuff is nasty.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? My ten-speed bike, except I have to wonder if it might have been a birthday gift instead. But the question didn't specify, so I'll run with it.

7. Hardest person to buy for? The nieces and nephew. I don't live with them, and they don't communicate well.

8. Easiest person to buy for? Me. Duh. Other than that, this year I had something in mind for Mom since about June. But most years I have trouble coming up with something for her.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Nope. Not likely to get one either.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Neither? I'm very very bad about that.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? When I was a teenager cultivating my beard, my mother gave me a shaving kit.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? "Catch Me If You Can." Leonardo DiCaprio as a forger/con man, and Tom Hanks as the FBI agent, remember? There are several critical scenes set during Christmas.

13. When do you start shopping? Between mid-October to mid-November, depending on the year.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Heck yes.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cookies that I baked myself. Putting in the work makes them even more delicious.

16. Lights on the tree? See #3… but there will be, eventually.

17. Favorite Christmas song? Pere Noel Blues by ComaR. I do not expect many of my readers to appriciate this choice. As a second answer, I love Handel's Messiah– not just the Hallalujah chorus, there's a whole oratorio there, people!

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? I'm staying with my Dad, and everyone's coming to see him.

19. Can you name all of Santa reindeer? I can.

20. Christmas Tree Topper? I have no idea. See #3.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning. Although when I was overseas and a bit homesick last year, I decided to open a present a day for a week.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Corrosive road salt. Also shoveling driveways.

23. Christmas Tree Theme or Color? Call me a wild-eyed idealist, but I think Christmas Trees should be green and brown. And the theme should be encapsulated with two words: "Christmas" and "Tree".

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Apple pie.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? For crying out loud, I've got three hundred items in my Amazon.com wishlist. Stop asking me what I want for Christmas! In fact, the list is so long I don't remember everything on it, so I'll even be surprised.

26. Who is most likely to respond to this? No one. By which I mean, if you pick any currently-living human being, the odds of them responding to this are vanishingly small: one chance in a billion would be the high end of my estimate.

27. Who is least likely to respond to this? See #26.

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The local deer were munching on the bushes in the backyard. Dad and I installed some plastic netting that's supposed to discourage them. We'll see if it works.

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I've been trying very hard to cook healthy food for Dad. As a result, I've lost six pounds myself. Almost as if there was something to this nutrition thing.

Today I was wrapping presents, and had to call my twin sister. Family tradition is that when it's time to open presents, the adults all sit in the comfy chairs and force the youngest generation to crawl around the tree, pulling out the presents and passing them to the recipients.

While wrapping a present, I realized that writing "Mom" on it would be a problem, as there will be a fair number of people in the room that answer to that description. I could have written her given name, but I doubt that the youngsters know it. So I had to call a sister and get the correct nomenclature that the youngsters use to call their mothers' mother. (It's "Grammy", for the record.)

The arrival of the presents amused me, too. The UPS truck pulled up outside, and I expected the driver to park, get out, walk the box up to the house, then deliver it. No, it's crunch time! The driver stayed in his seat, while a second guy popped out of the passenger seat and literally ran down the driveway, delivered my box, and ran back to the truck. I almost expected them to spin the tires leaving.

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I mean that title in a different metaphorical sense than is typical. Or perhaps a less metaphorical sense than normal. My eldest sister's in-laws mostly live in the area. So she and her husband are going to be attending four (4) Christmas dinners. The husband has been trying to lose weight, and four Christmas dinners is not going to help that process. Sure, you can sit down with the best of intentions, but eating is a social activity, and if everyone else is chowing down, it's tough to avoid  stuffing yourself too.

So we're going to make a little less of a giant spread than normal, and try to make it a healthier all around. I may have to make myself cookies in strict secret and hide them from all guests… for their own good, of course. Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

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Well, Paul's chimney is intact. What he heard was branches crashing onto his roof. Followed shortly by branches falling on the cable line and the power lines. So Paul's probably having a cold weekend, along with 2.5 million other people.

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I was playing an online game with my friend Paul (in Albany, NY), when his in-game avatar suddenly paused, then told me that he thought part of his chimney had fallen. Again. He left the computer to go check it out, so I waited for him. Then his computer abruptly disconnected from the server, as opposed to gracefully logging out. That's not a good sign. He're hoping Paul's century-old McMansion is still standing!

This happened at about 11 PM, which was around when I intended to quit myself. Dad's going to physical therapy tomorrow morning at eight, and I didn't feel like shoveling the driveway at seven. The weather forcast was for up to four inches of snow overnight, so I figured I'd take off whatever there was at the moment, and Dad's Subaru Forester should be able to plow overtop of what was left by morning.

I write this having just returned from shovelling off the seven inches of wet snow. And I'm not just guessing seven inches, I took a ruler with me and measured at five different places. Even more annoying is, it's still snowing at a brisk rate. I expect that I'll have to get up and do it again in the morning anyway.

UPDATE: I did indeed shovel another two inches of snow at 7:30 AM.

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Yesterday Katy went to the vet to get three immunization boosters. When she got home, she was not happy at all. I think "pouting" would be an appropriate description- she'd refuse to look at humans, turned her back at every opportunity, and generally was upset that the same people that provide food had subjected her to this indignity.

While Mom was taking the cat to the vet, I was replacing some outlets downstairs. Naturally the first one was easy, but the next one required me to run a replacement wire into a junction box in the basement. Easy sauce, just a dozen feet of wire, no fishing required, it'll take ten minutes.

Except that the box had rusted during the flood, to the screws that tightened the wire collars were pillars of iron oxide. First a spent a half hour fighting the screws, then I cut off the wires, pried the box out of the wall (an adventure in of itself, as it was well secured), and put in a new box. Most annoying. There's still more work to be done, though, as the light switch to the dining room is by the back door, which would be helpful if you're the sort of person who only enters the dining room from the back door. Also, there's a plug nearby that's connected into a highly-code-violating circuit that I want to replace. (The has a thirty-foot run of wire that uses three-conductor wire, with the two hot wires being for two different circuits, splitting at a junction box. So I'm going to replace that three-conductor wire with two normal two-conductor wires, and two new juction boxes.) [When I count conductors in wire, I'm ignoring the ground. Not that there's plenty of stuff not grounded, too.]

The new outlets I did finish mean Mom can plug her computer into a nearby outlet, instead of running power strips across the floor.

Once I get that last outlet and switch, we can get the dining room wallboards up. Finally having a finished room on the ground floor will be a good thing.

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