« 18 december 2005 - 24 december 2005 | Main | 01 januari 2006 - 07 januari 2006 »

29 december 2005

A Quarter-Century Requital

Christmas isn't about Christ. Christmas was a pagan ritual stolen by the Romans and turned into Saturnalia. And that was a feast where men gave presents to other men (because women weren't real people in the eyes of Rome) and ate a lot and had sex with each other.

In fact, Protestants (perhaps the Methodists) banned celebrations of Christmas. Probably because the Pilgrims figured that Jesus will hate you if you hold a pagan ritual on his birthday.

So one thing lingers as personally important to me, and that is the family Christmas Eve dinner at my parents' house. Even more specifically, my Dad's turn at public speaking (well, at least in front of the family) when he says his own homespun Grace.

IsightMy personal contribution was the idea that I could “be there” by putting together the technology they, for the most part, had around them. My brother Sam has a new iBook. Marie and Jack have an iSight camera and a broadband connection. I had Brother Sam go out and pick up an Airport ExpressIndexhand06072004 to complete the project. So: Mac OS X Tiger + iChat + iSight + iBook + Airport Express = Family Teletogetherness®! Sam sat his iBook on the Dinner table at the far end of the table from my Dad's seat, set my own video feed (I have an iSight camera, too) to the full screen of the iBook and aimed the camera at Dad. So at 15 fps, there was my father, saying grace right in front of me. I dare say it was one of the better ideas I've ever had.

During the prayer, my father mentioned my mother's long joke about paternity—a recap: first it was “you know, kids, you always know who your mother is but you can never be sure who your father is” and later more precipitously to my father, “ok, ok, two out of the three of them are yours, but I'm not saying which two”.

This latter comment has gone on for some time; it's one of our funniest traditions. Dad will call me up and leave voicemail “This is your father-I-think”, and my mother will sign all birthday cards “Love, Mom and Dad(??)”. So my dad, in his grace over the Christmas Eve Dinner, says, “I don't care if I'm the father or not: they're all my kids. He then pauses, as he does in order to refocus on his notes, and adds, ”All ten of them!“

I was laughing my ass off, forgetting that they could all see and hear me just as I could see and hear them.

After 25+ years of Mom owning the tactical advantage on the running paternity joke, my father, in one fell swoop, steals it back.

And that, dear readers, is a sublime example of the True Meaning of Christmas: family. Family is what you make it. DNA is only part of the story.

Technorati Tags


Posted by jeff at 10:12 am | Comments (5) | TrackBack

27 december 2005

I'm Bifocal!

So I knew this was coming. I knew it because it's something that happens to both gay and straight people, typically when they hit their 40s.

Oh, you might think the cause would be fatigue or too much experience, but no. It's simply a function of age.

Get your minds out of the gutter (no wait, don't). Presbyopia is the culprit, chil'ren. I realized it about three weeks ago, when I'd get headaches—and if you've seen the size of my head, you'd know that's somethin'.

So as a temporary fix, I decided to get some $9.99 reading glasses at Walgreens. I called up Marie and asked her how I'd figure out the ones that were right for me. I ended up with +150s with no real confidence that I did the right thing: I only got the +150s because all the +125s were ugly.

Then, being out of practice with glasses, I lost 'em. So on Christmas Eve, I'm at the Walgreens trying on other lens strengths. I settled on the +200s: in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

Well, today I went to see the Eye Goddess, also known as Kathleen Kennedy to do the right thing.

So I'm going to wear glasses again. At least when I read—so far, so good with using my Mac(s). So the glasses have progressive lenses. That means bifocals, essentially, with a smooth transition between the reading part and the regular part. There is no prescription, per se, for the regular part, save to correct for very mild astigmatism, and the reading-glasses part is only +125.

But....bifocals.

Sssssrrriussssssly.


Technorati Tags


Posted by jeff at 11:33 pm | Comments (8) | TrackBack

26 december 2005

Need a Little NYE

Could this year please be over NOW?

I'm not looking forward to ringing in the new year, officially, with many of the very same others who caused 2005 to suck so much, so often. So much am I dreading it that I'm giving very serious consideration to being apart from my partner because of it. And so I just thought if tonight were NYE, then logistics would decide for me.

It would be so easy, in moments like these, to extinguish the light of decency and fairness and optimism and hope inside me and just turn Republican.

I wonder if this is how it usually happens.

Technorati Tags

Posted by jeff at 06:09 pm | Comments (5) | TrackBack