Return of the Useless Blob! The site that hosted the useless blob and the 100 percent Useless Personality Quiz Thingie took down the images to save on bandwidth, so I uploaded them to my own site, but am leaving the links to that persons page, so no one thinks they are mine. Do NOT link to them on my page, please, as I don't wish to have the same bandwidth issues she had, and would be forced to take them down as well. Thanks.

Santa Today at work I listed to a couple of people talk about how they found out Santa wasn't real when they were kids. I don't really remember how I found out. Maybe I heard some kids at school say it, or ask me if I "still believed" in him or something. I do remember asking my mother if it was true he wasn't real, and crying. I remember my parents telling me about how when I was around one year old, how they took me to get my picture taken on Santa's lap, and he scared me, and I cried, and my dad had to back me up onto his lap because I wouldn't go. And I remember some years, when we lived in Charlotte, we'd drive to Tennessee to spend Christmas with my grandparents, and I'd be worried that Santa wouldn't be able to find me. And it worried me when my parents blocked the chimney of the fireplace in my grandparent's house to keep the birds from roosting in it. How could Santa get down the chimney if it's blocked? I think I finally reasoned that if he's magical enough to fit through that little tiny chimney as fat as he is, then he can unblock a chimney log enough to come down it. That was the same explaination I came up with when I wondered how Santa got into the houses of kids that didn't have fireplaces or lived in apartments or something. I would be so excited I couldn't sleep, and a lot of times I just stayed up in the bed singing Christmas songs to myself and my mom would come in after a while and tell me to stop singing and go to sleep, or Santa wouldn't come. When we moved to a house in Tennessee, we had a fireplace and it had an iron door in front of it, and I thought it was so cool to wake up Christmas morning to find that door left hanging open when it was firmly closed the night before. My dad used to write notes from "Santa" thanking me for the milk and cookies, too. It's nice thinking back and recapturing some of the joy and innocence from my childhood. It's enough to make me wish Santa *was* real, so that I could be excited and try to stay awake to hear the jingling of bells on a reindeer's harness as he flew over my house.

Stupid Signs A few months ago the state started putting up these electronic billboard type signs at various intervals over the interstates. They took *forever* doing it, and I figured they would be for traffic advisories and things like that. This weekend they *finally* got them up and running. This morning, driving to work, I pass one of those signs, and a couple miles later I run right into dead-stop traffic from the interstate being closed due to blasting for some construction. Of course, these oh so expensive signs didn't say a thing about that. All the signs have the annoying slogan "Booze It And Loose It" on them. Helpful. And about as annoying as the commercials and signs in the area that proclaim "Click It Or Ticket". Blarg.

Robbie As I was driving Sarah, my step-daughter, hither and yon for various Christmas pageants and concerts, she told me that one of her friend's mothers, one with whom she frequently spends the night, said that I shouldn't be friends with Robbie. Nevermind that he's my oldest friend, we knew each other in high school, and is pretty much the *only* friend that I ever hang out with and talk to a lot. I shouldn't have him as a friend. Not because he's gay, or anything else like that... simply because he's a *male*. This woman is so close-minded, she can't even comprehend that a female can have a male friend, especially a *married* female. She couldn't even fathom my going off and hanging out with him by myself, without my husband. What bothers me is why this woman, the mother of Sarah's friend, would be bothered by this? Does she think I'm going to cheat on my husband with my best friend? Does she think my best friend is going to "make a move" on me, after some 8 or 9 years? Or it is just one of these things that "just isn't done"... I don't know. What's kind of sad in a way is that my mother felt the same way, but to a lesser degree. She trusts Robbie, and he calls her "mom" and stuff. It just bothered her that maybe it would upset my husband. I'd say something about going off and doing something with Robbie, and she'd say something like, Doesn't that bother Daryl? And I'd say, why would it bother Daryl? It wasn't until my mother found out Robbie's gay that it stopped bothering her that I hung out with him. Maybe now she'll start worrying about Daryl hanging out with Robbie without me... Robbie still gets the biggest kick out of telling people how, on the day of my wedding, my mother came up to him and said something along the lines of "I always thought it would be you two getting married."

Christmas As I sit at work, I generally have nothing better to do than stare at the monitor, type a lot, and let my mind wander. Today, given the season and all, my mind has wandered to, you guessed it, Christmas. I'm not really thinking about anything in particular, really... just a bunch of different thoughts jammed together that probably only make sense to me. Now, I think it's possible, indeed, probable, that there was a Jesus. That he was the, literal, son of god, I'm rather dubious about. Maybe it was a philisophical thing. Didn't he say that we are *all* sons and daughters of god? Eh, I don't know. I'm certainly not an expert on these things. Anyway, so we have Christmas... this huge, consumerized, and most of all, annoying celebration of the birth of someone that only Christians believe in, yet is seemingly celebrated by one and all. Or is it... I don't really see a lot of um... NON Christians where I work and live, being that I'm in the veritible belt buckle of the bible belt, and can't throw a stick without hitting 12 Christians, and/or a church, but I don't imagine that the Jews, Muslims, Hindu's and other religions of the world generally care a great deal about Christmas. And yet, when Christmas rolls around, there's examples of it EVERYWHERE. You can't drive down the street without running into a ton of crappy, annually drug out Christmas decorations. You can't go to work or shopping or anything without coming across more people out proclaiming "Merry Christmas" to one and all, nevermind that most of them are run ragged worrying about Christmas presents, cards, parties, and are hardly very "merry" at all. And everywhere you go you're admonished with constantly ringing bells to give give give to the poor ladies in wheelchairs outside K-Mart in the freezing cold, so that people who never give a thought to the underpriviledged may feel better about themselves because they tossed a dollar in the little bucket during this, the season of giving. Stores are crowded, prices are high, people are generally cranky and stressed... all so the Christians can celebrate the birth of Jesus, when, in fact, the birth of Jesus isn't really on their minds at all, or if it is, it involves all the spiffy little programs that they are going to or participating in at their church. We have all the traditional Christmas things... trees, lights, gift giving, jolly fat men in red suits, stuffing yourself on food, and visiting family you don't want to see and haven't seen since *last* Christmas. I'm sure there's some historical significance as to why a pine tree is supposed to bring to mind Jesus's birth... after all, I'm sure there were a plethora of pine trees in Jerusalem at the time, right? And there was an abundance of happy, fat, white-bearded men in bright red suits in Jerusalem, too. But how are all these things supposed to bring to mind the poor, hard birth in a stable, of Christianity's greatest icon and probably the most well known religious figure in the world? I know when I see chincy decorations lining the streets I think of how hard Mary had it, giving birth in a stable, surrounded by animals and giving birth to a child she didn't even get to have the fun of conceiving, don't you? And I'm sure that all the non-Christians are sick to death of the constant reminders at this time of year that their religion isn't as celebrated and accepted as Christianity. Everwhere I go I see city sponsered events and decorations paid for by the city. How is this a separation of church and state? I don't see our tax dollars going to work on other, non-Christian celebrations and decorations. Where's the Hanukkuh, Ramadan or Lughnasadh decorations? No fair having state sponsored religious events, especially when they're only Christian events! Could it be construed as an un-offical declaration of Christianity as the "official" religion?

Of course, now, I don't really "celebrate" Christmas like I did when I was living at home. And generally, as a child, Christmas was just the time I got lots of fun gifts, and oh yeah, I guess that Jesus guy is kinda cool, too, cuz I'm getting gifts. Don't get me wrong here. I was raised in a Christian home, and we had the nativity, and we went to the church things, and wore little pins that proclaims "Jesus is the reason for the season" and such. But as a child, do you really care what all the fuss is about as long as you get gifts? And of course, from the time I started doing music things around six years old, Christmas became the time of Christmas performances. The best part of being in piano lessons, bands, and choirs. Where we got to sing and play all the fun Christmas carols. From the age of around 12 I was generally asked by local churches to sing Christmas songs. Even now, married, and unaffiliated with religion in general as I am, my father still gets me to sing at his church. And I do... not because I want to celebrate Jesus's birth, but because I *love* to perform and don't get much of an outlet for it anymore. We have a small tree up in our home now. I just put it up a few days ago. It's really nothing special, and it's the easiest thing to put up. It's just a small tree with fiber optic filiments all through the branches that light up and sparkle in different colors. It's really very pretty. And all I have to do is take it out of the box, fit the tree onto the stand, arrange the branches and make sure the fiber optic strands are evenly arrayed, and plug it in. Ta da. Instant festivity. We probably wouldn't even have that if it wasn't for Sarah. We have to have something to put the presents under for her, right? So we'll do the gift-giving, and we'll do the big Christmas dinner at my parents, and we'll go to the Christmas pageant at church... but it doesn't really mean anything to us in any religious way. It's just the done thing. When Sarah's grown up and my parents are too old to spend days making a huge meal that will be gone in an hour, I wonder what I'll find myself and my husband doing.

Have you read John Grisham's "Skipping Christmas"? It came out last year around this time. It's a funny short book about a well-off couple whose daughter isn't going to be home for Christmas this year. The husband's an accountant, and after looking at the outrageous amounts of money they spend on throwing a party, buying gifts, clothes, decorations, cards, the whole shebang, decides that since their daughter isn't going to be there for Christmas, they should just skip it altogether, and take all the money they *would* have spent and go on a tropical cruise instead. They decide to not go to any parties, not give or receive any gifts, not donate to the neighbourhood Christmas fund-raisers, not put up the decorations. They find out just how hard skipping Christmas is, as their neighbourhood tries to get them to join in. How will their neighbourhood win the award if they don't all have up their matching Frosties? What do you mean you're not giving to the police or firemen or boy scouts? How can you not throw your annual Christmas Eve party? I highly recommend reading it, it's quite amusing.

Well, this post has gone on quite longer than I thought. I'm not really sure what the whole point is supposed to be, but oh well, I'm sure you get the idea. I should get back to typing the meaningless drivel that constitutes my job. Merry Christmas. Bah.

Blarg It amazes me how people think that if they don't understand something, then it doesn't make sense. For example, recently, we (finally) got new computers at work. We share computers, and just sit wherever there is an available desk. So, when you log on to a computer for the first time, you have to set it up the way you like it, the desktop, sounds, email preferences and everything. When you log back onto that computer, they'll be there, but if you log onto a computer you haven't sat at yet, you have to set it up on that on. One girl couldn't figure out why she couldn't check her mail, despite the large memo's tacked into every cubicle explaining how to set up your email account on a shared PC and explaining that you have to do this on *every* computer. She hadn't set it up on her computer yet, but she just expected it to remember from... I don't know... some other computer she sat at. Apparently, computers are just supposed to be all interconnected and know her settings when she hasn't even set them up yet. When she was told she had to set up her email *every time* she sat at a computer she hasn't sat at yet, she said, "Well that just don't make sense!" Apparently everyone sitting around her agreed with her, but me. Blarg. Some people shouldn't be allowed near computers.