Moe Lane

…You should have seen this post before I edited it to hide the effects of a drink-heavy dinner with my wife (my sisters and mother have taken the children out bowling). Beers and Irish coffee can have a profound effect on a man, particularly when he no longer drinks competitively. Best of all, the bar was maybe a block away, with no dangerous streets to cross while on foot and half in the bag (to quote the folk sayings of my ancestors). Whee!

I hope everybody has had a good Christmas, so far. It’s been pretty painless for me and mine, equally so far. Hope that continues until I’m safely back home…

…that I have been ORDERED by my wife to take the dang vacation, for once. I am to relax and not foam at the mouth over deadlines, because it is CHRISTMAS and everybody else is taking the week off.  I would contest this… except, of course, I cannot.

I will still check in from time to time, over the next week or so.  When I need to RELAX and HIDE. So, probably a couple of times a day.

The schedule’s gonna be wonky because it’s a holiday coming up, so in no particular order:

• Two days left for Amazon two-day shipping by Christmas!
• Looking for that special gift for hard-working (ha!) blog-writers? Try their Patreon!
• …Or you could contribute to the American Red Cross.
• Or Toys for Tots. Hey, they have expenses.
• Or the Safe Water Network; they have a good rating from Charity Navigator and I like clean water programs. Clean water and no warlords; lock those two down, and you’ve got a good shot at achieving the rest.

…So maybe that wasn’t as crassly commercial as I thought it’d be.  Ach, well. Christmas, amirite?

If you Christmas shop at Amazon via this link, you put money in my pocket at no cost to you. Which is always true about Amazon links generally.  I don’t bring it up, much, but it is Christmas time and people are gonna shop anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: If you don’t want to give me money I’m pretty sure that there’s still somebody else out there more to your tastes who wouldn’t mind the affiliate traffic, either. Or who might just really, really need it. I’m pretty blessed, honestly.

…and this popped out of the maker:

That's no pizzelle… #starwarschristmas pic.twitter.com/71QtFeHDUF

— Moe Lane (@moelane) December 24, 2015

Merry Christmas.

You’ll start laughing, happily, about four and a half minutes in.  If you don’t… well, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope things get better for you.

We’re one of those benighted families that use an artificial tree – in our defense, we travel a lot during Christmas season – so today I finally succumbed to my kids’ nagging and we put it up.  This was the first year that the kids really noticed all those ornaments that they had to make in years gone by, so that was nice.  Now all I have to do is keep answering “I don’t know” to repeated inquiries of “Will it snow on Christmas?”…

Before I get too… cranky. Heh. In every sense of the term.

There was a pretty good Christmas song at the supermarket tonight.  I shouldn’t have liked it, but I did; good beat. Something about how every day was Christmas when it was spent with the singer’s (female) love interest.  And now I can’t remember the name.

And they wonder why people can’t stand them.

The Wadena city council voted unanimously but hesitantly to remove a beloved nativity scene from a city park Tuesday night.

Mayor George Deiss says for as long as anyone in Wadena can remember the nativity scene has been displayed at Burlington Northern Park. It used to be in the band shell, but was moved to the heart of the park last year and caught the eye of a resident.

(more…)

…regular posting will resume tomorrow.  Or, rather, that the current changes to the schedule keeps us here and recovering from the Plague, and not traveling which dear God I don’t want to do now. I just want to sleep.

The Christmas whirl. The wrapping, the visits, the last-minute food purchases, the road trip, and the constant need to not snap like a brittle twig under the strain. I’m not a devotee of Festivus, but I can see where that holiday might appeal to people…