Linda Z

Could be, MStar. Geo and Chuck, has anyone checked your bats for cork??? Hmmmmm. Well, I'm doing worse at this than I did this morning. Could I be in a slump?

Sorry to add to the derail, but... Garth, don't you think that's a rather silly, unfounded statement? John R., for example, has made a nice living for himself and his family with his window cleaning business. And it sounds like others have, too. He's hardly expressed any "positive opinion of VPW and/or PFAL." Not everybody wants to go to college or needs to. You're sounding a bit snobbish, Garthness, not to mention grabbing at straws to connect someone's occupation with his/her opinions about twi.

Damn it, I'm supposed to be cleaning. Just sat down for a smoke break and HAD to peek in here. Now I have to try to better my score. *sigh* I'm such a pushover for distractions. :D-->

It's all in the timing of your swing, brothersimon. Ya gotta get the little bastage airborne, but not so much that he nosedives. Who'da thunk I'd be coaching you in batting??? :P-->

It's only fair. We get to walk upright and ride roller coasters and eat many of the nonhuman animals. I think it's rather nice that the animals have SOME edge. :D-->

317.1 here, and a nice little 65.7 bunt. :D--> I love when he pops up and then lands beak first in the snow. Poor li'l penguin!

Animals' five senses are more finely tuned than humans' in many ways. Maybe it's because they have less other brain-activity "noise" to interfere with their senses than we do. While I'm using my brain to wonder what I'm going to do tonight, my cat just does. While I'm stewing over whether I remembered to mail the electric bill, my dog is looking for a good spot for a nap. I think animals literally feel, hear, smell, see impending earthquakes, storms, etc. Back in the late 80s, when we had a fairly strong earthquake in N.E. Ohio, my cat was acting really weird just beforehand--pacing around, meowing anxiously, looking nervous. Now, if she could have just developed her capacity for speech , she coulda said, "Linda, grab the good china!" Or if I'd been more tuned into my cat (and more open to the possibility of an earthquake here), I might have been able to understand her "kitty warning system." :)--> Humans can fine-tune their senses, too. Take, for example, the safe cracker who learns to feel the miniscule vibration of moving tumblers in a combination lock (that's my simplistic understanding, anyway), or the heightened sense of hearing that a blind person develops to compensate for lack of sight. It's really a pretty spiffy system, this body of ours. Maybe we as humans have just dulled our senses over the centuries. Maybe at one time we could feel a coming earthquake, too, but we got too busy doing other things, like driving cars and taking out mortgages and such.

Oh, and Simon, I have a solution to your spewing Squirt problem: keep a soft, damp cloth next to your monitor and don't forget to turn your head when you cough...er, spew Squirt. And waddaya mean Hallmark doesn't want me? I'm crushed. I thought "this mess" and "Christmas" made for a perfect rhyme. They're sooooooooooo darned conventional.

Jonny, were you addressing Vickles when you said, "And oh Linda Z, you are sooo PC! Far be it from you to consider that the twisted passions of one who defies the laws of nature is wrong in order to appear before humankind as one who 'accepts all'! "But yes, you should receive the 'I accept all award' because of your 'brave' and 'avante gard' view of human sexuality..blah blah blah." Weird. I coulda sworn you were addressing me. My eyes must be failing me. Look, I don't understand the actual sexuality part of homosexuality, either, because I'm heterosexual, but I firmly believe it's not for me to judge who is attracted to/loves whom. And by the way, attraction/love are not just about sex, whether one is gay or straight. I also believe the Bible is God's Word. But unlike you, apparently, I've gotten over thinking that I understand everything it says, especially, as Vickles points out, in light of the many translations and changes it's been subjected to over the centuries--sometimes at the hands of people with an agenda that just might not truly be God's plan for mankind. Frankly, I don't much care how I "appear to humankind" or where I "fit in." I care a whole lot more about how I appear to my God, and I believe I fit in just where He wants me to. Furthermore, I'm not "accepting" of everyone. I'm pretty intolerant, for example, of child molesters and robbers and muggers of little old ladies and those who mistreat their dogs and...well, the list could go on and on, but at the top would be religious hypocrites like those herbie describes. You can assume anything you like about what I believe, how I think, and what has brought me to where I am today. Makes no difference to me, because when it's all said and done, it won't be you doing the judging of me. Thank the good Lord.

Jonny the Righteous: Kiss my tolerant donkey.

Bravo, Daryl. Well said.

Hurry up, Mister! You gotta get here soon so Exsie and I can say, "But he started it!"

I voted "I like it" because I figured that was the closest to an average of the parts I love and the parts I don't like so much. For me, the holiday is all about family. It's a time to reflect on so many Christmases of the past, when the family was much larger, and to be together and be thankful for each other. Even when I was out WOW, my parents and youngest sister came to where we lived, their station wagon loaded down with goodies. We altered a couple traditions this year, which made life simpler for all of us! Christmas traditions are only changed in our family by dispensation of the matriarch, my mom. Always in the past we've gathered on Christmas Eve for dinner and just to hang out and maybe play a game or two. We never opened gifts on that night; that activity was reserved for the Christmas Morning Unwrapping Extravaganza, which used to go on for about 4 hours (proper, polite Brit-types that we are, we open our presents one by one while everyone watches each person open each gift). Because of the obnoxious snow storm of '04, Mom suggested that we break tradition (you can't know how much this shocked her children and grandchildren) and have the Unwrapping Extravaganze on Christmas Eve, so that my son and I wouldn't have to rush back to Mom and Dad's house at the crack of dawn in the frigid cold. (We usually do that, so the festivities can proceed bright and early, before any of the younger family members burst a blood vessel in anxious anticipation.) This new plan allowed my son and me to relax in the morning, open our gifts to each other, eat a real breakfast, and head back to the family home in time for lunch. Another thing we did was agree that we'd only buy gifts for the grandchildren and for my mentally handicapped younger sister. This not only saved money, but it also relieved the stress of searching high and low for the hard-to-buy-for adults in the family. Two pluses! I must admit, I love giving gifts so it was hard to restrain myself, but it sure was easier this way! We have a few traditions unique to us. When my eldest nephew was about 4, someone gave my dad a new garden hose for his birthday. My nephew was so excited that he blurted out, as Dad was opening it, "It's a 'ose, it's a 'ose!" So now that phrase pops out of one kid or another several times during the Unwrapping Extravaganza. We also place luminaries along the driveway every year and leave cookies and milk for Santa and a carrot for his reindeer. We always tease my middle sister, now in her late 40s, who still swears she heard jingling bells and saw Santa and his sleigh soaring over the Cleveland Ford Plant. We eat too much, we laugh a lot (never can laugh too much!) and we remember those who used to share in the eating and the laughing and the love. Hmmmm, in putting this into words, I realize that the annoying parts--the shopping and wrapping and the trying to bake cookies with limited time and the occasional sarcasm we dole out to each other when stressed over the whole thing--are not bad enough to bring my rating down to "I like it." I'm officially changing my vote to "I love it."

Herbie! Get thee to the prinicpal's office! (Exsie and I will be waiting there in the hall.)

Vickles, last I knew Jesse and Dixie lived in or around Lorain, Ohio. If you need to know Dixie's married name, e-mail me and I'll send it to you. They were doing fine last I saw them, but that was probably more than 10 years ago!

Nice background, Paw. I like it much better than those Christmas trees or the dreaded BoSox logo on the baseball forum. I'm glad they won, too, but opening that page damn near blinds me. :D-->

Geo, I understand. It's a stressful time of year for a lot of people, and emotions are right at the surface. Nostalgia can quickly turn to sadness and then progress to frayed nerves. When my sisters and I were kids, we could count on the annual fight between my parents over how to decorate the Christmas tree. Or on Mom getting her feelings hurt because someone let it show that he/she didn't like a gift. As for the ungrateful children :D-->... I've learned that they never turn their noses up at gift cards and cash. In fact, my son thanked me this year for not buying him any clothes. Oh well, Happy Boxing Day, eh?!?

herbie, I tried to make a play on words on your post, but I .... it up. Why do I feel like we're all gonna be called into the principal's office?

X-rated reply (mothers, cover your children's eyes) Oh rats, I don't have special dispensation from the censors. Never mind. The joke makes no sense now. -->

Johniam: No. As Steve! said, what matters is where you live when you file for divorce, unless (as someone has suggested) you went out of the country to get one. I'm not sure, but I think you can also still go to Nevada for a "quickie" divorce. I moved to Ohio after separating from my husband, but I ended up going back to Los Angeles to file because that's where I'd been living and had established residency.

Beautiful house and beautiful song...thanks, Sudo. I only have a minute. My son, our two dogs, and my cat are patiently waiting to open their gifts and have breakfast. I'm thankful to have my son living nearby for the first time in 14 years...I was especially thankful last night when I saw all the traffic backed up trying to get into the airport as over the river and past the woods we went to grandmother's (and grandfather's) house. I'm thankful that after calling about 20 snow removal companies yesterday, none of whom answered their phones or couldn't come out if they did, that a good samaritan in a pickup truck with a plow came along and dug out our two cars that had been buried in glacial boulders by the city snow plows. After the guy left, my son looked at me and grinned and said, "A Christmas miracle, Mom." Much to be thankful for this Christmas. May you all have a blessed and joyous and safe, warm Christmas. You all (even the ones I argue politics with :D-->) mean a lot to me, and my life is richer because of you!

Thanks, Bluzeman. That song makes me smile. I still have some Donovan vinyl around. I'll have to dig it out over the long weekend.

CW, I had a big crush on Donovan, too. I reviewed a concert he did at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967 or 68, and it was certainly one of my most exciting assignments! I was damn near swooning. I actually used the word "groovy" in print in that story. I'm STILL embarrassed.

Dave, I requested Adam Sandler's song on our oldies station during Hanukkah when they asked for requests of songs performed by Jewish singers. Alas, it wasn't old enough and they didn't have it. I get such a kick out of that song. They did play "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Neil Diamond and "Goin' Down to Stony Ridge" by Barbra Streisand. I would have preferred Adam's Hanukkah song.

Ho Ho Ho My car is buried in snow The other four-wheeled sleigh Had its windshied crack today We have to go to grandma's Oh brother, what a mess I'm sure we'll somehow make it Meanwhile, Merry Christmas! Ok, it doesn't rhyme so well, but I tried. Merry, Merry Christmas to a special bunch of 9th corkers!