Countdown to zero hour

With less than 24 hours to go before the big launch, I've been running around like a crazy person trying to get everything ready in time for tomorrow's New Year's day opening.

Yikes!

Wish me luck!

A tale of two kitties

I thought to counter some of the scary and depressing headlines appearing this past week, I would post some pictures of my two adorable cats, Moxie (the skinny one on the left) and Nomad (her much fatter brother on the right). Here they both are checking out the world beyond from our front door. How's that for cuteness?

We adopted both of them separately from local shelters. Nomad came home first, and then Moxie a few weeks later. They got along famously right away and now are best friends.

Nomad is a very gentle animal. We named him thus because he can't sit still - he always has to get up and move around after a few minutes. He loves rolling on his back to have his big white belly petted.


And Moxie, a tortie, was a stray and had six babies who all died before she was found by a rescue group. She's very sassy. She's also a scrappy, brave little kitty who has plenty of moxie to have survived as she did.


Feel the kitty love!

Not just a trite cliche

I have been riveted by the headlines this past week, disenheartening to begin with but even more so considering they all are coming on the heels of Christmas, a time supposed to be of renewed hopes for goodwill to all, world peace, and "joy to the world."

From where I stand, these sayings look to be just mere platitudes, cliches that are uttered as lip service to mark the holiday.

Assassinations, murders, riots, and priests beating each other up with brooms at a church in Bethlehem (granted, the headline "Rival priests brawl inside Bethlehem church" is pretty funny, and not something you would expect to see.)

Still - joy to the world, it ain't.

As we mark down the approaching New Year, here is to renewing and carrying through in our hopes for peace, to proving that all our holiday goodwill is not just a trite cliche to be uttered and then forgotten.

As a side note, I went on Amazon today to look for Benazir Bhutto's autobiography "Daughter of Destiny," and not surprisingly, the price had been jacked up to $99!

You'll shoot your eye out!

Holiday highlights:

1. Watchng all 24 hours of "A Christmas Story" marathon. Fa ra ra ra ra!

2. My new TomTom, from my sister and brother-in-law. I love it! I've been wanting one of these GPS devices ever since I saw my sister's Garmin work its magic: we were right outside of Pittsburgh on a roadtrip, and when dinnertime rolled around, we both got a craving for sushi. Being unfamiliar with our surroundings was not a problem: we had the Garmin look up sushi restaurants within a certain radius of our current location, programmed it in, and it led us straight there like a pair of locals on back roads we wouldn't otherwise find. It was great.

I also take a lot of roadtrips with friends and to visit friends, and combined with the fact that I have no sense of direction and always get lost, the TomTom is made for people like me. This will be especially useful for my occasional trips to Philadelphia because the part where Wilmington and Philadelphia split never fails to confuse the hell out of me. The signage is awful there. But with my TomTom, no more looking stuff up on Mapquest and no more squinting at a printout of the directions while driving. I'm on my way, baby!

Thanks, sis! You're the best!

3. One of my friends has this awesome recipe for a dessert she calls fruit pizza. I made it for my family for an early Christmas dinner.

4. Our unique mix of Jewish/Catholic traditions for Christmas Eve: Chinese food takeout for dinner (Jewish) followed by Midnight Mass (Catholic).

5. Christmas night at the movies with a few hundred other people. Evidently everyone else had the same idea we had. We saw I Am Legend, which was alternately creepy, sad, riveting, and disappointing. There was also this part that was hard for me to watch, as all animal lovers and pet owners will no doubt find hard to watch as well.

6. Finaly, this magpie's Christmas gifts from Mr Hazel: a bracelet with little diamonds and a pair of amethyst earrings. Sparkly!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Track Santa's whereabouts!

This Christmas Eve, NORAD (yes, that's right - the North American Aerospace Defense Command) is tracking Santa's whereabouts and refreshes his location every five minutes on their world map.

From the North Pole, Santa and the reindeers made their way over Russia. And as of 8:32 pm, it appears that Santa has already hit most of the eastern hemisphere and is starting on South America. He is currently in Venezuela.

Keep track of his journey on NORAD's site.

Christmas by candlelight

Picture this: a hushed, darkened concert hall. A single soprano voice rising above, singing the first verses of Once in Royal David's City. Then a whole chorus of voices takes up the song as a long line of candles float up both sides of the aisles onto the stage, their voices swelling in the darkness, the long procession of candles casting an eerie, yet beautiful, glow.

I got chills.

When I played for the symphony orchestra in college, every Christmas we would perform Handel's Messiah to the whole community. It got to be that it wouldn't feel like Christmas without hearing the strains of Comfort Ye, or the Hallelujah Chorus, where the whole audience would stand up, following tradition.

But now that I don't play it anymore, I've missed hearing beautiful, traditional and classical Christmas songs (somehow, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer just doesn't cut it). The candlelight concert on Saturday was a wonderful substitute.

It also brought to mind something my dad once told me. Although we were Catholic, he and my mom would go to the Protestant churches while we were still living in Manila to listen to their choir at Christmastime, because the Catholics had nothing on the Protestants when it came to their choirs.

At the end of Saturday's concert, the chorale once again took their candles and slowly processed out of the dark concert hall humming Silent Night.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Today marks the beginning of winter, the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, and the opposite in the southern. I've always thought it must feel so strange to have summer in December for the Australians.

As the saying goes, it is always darkest before the dawn - after today, the days begin to grow longer and longer. The countdown to the spring equinox begins!

It seems premature to think about spring just yet with Christmas just around the corner. (Are you ready? Did you finish all your last minute shopping?) In medieval times, the winter solstice marked the beginning of a scary period because of the lack of food, water, heat, and light. They burned yule logs to stave off the darkness and cheer themselves up. Today, our celebration of Christmas during the darkest days of the year stems from this practice, with all our twinkling lights and holiday cheer.

Tonight my family and I are going to a Christmas candlelight concert. The chorale is supposed to march in to the darkened concert hall carrying candles while singing Christmas songs. I hope I don't start bawling!

From all of us here at Hazel Designs, Merry Christmas and happy winter solstice!