December 2001 Archives

We're back from our Christmas trip and are prepping the house for some relatives that are going to descend on us today.

Although we planned to go to Ft. Worth on Friday night, that didn't quite happen. Uncle Tim was in town and we took that as an excuse to delay the trip until next day (since we weren't ready, anyway) and went out to dinner with him instead. We had a great time and the food was good, as always.

So on Saturday we finished packing, loaded the Cruiser, got Homer in the trunk (so to speak) and headed to Ft. Worth. We were going to unload at Benny's and then head on to Wichita Falls, alas, that didn't happen since we always found another excuse to wait just a little longer.

So to Wichita Falls we went on Sunday and I got to meet Jennifer's relatives on her dad's side and to help make tamales. I've heard a lot about the Lucio family but all of them (Benny was one of nine kids and most of them procreated) kinda blended together. I've been now able to put faces and personalities to some of the names, but it's still a little confusing. The tamale making happened at Grandma Lucio's house. Grandma Lucio was the matriarch of the family and although she passed away a couple of years ago, you can tell that all her family still are a bit in awe of her. Her house is permeated with her presence and the influence she had on her immediate and extended family. So the tradition of Christmas tamales carries on in the next generation. Apparently her gift of cooking passed on to her daughter Hellen, because the tamales turned out wonderful. Although the preparation of tamales - making the masa, filling and assembling the things - has been traditionally done by the women in the family, I helped by preparing the corn husks and managed to fill one tamale all by myself (during the time I made mine, Martha, who's a pro at those things, made about five).

Besides making tamales, we also helped clean out the refrigerator and freezer that have been mostly untouched since grandma Lucio's time. At the bottom of the freezer was a foot thick layer of solid ice with bags of ancient tamales embeded in different strata representing Christmases past. It tooks us (well, mostly Meredith) several hours to extricate these fossils and clean out the freezer. I'm not quite sure how these tamalosaurs managed to be entombed there, since once the tamales are made (all 70-90 dozen of them) there comences a fierce battle among the relatives for the bounty. I don't know how the allotments are made, but connections are obviously important. While Jennifer and Meredith scored three dozen tamales amongst them (since I'm not a relative yet, I apparently can't make a claim), cousin Debby also sneaked Meredith another dozen under the table. With all that being said and done, the tamales were delicious. They had quite a bite to them, but not so much that it would spoil them for me.

Besides making tamales, we also wemt tp the cemetary to visit grandparents that are there, and on the way back to Ft. Worth we dropped by grandma Karl where Meredith left a dozen of her tamales (of which she then proceded to remind us every single hour for the rest of our trip).

On Christmas Eve day we went to visit Jen's mom Rita. We spend some time at their house and opened presents to and from Rita and Jerry. I scored the Cutco kitchen shears that I once used to have and that I've been missing for years. We gave Jerry a lucky bamboo plant and Rita a certificate to go shopping for a new cell phone. Around three, Jennifer, Meredith and I left for my cousin's to help with her Czech Christmas dinner.

At Hanka's we helped prepare hors d'ouvres - sliced baguette with mayonaise and cheese/ham/salami/egg/pickle/bell pepper toppings. I then got to slice the pork for Wiener schnitzel and delt with the carp. The fish was already gutted and decapitated but I first had to get rid of the scales. Little Kacka pulled her chair next to me and watched with fascination while I scraped the scales off the fish with a fork. I then had to collect the scalles into a bowl for her to play with (she was a bit upset when Ron tossed out the smelly scales later in the evening). I then sliced the fish - bones and all - into several horseshoe shaped portions. These were breaded like the schnitzel and we then fried the whole lot.

After we set up the table, Ron's family arrived and we had dinner. The fish sup was on the stove too long and was a bit thick, but it still tasted as good as any fish head soup. Everything else was perfect and I managed to not get a fish bone stuck in my throat. After dinner we sang carols by the tree and then exchanged gifts.

We left Hanka's after 10pm and headed to Denton for midnight mass. Msgnr. King was saying mass and we hope to get him to officiate at our wedding. We got to church a little early and they did some pre-midnight mass stuff that made me really sleepy. It was misc. readings from the bible interspersed with the occasional carol (which was cool by me) and the choir singing. It was a typicle small-church choir where the women outnumbered the men five to one and you really can tell. The mass was OK - the most memorable was the homily during which Msgnr. Kind several times referred to the "events on September 9th". As he was greeting people existing church after mass every other one pointed his mistake out to him (we, of course, we too cool to do that). Oh, and the best thing was the "angus dei" typo in the church program. When Meredith pointed it out, Jennifer replied that "we're in Texas, after all".

Christmas day was back at Benny's. We did breakfast and started with the gift exchange when Danny got there at 11. Everyone got lots of cool gifts. Jennifer not-so-subtly hinted for me to get off my lazy ass by giving me all sorts of tennis-related gifts. The biggest gift I received was an air-compressor and pneumatic tools - Archie is going to be soo jealous! I really need to get a propper tool box. We'll now need to buy a shed to store the stuff that's starting to accumulate in the garage. I got Jennifer a Dell Inspiron 8100 and some other goodies related to it. It (and the extra RAM I ordered online) made it on time and everything seems to work. I guess the next thing we need to do is make her Windows XP a little more secure. Jennifer and I got Danny a bed sheet set and we got Meredith a Japanese cast iron tetsubin tea pot and some tea to go with it (a very successful gift). And I got Homer a nice collar and leash set. Later that day we got to see Lord of the Ring, which was pretty darn cool - I've started to re-read the book.

Yesterday we hooked up with Rita to take her shopping for her phone. Due to Meredith scary powers of persuasion (although I think she just wore them down) we managed to get a whoipping $130 discount on a $160 phone. So Rita has a nice working phone again. We left Ft. Worth around 6:30 and made it back to Austin and managed even to watch Shrek that Jennifer gave me for my name's day.

Homer had a blast throughout the weekend since he got to play with Jason's dog Duke during most of our stay. Duke is a four month old puppy that's about Homer's color and height (although Homer is stockier). He's incredibly sweet and full of energy and is going to grow up to be one big dog (he's some sort of lab and german shepherd or pit bull mix).

Good god these Christopher Radko® Christmas ornaments are butt ugly. And they go for $30+ and are HUGE. Talk about tacky, tacky, tacky!

If you want cool and sophisticated glass ornaments, go by Pier 1 and pick up some of the ones they carry. Stick with stuff smaller than 3" because when it comes to Christmas balls, at some point bigger isn't better. And of course, for the ultimate in cool, pick one of those manufactured in the Czech Republic, 'cause glass is what we're famous for.

Santa, a.k.a. United Parcel Service, just came by the office and dropped off the one present I really needed that I was afraid wouldn't make it in time. It was only shipped two days ago and was supposed to take 3-5 days to get here. Thanks UPS, you rule!

So the only things still in transit are, more or less, stocking stuffers and I can live without them being here for Christmas.

Wow, we just wrote close to twenty Christmas cards. Yeah, they'll probably arrive after Christmas, but it's definitively a huge improvement for me over last year (an infinite improvement, considering that I sent zero cards last holidays). It's been interesting trying to come up with addresses. Once again the internet (especially Google and misc. tax rolls) have proven an invaluable resource. I even had to resort to whois, although some people really need to update their whois records :-)

I got two packs of Christmas cards at Cost Plus and the stack of the square, non-religious cards contained a note that you have to pay $0.11 surcharge on square envelopes. No way, thought I, but sure enough, USPS slaps an 11 cent surcharge on weird envelopes.

So far, one of may mail order things arrived (and I found out that I didn't order what I meant to order, but that's OK). The other ones are still in shipping, or whatever, limbo. I love UPS's tracking web site and following the magical progress of your package. Or, the lack of (a missing suite number is preventing one package to reach me at work). I hate it when some merchants don't give you that extra line to put additional address info on - or when they truncate the address or strip out non-alphanumeric characters (getting stuff send to my work address "@hand" can sometimes be difficult).

So the party last night was great. The view from the top of the Bank One building is awesome. We were on the south side (21st floor, I think) and Austin just looked flat from up there. You could see the Zilker tree and it looked tiny. I liked the food, especially the salad and desert. The pecan-crusted trout was nice but a bit too fishy.

I like the people at Jennifer's company. They all seem to enjoy each other and to be comfortable with where and how they work. None of that high turnover rate that you see in my industry.

We had our company Christmas party on Friday. It was a pot luck affair at Sara's but I think I liked it better than last year's fancier event. Our (well, Jennifer's) baked brie with pesto was voted as best dish which scored us $100. Since Friday we've been eating leftovers from the party. After a while, baked brie and shrimp get kinda old, too.

At the party we've learned that with the blessing of our board of directors our stock options got increased and we get to take the week of Christmas off!. That's three extra holidays than what we were supposed to get. This means that I'll have to use up some of my other vacation during this week. I'm sure it's going to be tough.

Over the weekend we managed to get all the Christmas gifts for my family together and Jennifer mailed them off today (she rules!) I doubt it'll make it to Switzerland by Christmas, but then my presents never do. I have several gifts on mail order and I'm dreading that they'll all arrive after I've left Austin. So far the only concrete thing I actually have in my possession is a stocking stuffer for Jennifer. Oh and I haven't even made the stockings yet.

As is my custom, I have the Christmas tree lights hooked up to The clapper. (you know "Clap On! Clap Off!"). Jennifer hates it because it's not quite deterministic.

Plus Homer manages to turn it on or off with his bark. Which, I think, is kinda neat. It would be cool if he figured out that that's what he's doing. On the other hand, maybe it would only lead to incesant barking, so I guess it's better if he's not aware of his power.

I got gas at the RaceTrac on Braker (they usually have the cheapest gas far and wide) today. All the gasoline grades at the station had the same price, $0.89 a gallon. It's weird to see the gas counter increase faster than the money counter. It's also strange to be paying the same for premium as those who got regular gas. I'm not complaining, mind you.

I went home over lunch to put up the last strand of outdoor icesickle lights since today the weather was gorgeous and it's supposed to rain on the weekend. It looks pretty neat, but I don't think Jennifer has noticed it yet, since she hasn't mentioned it. Well, she'll find out when she reads about it :-)

Baked another 100 or so gingerbread cookies last night. I used mom's recipe this time, and the dough was very different Hanka's recipe - much more dense and harder to roll out. Still the cookies turned out great and I'm looking forward to decorating them over the weekend.

Tonight's my company Christmas party which is, due to "cost saving measures" a potluck shindig at Sara's. We're bringing baked brie and, you guessed it, Christmas cookies. Jennifer is promising to bring something with sides to bake the brie in. The first time she did this dish at my house (a few years ago) the melted brie flowed down the back of my oven and it took me forever to clean it.

Speaking of melting stuff in the oven. When Molly Maid cleaned the house on Wednesday, they put away the cookie sheets and baking dishes into the oven (they always put stuff away in unexpected places). So I preheat the oven to 360F and eventually notice a plasticy smell. Well, one of Jennifer's favorite pans has a plastic lid that melted into an abstract, transparent sculpture. The pan was non-stick, so it could be salvaged, alas the lid is history.

Bush decided to withdraws the U.S. from the ABM treaty saying that

"Today, the events of Sept. 11 made all too clear the greatest threats to both [i.e. US and Russia] our countries come not from each other or other big powers in the world but from terrorist attacks who strike without warning or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."

I agree that, as 9/11 has shown, terrorist pose a greater threat than other countries, but does withdrawing from ABM makes sense. And do "the events of Sept. 11" make it more urgent? Well of course not, but whenever Bush wants to get anything passed or make some stupid move palatable he mutters his "Sept. 11/terrorist" mantra and everything is justified.

A missile defense shield will make zero difference in protecting the country from terrorists. What 9/11 has shows is that U.S. is much more vulnerable to low tech attacks. Hijacking airliners took box cutters. Mailing out anthrax (probably by domestic terrorists) took some basic lab equipment, nothing "high tech". Even if they were to develop a weapon of mass destruction, terrorists would be unlikely to be technically able to use a missile to deliver it to the U.S. (where would they be able to shoot it from?). It would be much easier to sneak it in "legitimately" on a container ship, or smuggle it into the country in a truck or boat and then deliver it to its final destination a la Timothy McVeigh. The missile defense shield is like installing a fancy and expensive security system for the upstairs window in a two story house while leaving the front door unlocked and wide open.

Even if you include "rogue states," whatever that means, a missile defense shied doesn't make sense. There are a few hostile countries that might develop the technology to deliver nuclear missiles to the U.S. they would never do it because of the retaliation the U.S. would take and for the reaction the rest of the world would have (militarily and economically.) Look at what happened to Afghanistan for "merely" harboring terrorists that killed "a few thousand" people (I'm trying to put things into perspective - not be callous). Iraq didn't fare much better and they didn't even attack any Americans.

From a technological point of view, I doubt that a missile shield would work within a decade (and look how the political world has changed in the last ten years). Right now, the missile tests are postponed whenever there are clouds because the tests would fail. I guess a rogue state would have to wait for nice weather and maybe notify the U.S. a couple of days in advance for the missile defense shield to stand any chance at all to intercept at least some of the incoming missiles. Yeah, right.

So what's going to be the effect of withdrawing from the ABM treaty? For Bush it means scoring browny points with the conservatives and he might score points with uninformed electorate. For me (a U.S. tax payer) it means my money thrown out the window. It's going to piss of U.S. allies around the world. It may cause Russia to withdraw from START treaties and China and Korea to build up their strategic missile programs.

Our outdoors Christmas lights are now officially powered through the outlet I installed. I'm da man! Actually I still need to add the faceplate, but that's trivial. I also need a better pair of pliers and some serious power tools, but that's another story.

We've made another batch of cookies last night. We had Archie, Jessica, Margaret and David over last night to help us set-up the Christmas tree and decorate cookies. I made gingerbread cookies from my cousin's recipe (they don't contain ginger and the recipe was very vague about how much spice to put into them). They turned out OK, although I think that the taste is acquired. I just now got my mom's recipe which is similar, but also includes rum, so you KNOW it's gotta be better. After we backed the cookies, we decorated them with sugar icing. It's difficult coming up with original designs for tens of gingerbread people (there's nothing wrong with a gingerbread person wearing a two-piece bikini, right?) but they all turned out quite pretty. So I have at least one more cookie recipe I want to make and then, if we run out of cookies due to all the parties we're taking them to, we may make second rounds - I definitely want to make mom's gingerbread cookies for Christmas.

What a productive Saturday! The plan for today was to string up christmas lights on the house. We had bought four boxes of icile lights last weekend but, due to bad weather, couldn't hang them. This morning was raining, too, despite what the local news and weather.com predicted. That didn't faze me too much, since I first had to install an outlet for the lights, anyway. So I ran by Home Depot to get the neccessary components and started working on the outlet.

Eventually the weather turned nicer and we managed to hang most of the lights. I discovered that I needed some more screws to finish the electric hook-up (I also discovered that you can simply run the cable under the front door - alas I was to far into the project to back out). Do we went out for dinner (portabello-proscuito pizza at Brick Oven Pizza is divine) and by Home Depot again. When we got home, I went ahead to finish the outlet and promptly managed to crack the outlet face plate, so it'll be another trip to Home Depot tomorrow.

Still, most of it got done, the lights look lovely and we should have it finished tomorrow. We also made over a hundred cookies - Jennifer made her peanut butter blossoms and I made coconut balls (no flour - just butter, sugar, cacao, egg white and coconut). We have plans for at least two more kinds of cookies for the holidays.

I had an email exchange with Patricia at brol.com about our trip to Brazil. They recently sent me a change in flight schedules which would lead to sucky connections and conflict with the Amazon river cruise. So we're trying to work out another schedule and maybe do the cruise following Recife. I hope it'll all work out and that TAM stops messing with their schedule.

We went to sing carols at the Zilker Holiday Tree tonight. People from Madrigal were going so I got to do 4-part harmony and Elizabeth and Jonathan came as well, so he got to spin with his favorite aunt. And there were lots of kids all around, so Homer got petted a lot and he didn't even seem to mind that much.

The lights on the tree this year are in red, white and blue (isn't everything?) and the pattern looked really pretty. It was a bit too warm and muggy to really feel like the holidays, but I'm hoping that we get to do some more caroling later in the season, and that it'll feel more christmasy. 37th street, here we come!

Jennifer is installing Adobe Illustrator 10.0 on her antient Dell Latitude LM laptop.

It's got 24 megs of RAM.

She also uses Microstation on that machine fairly often and used to run AutoCAD on it as well.

She's gotta be a masochist!

Today is St. Nicolas day. In my childhood I would have been visited by St. Nicolas (the bishop, not the obese elf), an angel and the devil. Hopefully I would score yummy goodies from "Mikulas" and manage to stay away from the devil's bag that he used to take away bad kids.

Happy Saint Nicolas day to everyone!

Oh no, USDA bans import of clementine oranges :-(

We have bought our first box of clementines last week and I was looking forward to more, but aparently they found larvae of the Mediterranean fruit fly in some of the fruit (well, I hope not in our fruit) so they're banning them from southern states. Maybe we can get Meredith to sneak us some when she comes for christmas from New York.

"Ginger" or "IT" has been revealed and it's name is Segway. The vehicle or device is pretty intriguing and I hope that I get to ride one some day. Although I can see its industrial applications, I wonder whether it will have much success in the consumer space, beside maybe as entertainment.

If it does, it probably won't be here in the US since a lot of our infrastructure is geared towards car travel. But in more densely packed cities (Europe, Asia, developing world and some parts of the US) this thing actually might fly.

I can envision arriving in St. Gallen (Switzerland) and renting a Segway at the train station and using it while shopping in the (pedestrian) center of the town.

Since the weather outside is frightful, we're hanging pictures on the walls instead of putting Christmas lights on the roof.

Jennifer is not completely pleased with where all pictures go. She just flipped me off!

We went to Tim's last night to watch the UT-Colorado game and partake in his fried turkey. The game was pretty exciting but would have been so much better if UT had actually won. There were way too many mistakes - I bet Simms feels aweful. At least the turkey was pretty good.

Madrigal on Friday was wonderful. We arrived a bit early, got stuff at the cash bar and hooked up with Meredith and Michael and then met other people we knew. The carols from the balcony were lovely. I always wondered how well people in the lobby could here them - well they're heard loud and clear. I couldn't help but sing along.

Our table in the hall was very good and the play started moving pretty quickly - although it was a while before we got wassail. The script was very funny but it was the actors that really pulled it off. All of them were good and some were simply excellent. The guy playing Sebastian had an excellent feel for his role and his great sense for comedy. We couldn't believe that he was a first-time actor.

Cayla had split the singers into two choirs this year - one mixed and one all women. Both were great. It was a bit difficult watching from the sidelines since I know half the choral pieces they sang and really wished I had been on the stage with them. The wenching was really good, too. Our table was visited by a group of newbies and they sang well, with enthusiasm and knew all the word - yay to Alice and anyone else responsible for this. We also enjoyed Aaron's juggling and Kat's belly dancing.

Overall I liked the food - the chicken was just right but the bread pudding was no trifle :-(

So the holidays are on for me and I'm looking forward to going caroling next Friday at Zilker with the Madrigal crowd. Let's hope the weather will be nice by then.