December 2002 Archives

I'm working very hard to get Jennifer to keep up the Czech Name's Day tradition and give me gifts on my Patron Saint's day. I would be successful, too, if it had not been for my mom two years ago when she proclaimed that "you only do this for kids" when Jennifer was the only person who gave me something on my Name's Day. Still, Jennifer does not fail to give "me" a DVD that she wants every December 26. This year she didn't bother to wrap Spider-Man, although she claimed she didn't need to because it comes shrink wrapped from the store. That's what happens when you get married!

Christmas was very nice. I had a lovely call with my family on the 24th and then left Austin two hours later than I intended to. Traffic was good and I made it easily to Houston. Dinner was at Kathleen's and there were over 30 people there. After appetizers, food and drink there was a very active and tumultuous white elephant gift exchange. All the gifts were pretty neat. I ended up with a purse that I stole from somebody else for Jennifer through a complicated three-way exchange. She ended up with picture frames and a huge Toblerone but then exchanged the frames for a Margarita set.

After the white elephant we did our gift exchanges and I cleaned up pretty nicely, thank you very much. The we hang out and didn't leave Kathleen's until after one AM when Margaret called that Homer had dismantled their screen door and was barking incessantly. We missed an exit on the way and drove an extra 15 miles.

On Christmas day we did church in the morning, took a nap and then went to Felicia's for her Christmas Day dinner. It was another big crowd and delicious food and lots of visiting, etc. We left Houston at 8:30 and I made it back to Austin in just over two hours. Not bad at all!

Yeah, I know it's only the 24th, but that's Christmas for me. In a couple of hours I get to call my family in Switzerland for the annual Christmas Eve call. Then it will be off to Houston to meet up with Jfer and her family. And I still need to get Homer something for Christmas, too.

I think I got most of my holiday things done, but there are a few intended or considered things that didn't get around to: buying and putting up chocolate tree ornaments (available from Costco), baking more than four kinds of Christmas cookies, baking a vanocka. And while I wasn't planning it this year, there will come a time where I too cook my very own Christmas carp. Oh well, there is only so much time.

Y'all have a very merry holiday season and enjoy you friends and family.

We decorated the tree on Tuesday and as usual, I hooked up the lights to the clapper. So now whenever Homer gets into barking mode (his unsuccessful way of trying to get us to play with him) the tree lights go randomly on or off. I don't think he's aware of his power, though.

Last Friday was my company's holiday party. This year it was at Sake on Sixth, a pretty good sushi bar in downtown Austin. The company is back to a size where everyone can be at a party without it being crowded, which is actually nice. Still, it wasn't until the game of musical chairs that everyone got funky.

I've never been at a all-you-can-eat sushi buffet where the sushi was good and the sashimi was plentiful - usually you're faced with a bunch of crappy California rolls. The presentation was quite unique, in that some of the sashimi were served on a sushi girl - a lovely young lady covered in flowers and raw fish. Apparently it's all the rage in Japan and Europe and "had never been done in Austin". It was, er, interesting and I must admit that the yellow fin tuna I picked off her was quite tasty. Still, it's not your average company party decor I kept wondering whether the health department would approve.

I have set up my new computer yesterday, and it is oh so sweet. Despite the put-downs I had to endure at work where it was delivered, it's truly a cool machine. The overall look is so neat and the display is very crisp. However, I think I'll have to spend some time getting used to MacOS X. Hopefully my Amazon Wishlist will be used this Christmas... Also, it's going to take me forever to transfer everything from my old mac (finding everything on my old mac is the hard part). I also need to install the software I bought and tools and mySQL, etc. Then I need to decide whether to use Entourage or the Mail application on the iMac. Any suggestions?

And I'm kind of thinking that it should get a pretty mouse to complement it, maybe this Kensington?

Jfer and I went to a panel discussion last night part of The Journey of Dead Man Walking symposium sponsored by UT's Humanities Institute. It was the third in a series of five parts - we've missed the first two, but we have tickets to the next one, the Dead Man Walking opera and plan to go to the last on as well.

Last night's panel discussion featured Sister Helen Prejean, the author of the book, and Jake Heggie, the composer of the opera and was moderated by UT professor Evan Carton. The discussion was mixed with members of ALO and two local elementary schools performing parts of the opera. It was quite and captivating event. Both Sister Helen and Jake Heggie are captivating speakers that clearly convey their convictions and involvement. Listening to them talk about their work makes me read the book and rent the movie and we are very much looking forward to the opera.

The death penalty is such a polarizing issue here in America and the Sister very convincingly presented her views as to why it's wrong for our society to be putting people, even guilty-as-sin murderers, to death. She has been involved both with death row inmates - she mentioned that of the six that she has accompanied to death have were guilty and the rest have been either innocent or not competent - as well as with victims families, although she's more often viewed as an adversary by the latter. I wished that they had brought somebody from the other side of the argument to the panel as well. As it was, it felt a little like the Sister was preaching to the choir.

Personally I have had mixed feelings about capital punishment. There are such horrendous crimes where death seems to the least you can do to the criminal and that used to seem justification enough to me. Yet I think now that capital punishment, despite what its proponents say, is much more about vengeance than about justice - especially considering some of the people that are being put to death. Look at the statistics, a tremendous portion of death row inmates is poor, black, uneducated and/or mentally ill or retarded. But even executing those that do not have the cards stacked against them like that just doesn't feel right to me. I don't think society is any more at danger from a life-behind-bars prisoners than from an executed one. And there is nothing you can do about the later if he turns out to be not guilty after all - as too many death row inmates turn out to be.

Several years ago the husband of a friend was senselessly murdered. My visceral reaction to this event was that I wanted to see those punks put to death - not as a determent or to "protect society" but simply because they deserved no better and there they'd never amount to anything half as worthwhile as the wonderful husband and father whose life they took away for kicks. I've heard about his family's pain and have seen the toll it was taking on my friend years after the event. Yet the widow pleaded on the murderers behalf against capital punishment - and there wasn't any doubt about guilt in that case. I had a difficult time understanding that she would go out of her way and do this. Yet putting them to death would not bring her husband back or make her feel any better. By pleading for their life she rose high above those men and made a strong point about the sanctity of life - everyone's life. I think that's something that we as a society should strive for as well.

My so-called "friends" informed me almost-after-the-fact that Zilker caroling was going on tonight. Too bad we missed it, it's the perfect cold and drizzly night that makes you appreciate a smoky yule log without freezing too much. I guess we'll do the Zilker thing some other time, but it's just no the same when the carols are not polyphonous :-|

Put up the christmas lights today. I must say it went much faster than last year, since the roof clips were already attached to the strands and they (the icicle strands) weren't as tangled up as last year. Jfer also installed the electric luminaires she bough three years ago. I kept humming "It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas" (as well as "I'm feeling Japanese" which has been stuck in my head ever since we saw Jack Ass). The tree should be up next weekend.

So while at Home Depot, getting stakes for Jfer's luminaires, I picked up and anchor kit for our shed and put in a special order for an attic for the shed. The attic should arrive at Home Depot in a couple of weeks but the anchors I had today. And since "installation is easy", after I was done with the lights I decided to instal the anchors. Although it doesn't sound that tough, it actually requires quite a bit of force to manually screw an auger three feet into the ground. I managed to get two of them that deep and the other two were stopped at about two feet depth by a root or rock or something. Hopefully they'll hold in a storm.

Tonight we're making our first batch of Christmas cookies. I have combined my mom's and my aunt's gingerbread recipes (my mom's got rum in it while my aunt's got butter), and I substituted clementine for lemon zest because that's what I had at home, and they have turned out great - even better than last year. We're going to get up early and decorate them, since we plan to take some to a Christmas party in the afternoon. Also, I've learned that if you bake anything that's brushed with egg, do not expect non-stick cookie sheets to perform as their name might suggest. Egg is an excellent glue and teflon is no match for it. So when in doubt (or even if there is no doubt whatsoever) use paper on your cookie sheets.

I spent the evening scanning proofs of our wedding pictures and tweaking my photo album script to display them. The pictures can be seen on our wedding site. If anyone is interested in any prints (especially of the Lucio and Karl family pictures), please let us know.