The stockings were hung by the replica statue of David with care, in hopes that his nuts would not be too visible in the cold winter air.
Making sure things are hung for Christmas seems to be the easy part of things, the more challenging is arranging a holiday event that is consistent with the goals of the season. This means that I need to coordinate food, music, my mood and other things to work well with each other, as well as with some sort of “seasonal protocol”. Food is by far the hardest though, everyone has such delicate tastes this time of year. Then there are the people who are allergic to everything, certain measures must be made to accomodate them. Food seems to be such a huge part of culture. It isn’t easy to find things seasonal that taste good. The most “typical” Christmas dessert is fruit cake, but no one likes it and no one under 70 eats it (for those Alton Brown fans out there, yes it is Good Eats when it is done properly, but I mean the typical brick variety).
So far for tommorrow I have completed:
Arctic S’mores
Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies (the gooey kind)
Spice Cakes (6 pecan caramel glazed, 3 walnut caramel glazed)
Yule Log
Chilli (C/O Dad)
Bagguette (got to love bakerys :-D)
Nog (premade, yeah, i suck)
The items still to be prepared are:
The Soups (potatoe and veg)
Wassail (base only, accessories are ready)
Tea, Coffee, Hot Chocolate (to be brewed moments before guests arrive)
Warm Apple Cider
My aunt seems to think I am crazy for doing the stuff im doing, but I think I am doing quite well to this point.
One question I am still trying to answer is when I am supposed to sleep, the past few days I have already been on an inverse cycle and today I ended up sleeping on the couch waiting for my mom to be ready to help me with the Yule log, which resulted in me running to bed for a few hours. At the moment I am sitting here wondering how I will handle my commitments of the evening and still manage to sleep a sane way, since I am supposed to be functional at 6am (I should only require 4 hours of sleep since I have completed a 4 hour cycle already).
I love this time of year, I just am not certain of my physical or mental health after. Last year I did this and pulled off 40 hours of continuous up time. I am not quite stable enough to do that this year, I see napping in my futures.
Terra Cotta Bliss
I had some fun tonight with my clay. I once again got pissed off at the earthenware because it is just simply stiff if you dont have 2 hours to spend working it over, so I did 1 earthenware piece followed by a terra cotta piece. I was impressed with how well the terra cotta piece turned out, it was a little off at first with its shape, but in the end it was quite smooth and very creamy in appearance. Only mild sanding will need to be done to get rid of a few slurry droplets.
See all images from this session.
Internet Draft Submission Changes
It has finally happened, the IETF is relieving the IESG Secretariat of one of her most recognized roles, the proccessing of new Internet Draft Documents. Very soon there will be an automated procedure for submitting new Internet Draft Documents to the IETF/IESG. For many years the standing procedure has been that an Internet Draft Document author would prepare their drafts and email them to the IESG Secretariat to make them publicly availible to the Internet as a whole, the first milestone on the road to becoming an RFC. The human element is very important to the heritage of the I-D system. Without human hands guiding these documents to their destination it is possible that a document will be submitted and no one will ever see it as it simply becomes part of the larger public repository. There is a level of anticipation that will no longer be present, as each draft is availible instantly. Years ago it was exciting to me to submit my I-D to the IESG a few weeks before an IETF meeting, watching and waiting for my document to appear with everyone elses in the list of new drafts to be considered.
The IESG secretariat will still recieve documents that have been determined to have errors, most documents will make their way to the draft repositories without ever beeing met by human eyes.
Announced in: RFC 4228
Blog Engines Need to Be More Complex
Movable Type is starting to bug me. I don’t have a consistent blogging pattern, some days I blog 5 times, sometimes i wait 2 weeks between posts, and I have to pick between a number of posts to leave on the main page (usually 5) or a number of days to leave up (usually 10), there is no way to do something more elaborate.
I would like to be able to have there to always be at least 5 entries on the main page, regardless of age, but if I have blogged 25 entries in the past 10 days, I want them to all be there.
Time to Say Goodbye
I have been fighting myself on the topic of the GITI v1 to v2 migration for far too long now. I have three weeks in which I don’t have to do anything, and I think it is time for me to dedicate some time to finalizing the transistion and letting v1 go to rest permenantly (minus the administration functions, which will serve for v2 in the interim). I have been dragging out the conversion for way too long. I dont need to have v2 complete, I just have to get all of the modules assebled and as functional as they were in v1. So far I need to finish out education and schedule, then convert todo, notepad and email. Once those critical pieces are finalized, everything should be a go for packaging up GITI v1 permenantly.
First Non-Pregnant Pot
Here it is, my first non-pregnant lipped pot, fresh from its glaze firing in the kiln.
All of my other pots of a similar shape have a “bulge” that makes them look kind of strange, this is the first one that has been perfectly centered and avoided such an occurance.
Another Quote
I read this quote, read it again, and then finally decided I need to share it. It is factual, but not something I thought of before. Now I must ask… is it the homosexuals or the heterosexuals who are unnatural?
“we [humans] are the only species in which men [males] and women [females] copulate face-to-face”
Fighting Against Familial Divisibility
My family drives me so nuts sometimes! Today I found out that there is a competetion in place between my anual Christmas event at home and my cousin’s arrival in Myrtle Beach. My event has been planned unofficially for almost a year, but officially for a few months. I have done everything short of sending out paper invitations to alert my family that they are to gather at my house on December 25th at 5:00PM. That date and time has been delegated to me for my use with the family. My cousin who lives in San Franciso, CA has decided to fly in next weekend instead of this weekend, and has also decided that he doesn’t wish to make the long trip (3.25 hours) from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte to come to my event. It is unfortunate that physically distant relatives get priority in this family (I blame it on the fact that there has never been a physically distant member before). It would appear that I have a lot of family members on my side for the event, but also some feel a loyalty towards my cousin. Some people in my family want me to move the event to December 24th at 5:00, but I am fairly decided in my time and I don’t plan to let myself be manipulated by their confusion. One of the fun things about my event is that it is my event, no act of committee can make the event float across time and space, as it can with all of the others. I suppose another factor on my side is the act of committee that is required to coordinate the pilgramige to Myrtle Beach, with the division and indecision it will not be possible for a conclusion to be reached and it is likely that either the deciding bodies will opt to remain on the original plan with my event, or a representative body will be sent to Myrtle Beach and the rest will be with me. Family politics are a lot of fun when im not involved in them :-/ I suppose its time for me to send an email to my aunt who is attempting to coordinate the Myrtle Beach thing and see if I can get her to work with me on a plan of action that will make sure that both of our events occur without a problem. I guess for once I have a reason to like the republicans in my family (primarily my aunt in Charlotte and grandfather who are strickly opposed to travelling out of state on Christmas and wish to honor their commitment to me).
Curtis E-mail Changes
After many strange looks and much bitching from people about my email structure, it has chaged. The someuser*@curtis.kularski.net stuff is in the past for my personal email. My organizational, public and automated email stuff will still run through the old schema. My personal contacts will now be given a new, single address to use for contacting me. If you are a human, don’t SPAM and I like you, contact me and you will be given my new email address for immediate use.
Chancellor’s View of Academia
“a university president or chancellor has to do only three things to be successful: to provide parking for the faculty and staff, sex and beer for the students, and a winning football team for the alumni.” – Phillip DuBois, UNCC Chancellor
Interesting isn’t it?