Look to the right

...if you haven't already. There's a feed of my last few pictures posted on DeviantArt. At the time of the posting, Mom and Wood's Christmas present should be the last two postings. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, all in all.

A Christmas Album

Without comment:






























Okay... maybe a few comments. Wood is unfairly underrepresented here - all of the pictures he was in were out of focus or too dark. But he was there for it all, looking as dapper as ever. Kim is fairly underrepresented, and Ellen and myself are overrepresented, because Kim did most of the picture taking here. So there you go.

Exprovement

If an improvement brings value into something, an exprovement...

One of the things the handyman was supposed to do with the check from the previous owner was patch a hole under the eaves. Some varmit has been getting into the attic, burrowing through the insulation, and generally making a mess of things. Since the handyman basically said he wasn't interested in that kind of work (but thanks very much for the check!), I thought I'd have a go at it myself.

I wasn't very successful:










Wait for it....










Now I'm wondering if I should have a handyman patch the ceiling. But I think maybe it's something I can have a go at...

Kim's Holiday Party

Aside from our houseguests, Kim's holiday party for her Pier1 employees was our first real experience entertaining in our new house. There were about 20 people in all at different times during the night, and we played games, ate and drank, and had holiday fun.




For those of you who haven't seen it, this is what Kim's done with the dining room:



It looks great!

Frost (etc.)

I spied this leaf at work Wednesday last week. I watched it for a while while I was smoking my pipe, and eventually plucked it. I like it. I kept it at work for a few days, then I brought it home and put it in a cup of water. After waffling on whether or not to throw it away, Kim suggested I press it in a book. So now it is safely between the pages of The Earth from Above in 356 Days.


A little mini-landscape in my front yard.



It's frozen each night the last week or so.


A couple of the nights we had rain, and the mud froze in this alien landscape.




If you get up early enough, the leaves are jewels.

X-masy

(Yes, I feel comfortable with the X, from a Christian perspective or otherwise. The early Christians regularly used the Chi as shorthand for Christ - I feel it is no disrespect to do the same. Even if I didn't, I don't think Jesus would be too upset with being distanced from the pagan winter solstice feast and its more recent trappings.)

I took this morning off work to put up Christmas lights for Kim. She's having a Christmas work party at our house this Sunday, and it was far to rainy last weekend to be traipsing around the roof or teetering atop 20 foot ladders. Bright and sunny and 31 degrees is much more the atmosphere I prefer.



Kim likes the "icicle" look. I have to say, it does look pretty sharp, though I think I need to swap a fuse up there on the second story.


(The requisite "ghost" picture. I don't think it's a ghost. I'm pretty sure our house hasn't been haunted for months.)


Kim says her Xmas tree is a work in progress. I think it's beautiful...


...Especially with the angel I picked out on top. Kim says she looks African-American. I think she looks Eastern-Mediterranean, like a proper annunciation angel.


Some other Xmas decorations Kim put up with me in mind. She does a very good job of incorporating me into a holiday I used to have grave reservations about.


She does not like to have her picture taken!


One other decoration I picked out - a little Father Christmas. He's upstairs in my drawing room.

A business idea, for anyone who would like it!

I think a really great startup business (great both in the sense of a potential moneymaker and in the sense of a benefit to myself as a consumer) would be a bloggable music download pointer service. What I mean by that very unbecoming name is a service which would allow a blogger (or anyone else, for that matter) to log in, find a song or album that is for sale on the web at an existing service (Napster, iTunes, Walmart Music, Yahoo Music, etc.) and produce a link that they can then copy to their blog, website, email, etc. When the link is clicked, a window pops up and streams a song or a portion of a song (hopefully the pop up is small, unobtrusive, not laden with flashing advertisments, and generally works well), and links the listener to the download service where they can download the song, album, etc. for the going rate.

The key would be for the service not to sell anything beside the advertisment, and not to host any of the content - all of the streaming media, album art, etc. should be drawn from the selling service's site.

I think the service could easily make a few cents off each song purchased that way, and perhaps they could even offer a penny kickback to the person who created the link and drove the traffic their way.

I can imagine this service getting a lot of usage from bloggers who want to say with each post, "Look what I'm listening to!"; I thought of it as a way to add soundtracks to the stories I write without illegally posting mp3's.

Any takers? It's a free idea!