Monday, December 31, 2007

Puerto Rico Bound

We leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a week in Puerto Rico. It will be interesting to see what I have managed to pack between glasses of wine. My heavy drinking was justified by the fact that trying on bathing suits immediately following the holidays...IS JUST WRONG.

I have left seven Rotweillers, Elsie the fat cat, and a Fur Real pony named Butterscotch in charge of the apartment while we're gone.
Happy New Year All!

Friday, December 28, 2007

Feed The World

Here is a really FUN way to feed the world and improve your vocabulary

www.freerice.com

Grains of rice are donated each time you correctly guess the definition of a word.

Rice plus vocabulary....smart really is the new skinny.

A Very Veasey Christmas

On the way to Nonnee's house, we traditionally pop THE NATIVITY STORY into the DVD player, and call it our version of Sunday School. We have begun this practice ever since the Christmas when DeeDad asked Jesse whose birthday we were celebrating and the child enthusiastically answered; "Mine! Mine!" and we had a Dickens of a time explaining why there were presents but no cake.

This year, as the familiar opening music began to play, Jesse turned to Annie and said "I know how this ends. HE DIES."

Which means Spring is not so far away....

Friday, December 14, 2007

Free Floating Angst

I become too busy to blog. Kind of like the way I put excercise off EVERY YEAR until January. As if, magically, in January I WILL HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD FOR THE STAIRMASTER. Blogging for me is a finger excercise--a way to clear the old creative pipes--because my gosh; those witty mugs don't just make themselves, after all.

My friend Natasha has started a website called Creative Nachos www.creativenachos.com and she SHAMES me because she faithfully creates new posts--like a 9 page hiaku, or an in depth inteview with Neitzche--three days a week, like clockwork, and she has a BABY to boot. Kind of makes my cutting and pasting from Santa dot come look a wee bit lame, no?

And so I am reduced to this post: random, free floating thoughts swirling around in my head like the dregs of Pinot Grigio in a glass...AS IF I would ever leave a swallow. Please...you know I lick the bottom.

This is a TRUE STORY. This morning on my way to the dentist, a man walked up beside me making loud duck calls. He was obviously from Planet Wacko; and wore a jaunty cap with three long Quail feathers. But this is not what was unusual. What caught my jaded New Yorker's attention was the fact that a police car parked two blocks ahead at a corner answered each duck call with short toots of its siren. CAW CAW went the duck man. WEE WEE went the police car. CAW CAW went the duck man. WEE WEE went the police car.

My gosh, I really need to write that children's book one of these days.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Is it Hot or is it Just Me?

In One day Al Gore is going to address the UN Climate Change
Conference in Bali, Indonesia. At his urging, (OK-he didn't call me or anything, but just the same...) I've signed an
important petition showing I support his important call for a visionary treaty to address the climate crisis. I hope you will too.

http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

The world's elected leaders must take the steps necessary to solve global warming. It's not too late. We have the opportunity now to improve the Earth's future for our children, and their children.
Please sign the petition today. http://www.climateprotect.org/standwithal

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Santa Blogs about His Weight

Santa's Blog
Milk and Cookies

Posted by Santa 1 day ago

Hello Everyone,

Santa here again, with another quick note about another topic that's recently come up: my weight. A couple of well-meaning letter-writers have pointed out that someone of my size and comportment has no business requesting milk and cookies from every household the night of Christmas Eve. They say (more or less tactfully) that I'm too fat.

To which I say: Thank you for your concern. However...

My weight suits me perfectly, for several reasons. First, it is very cold here at the North Pole. Right now, the temperature is (hold on, let me look) minus 4 degrees -- and today is relatively balmy! I invite any of you worried about my weight to live in this climate for a few days, and then talk to me about insulation. Second, related to this, consider the polar bear: I daresay no one would feel it necessary to point out to a polar bear that he or she could lose a few. (Bear Bryan, our reindeer trainer, weighs in at just under 1,000 pounds! He thinks I'm downright skinny.)

Third, my snack request has been a long-standing one that began back in the days when "milk and cookies" meant milk from healthy cows who ate grass and cookies baked with natural, wholesome ingredients -- that is, long before pesticides, BGH, trans fats, additives, and all the other poisons began appearing in our foods. So it's true that too much of that stuff is unhealthy for me. (And you, for that matter.)

So maybe it's time to update my request. This year, for the first time, I'm asking for healthy milk and cookies -- or, better yet, some sort of nutritious snack you think I'd enjoy. (My suggestion is to ask your mom or dad what they like -- parents have a pretty good sense of what adults like to snack on late at night.) Thank you!

Some other things to consider. One, it really isn't polite to point out to people your opinion about whether or not they're the right weight. And two, consider metabolism: different creatures burn food fuel at different rates, and if it works for them, that's all that matters. I myself have a high metabolism, especially on Christmas Eve. One of the elves, Kevin, is famous for eating two or three times his weight at every meal, and Kevin is no bigger than the average elf.

Oops! Speaking of food, gotta run! I'm meeting Mrs. Claus for lunch in the kitchen.

(I know what you're wondering...tomato soup!)

Love,

Santa

More of Santa's blogs at www.santa.com

Friday, December 07, 2007

Why People Should Help out With the PTA Bakesale

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shadows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who stand in the line and haul in their places, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing, well done, has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn are put in museums, but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.