:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

When myspace hit the scene as a place to blog and to keep up with friends, I passed. I’m not particularly concerned with the music scene, a primary use for myspace, and found the design difficult to navigate. It felt like an arduous journey through a maze just to update my profile–something that made updating my old TypePad blog look like a breeze.

Sticking with my wordpress blog, I had all of the online presence I would need until facebook came along. I actually signed on to facebook because of my freelance writing career. I didn’t really know that many people using it and just assumed it would be a neat way to connect with my readers. Facebook holds the promise of opening channels for two-way conversation in the one-way medium of the book industry. It’s a simple, non-committal way to be available without committing an e-mail address to someone who may forward me to distraction.

However, once I signed on, I quickly accumulated a list of friends, relatives, and old acquaintances, some I haven’t seen for years. Nevetheless, I resisted jumping into facebook too much. I already had a theology blog and a writing blog, not to mention flickr for my photos. I had del.icio.us to keep track of links. I didn’t need yet another place to mess around with on the web (see the icons in the “about” box if you’d like to check any of these out by the way).

The floodgates opened when I realized facebook had the capacity to synch across platforms. Photos on flickr could automatically upload onto facebook, blog posts could automatically show up as notes, and a simple toolbar button made it just as easy to post articles to facebook as del.icio.us. While facebook still requires a little time on site, I found some very simple ways to keep my content up to date without adding anything new to my web routines.

I put up similar resistance to Twitter until I learned that facebook and Twitter can be synched together as well. Updates on Twitter, made from the toolbar of my Firefox browser, are copied onto facebook as well. That helps me share ideas, information, promote by blog, and stay in touch with friends in a pretty simple way in multiple networks. Family members can find my pictures and potential blog readers are introduced to my posts on my facebook wall or twitter feed.

When it comes to social networking, I have a few rules to follow:

• Set specific goals for social networking and stick to them. Don’t download games and other distractions if you don’t want to be spend lots of time on facebook.
• Sync your networking sites together so they stay updated and fresh without demanding too much time.
• Take the time to find a few tools that will make social networking a breeze. I love the Twitter bar plug in for Firefox, and have facebook, Twitter, and del.icio.us boxes on my Google home page. In a matter of seconds I can check my e-mail, calendar, to-do list, and social networking sites. I end up using them more, while preventing them from taking up huge chunks of time.
• Take breaks, don’t check for updates constantly.

At this point in my life I think I have a decent balance between the online world and real life. Of course there still are moments when I wonder if I’ll cease to exist if facebook disappeared…

Julie and I have made it our goal to make many of our Christmas presents for the past several years. Whether baking some unusual cookies or breads, making special mattes of my photographs, or making some other kind of craft, we’ve found that with a little planning you can give some relatively low-cost Christmas gifts.

While I won’t divulge our plans for this year, I’ll pass along some ideas we’ve used in the past.

Jam and Jelly

It isn’t all that hard to make jam or jelly once you pick up the canning kits. We made a cran-apple jelly last year that was off the charts, but even marmalade isn’t that difficult to make. I’ve screwed it up and it still turns out great. Just goes to show you can’t go wrong when you add that much sugar to anything.

Gift Baskets

If you go the jam and jelly route, why not pick up some goat cheese and some other spreadables so you can put them all in a gift basket. Toss in some crackers and you’re in business. And by the way, you can make your own crackers too! I don’t recommend making the basket yourself.

Applesauce

Applesauce is relatively easy to make. Just quarter the apples, boil, and then process them. Once you have the right kind of food mill, it’s a snap. If you freeze it, then you don’t have to bother with the sterilization for canning.

Pictures

You’ve had that digital camera around for so long, but perhaps you haven’t tapped it’s gift-giving potential. Try developing some small prints and pick up a bunch of inexpensive frames on sale. You can even print the photos yourself if you’re pressed for time. Think of places people may want some small, unique photos such as hall tables or even the bathroom.

Unusual Baked Goods

Anyone can crank out chocolate chip cookies. Even I did it this year, so anyone really can. However, not everyone is going to comb through this year’s cookie issues of the cooking magazines, so why not experiment with some unusual cookies and breads?

That’s about it for now. After Christmas passes we’ll have some other ideas to share. For now, this is about as close as I’ll come to Martha Stewart. I’m just kind of sick of the commercialism of Christmas and this has been our way to give people simple, but unique gifts.

Making these presents also gives Julie and I a chance to hang out together. It’s way better than fighting our way through a mall, trying to figure out wht to buy. Who wants to deal with that?

The wife and I have many computer-based projects to work on these days, so we’ve been spending quite a bit of time at cafes sitting across from each other. Our lap tops spend a lot of time looking at each other.

Today we went to the South Street Cafe in Bennington, VT, which is notorious for not having wireless internet. This means my desire to use twitter is thwarted.  In case you are wondering what you have been missing all day, I cobbled together some of the tweets that would have been:

I can’t believe this cafe doesn’t have wireless internet.

This 80′s music has to go. I have never been so thankful for my headphones.

There’s a kid wielding his light saber in the cafe. Glad my tea cup is empty.

The Monopoly game those little girls are setting up won’t last more than 20 minutes… tops.

When faced with the possibility of actually paying cash, money that we have worked hard to earn, for a CD of Christmas music my wife and I found that picking out a quality collection of Christmas songs is far more difficult than we could have imagined. While the songs are mixed on a radio, there are hits and misses, and even the classics have a wholly pleasant ring for the two or three minutes they are crooned by an old standby such as Crosby or Sinatra.

All of this changes at the prospect of purchasing a whole CD with nothing but ONE KIND of Christmas music.

Perhaps I aim too high, but if I’m spending money on a CD, I want to enjoy at least half of the music. A quick scan of the titles selected for most CDs ends up in classifications such as too sappy, too traditional, too brainless, too ditzy, and the list goes on. I’m like Goldilocks looking for a CD with the right musical temperature.

I have to confess that I just can’t stand Silent Night. There I said it. If you drag me into a church, stick a candle in my hand, and wave a flame in front of my face I may get into the spirit, but don’t count on it. Julie and I don’t mind the Christmas classics, but we still could not stomach the thought of sap poured out in such quantities. We initiated an all-out search of Amazon.com.

We searched and found that Christmas music can be classified in the following categories:

- The aforementioned classics.

- Pop Christmas music by today’s “stars” who are probably forgotten by the time the CD is released. These are the inexcusable compilation CDs with tons of “contemporary” holiday music that could make a cat gag (or a rabbit in our case).

- Twilight albums by former stars. Once a performer runs out of gas, a Christmas album is produced on fumes. Johnny Cash, who had two or three twilights in his roller coaster career, produced nine Christmas CDs. Not counting live and studio albums, U2 has only produced eleven records…period. No Christmas CD yet.

- Instrumentals with all of the great tunes, but none of the lyrics. I think this may be the only way we can enjoy Christmas music on a regular basis in our home.

We ended up purchasing a collection of 20 Celtic Christmas Favorites. It’s not bad. There is a blend of older Christmas songs and some from the past 100 years or so. I played it while washing the dishes last night and it worked. We’ll see if I’m still saying that three weeks from now.

Of course the obvious solution is to listen to Christmas music over the radio … oh, but we don’t get decent reception of ANY radio stations in our little mountain valley. Ah, but there is always internet radio? Yes, but there is no high speed internet infrastructure in our neighborhood. We have satellite internet and online streaming there is about as efficient as writing on a slab of rock.

And so, we are stuck with our Christmas CDs.

I got up on Saturday morning and started painting and I did not stop save to hike 2.6 miles up a really steep mountain in nearby upstate, NY this afternoon in light flurries.

Because of hunters I wore an orange vest over my puffy layers of jackets, a glowing freak of nature with a huge upper-body and pencil-thin legs. But I’m off track now, back to painting.  

I am proud of my ability to paint, in fact Julie often marvels at my skill: how straight I can cut in a line, where to cut corners, and how to pick the right paint for the right spot. I spent quite a few summers during high school and college painting, not to mention the odd job here and there since. Oh, and we always live in handyman specials that need to be renovated and, you guessed it, painted. We’ve painted so many houses that Julie has gotten really good at it too.

So my pride and credibility took a big hit this weekend. Really big hit. First of all, I got my semi-gloss and high-gloss trim paint mixed up. But hey, haven’t we all done that at one point or another. Not a problem.

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Whenever I try something new, you can bet it will take 2-3 times longer than it probably should. Such was the case today when I attempted and pretty much succeeded to install a new storm door in our front entry.

I have a few things working against me:

• I hate following directions. Really. I only cook things that I can do without a recipe.
• I am horrible at figuring out diagrams.
• I am not very good at improvising.

Clearing the garage for Julie’s car is a project on the horizon for us, and so the large storm door had to be removed from storage and stuck in its proper place. I really wasn’t looking forward to this, especially with a high of 40 degrees and high winds…

I started off by glancing at the directions and screwing in the top part. It felt good to just pop something in to the door frame. I felt like I was getting somewhere. Step two almost stopped the whole enterprise cold.

I needed to put the hinged part of the door frame onto the door. It is essential to make sure the door can actually open. I looked and looked at the diagrams and the door and I just couldn’t figure out how it was going to work. Even when I had the hinge system figured out, none of the holes lined up as the directions said they would.

Keep in mind, I have every confidence in my ability to mess things up. I could not believe that the directions were wrong. I almost gave up. Finally I just drilled the holes, chopped off the extra door frame, and slapped it all together. It worked fine, the directions were wrong. I won.

Actually getting the door in place was another challenge by myself. I used a cinder block and chunks of wood to prop it into place, furiously trying to drill holes with screws that didn’t like boring into wood. Though things continued to go slow, I eventually got the door attached with the frame in relatively good shape. I even had the latch side spaced out correctly with some ingenious use of wood scraps.

At that point I was ready to be done, but I still needed to drill holes (with the bits I had that were too small) for the latch and door knob assembly. While doing this there were three separate occasions when the door closed with the partially assembled latch and I had to spend 5 or 10 minutes opening the door.

When I could safely open and close the door, I gave up. The spring that closes the door will have to wait. I also couldn’t line up the metal plate that the latch goes into. Oh, and that piece I screwed in at the beginning? I should have measured first. The door now has a 1 1/2 inch gap between the threshold and the weather stripping.

All of that will have to wait until next weekend, further delaying the garage project. Sigh.

We had eight trick or treaters come to our home tonight for Halloween! This is a fantastic record that smashes the previous tally of three at our in-law-style apartment in Doylestown, PA.

Even with our dark dirt road located ten minutes out of town with houses spread along a two mile stretch before they are concentrated in any kind of way, eight brave souls literally traveled over the river, through the fields, and along the woods to our door step.

We rewarded them with cheap candy.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I should add that we had 7 actual children who received candy. One of those kids in costume was held by his father (who was not in costume). But his mother gladly put forward a bag in place of the boy who clung to his dad. The mother was decked out in a  little leopard outfit complete with high heels and kitty cat ears. So the official tally is 7 candy eaters and 8 dressed up in costume.

The highlight of our evening was the lady who brought her two daughters down the two-mile stretch of road with one on a horse and the other on a pony. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen for Halloween. They also brought along their teenage exchange student from India who was really enjoying the spoils of her first Halloween.

I saw them working their way up someone’s driveway on my way home, but I didn’t notice which way they were going after their stop. While tapping away at the computer, Julie heard them coming up our driveway and walked out to meet them. After passing along the candy Julie got to pet the horses.

But alas, that was both the climax and end of our low-key Halloween. I spent the rest of the evening working on one of the study guides for my theology book, while Julie laid on the couch trying to read in the midst of Baxter launching herself from the floor onto Julie’s chest. Judging by Julie’s yelps, Baxter also bit her a few times … we need to work on that.

Baxter is the fourth rabbit to enter our home and the youngest one yet. After having 3 rabbits indifferent to human contact, we were determined that things would be different with her. She was going to learn how to be a “lap bunny.”

A lap bunny is a rabbit who calmly sits on you lap and lets you pet her or just sits serenely. It’s really all we’ve ever wanted from our rabbits. None of them have done very good in the serene department.

Therefore, Baxter has been held on a regular basis and brought up on the couch. We sort of pinne her down a little and pet her before she scampered off. After a few weeks of this, bunny magic happened. She actually sat with Julie.

And then she became insanely attached to me. I could not walk in the house without her scuttling about my feet. It feels like cowboys and indians as she runs around my feet, zig zagging in between my feet. I sometimes have to shuffle around the house.

All of this has been well and good. In fact, I thought we had a major breakthrough yesterday, as I laid down for a little nap and she laid right next to me for a long time letting me pat her head.

And then there was today.

After spending a good bit of my afternoon writing, I just wanted to sit and read the latest Rick Atkinson book. Baxter would not permit this. She hopped onto the couch, nipped at my knee, and climbed all over me. I could briefly pacify her with a little petting, but for the most part she wanted to either chew on me and climb on me. The couch also sustained some damage.

I can only hope this is a passing phase.  

Rabbits are cute little creatures. We love all three of our rabbits. Each has a wonderful quirk, an endearing superpower if you will. Baxter follows me around like a dog and will gladly sit in our laps to be pet. Eva loves to be pet and will sit for hours provided you leave her on the floor. Evan will lick your fingers if you can stand it.

And after they’ve done all of these cute things for you, one rabbit decides, “I’m sick of my toys, I’m going to chew on the coffee table.” We hear scraping in the general direction of the coffee table, snap our fingers and yell, “No!” but the process of destruction has begun.

Once ONE rabbit has decided something is interesting, you can rest assured that every rabbit will agree. Each rabbit leaves a scent, and so the next rabbit in the room must carefully inspect EVERYTHING, re-scenting each defiled object. While in the midst of the re-scenting program, they have this amazing ability to recognize the genius of the other rabbit. “Hey, this table really is a great chew toy!”

Repeat gnawing, snapping, yelling, and sometimes chasing sequence. This goes on and on. Sometimes it takes a month or two for rabbits to leave a piece of furniture alone. In the case of our nibbled coffee table, months have passed and even this evening Eva took a chunk out of it.

The most galling destruction was accomplished by none other than our adorable Baxter, the female bunny that we originally thought was a male. I was just about to tell Julie how good she’s been, when that jerk ripped a piece of sheet rock from a corner. This top layer of the sheet rock had the beautiful green paint that I so carefully applied last May. Now a huge gash remains in the wall.

The next rabbit out after Baxter was Eva. It took her a while, but soon she contributed to the growing bare spot on the wall. At this point I’m not sure if I should repaint it or let them run their course before touching it up.

Rabbits are jerks.

I have a large tote bag full of apples that I gathered from the apple tree at my place of employment sitting in our kitchen. With the intention of making applesauce, I’ve had a large pot sitting on top of the bag waiting for the right time.

The weekend passed, and so I decided that Tuesday night was going to be applesauce night. I even told Julie about my scheme and we planned out the entire evening. And then while in bed last night I remembered: I’m throwing a huge party at work on Tuesday night for about 100 people!!!

Rest assured I’ve been planning for this big event over the past 4 weeks . . . and perhaps that makes it worse that I momentarily forgot about it. So while I have most of my plans in place for tonight, I don’t quite see how I could have forgotten about it so completely yesterday.

The whole thing has me a bit creeped out. Am I that distracted? I’m just imagining myself pulling out of work tonight at 5:00 pm to the utter consternation of my co-workers.

On the plus side I did manage to finish my first draft of the my theology book yesterday. Now I’m officially freed up to work on the study guides. Maybe I’ll work on them tonight since I’m not doing anything important . . .