Sort of lousy Christmas break- step-father had a very mild heart attack on the 22nd, and then my grandfather fell and bruised himself very badly on the 24th. All things considered, this hasn’t been nearly as bad as it sounds- Brother (my step-father, don’t ask) has had a very routine angioplasty with a balloon and stint, and no muscle/tissue damage, so he’ll be home today and would have been home a lot earlier if the hospital didn’t have a virtual blackout between the 24th and 26th. My grandfather has been x-rayed and has not broken anything, nthankfully, so he just has to wait for the soreness and bruising to pass. That goes much more slowly at his age, of course, but that ‘just’ takes time. Needless to say, all this has crimped the holidays a bit around here- lots less time relaxing, lots more time helping mom and grandma cope with all their new headaches. On the bright side, there has been lots of family togetherness :)
Some cool gifts given and received:
- Gave a Phillipe Starck juicer to Krissa. Not very useful but lots of fun. Answer to ‘where will you put it in your kitchen?’ is ‘in the living room.’ Despite it not being given to me, it probably makes me the happiest of anything I gave or got this year.
- I was inspired to get the juicer because it is on the cover of Don Norman’s Emotional Design, which I got for my brother, the architect-y type. I just finished it myself, after I bought it for him. It was thought provoking, but not as great as I’d expected- feels like an essay’s worth of ideas stretched to book length.
- Got the utterly cool Complete Far Side from my stepmom. Something it should say in bold print at the top of the amazon entry: ‘This book is 20 pounds and two volumes. Odds are this will be the most substantial book in your house/apartment. If that embarasses you, don’t buy.’
- My little brother got me Moneyball. I burned through it. Great, great book. The new paperback has a very interesting postscript on the baseball world’s response to the book- in a nutshell, the book basically said ‘you guys are getting killed by people doing this smarter than you are’, and instead of trying to learn from it, the baseball ‘clan’ bragged about not having even read it. It’s a great read- I’ll probably end up recommending it to at least a few friends who don’t care at all about baseball.
- For those who thought I was physically incomplete without a fleece vest Krissa bought me a new one. I’m psyched, though I’m going to return it to get a different size. I am now looking forward to spring even more, as if that was possible :)
NB: I’m going to play a little bit with routing books/etc. that I post on the blog through my Amazon Associates account. I usually link to Amazon anyway, so I’m curious if I’m actually bringing them any revenue or not. We’ll see, I guess :) Might create a gnome.org account and route things through there if it is moderately successful. Likely to keep it myself if madly successful ;)