The New Year -Check It Out, Check It Off

Nothing much to say, of late. I haven't been hibernating, though.

Hired new staff member in IT... this could be a major improvement in my life.
Installed some Smartboards and scheduled the upcoming trainings...this could be fun.
Network upgrades - I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...this could be a great relief.
Grandbaby (girl) expected any day now...this could be lovely chaos.
Her parents are in contract on another house in Park Slope (though they have not yet completely unpacked into the house they moved into in December)...this could be exhausting.
I've gotten really good at mixing Cosmos...this could be oblivion.

Check these off the list for this month:

60th birthday party thrown for MacTech husband.
Grandest commission check deposited by MacTech husband.
Annual upper respiratory illness (short and thus already) recovered from.
Plane tickets purchased and villa and car reserved for March vacation in Anguilla.

Saw:
Dreamgirls, B-
Volver,B+
Notes On a Scandal,B-
The Good Shepherd B+

Don't Go There

This might have been my last ever trip to that snake-head of a peninsular chad-hanging state of Florida. Just flew back to NY about an hour ago. Though there were a number of mildly annoying things about this particular trip, none of them were so terrible, and the weather was hot, the ocean looked good (I say looked good because I could not bring myself to go into it. I could not take the chance that I might find it...fun.
So why could I not enjoy myself just one little bit?
The place is a model showroom of everything that's wrong with this country and how we attempt to live our lives in it. (I'm sure LA could be a contender but not the ENTIRE state of California, they do produce wine there, after all)
Conspicuous consumption, to the hilt – driving back and forth up and down Federal Highway from one hideous mall to another (the restaurants mostly reside in malls too) to buy useless crap to haul back to your place.
The state is populated by a most disconcerting collection of misfits and "ne'er do not well-enoughs" who swarm and grovel in minimum wage jobs below the styrofoam-trimmed and gated mansions of the rich. Those are the ones who work. The place is the Mecca of those trying to make it on Disability checks and or Social Security. Every foray into public space left me wincing in a sea of palsied slow-moving limbs, and worse, navigating motorized wheel-chair traffic (younger than me, people!)
I think the place just scares me – to death.

R.I.P.

Lest we forget. It wasn't always rising property values and high-fashion-high-life.
Click for article from 1975

Christmas Dinner 2006

It was my turn to do Christmas dinner this year.
Seven of Mac-Tim's eleven sibs were in attendance and one of mine. With the various spouses and cousins and friends and my mom, we were almost 30 people. Chicago Mac-son's girlfriend-who-could-not-get-home-to-Denver was a big hit with everybody and she was a good sport about the dumb questions.
"Do you think this spot could be cancer?"
"So skin is an organ, huh?"
"Did you bring any Botox or Retin A?"
(She's a dermatologist)
Mac-Tim cooked the three fillets of beef on the gas grill in the pouring rain. There were no leftovers.
I wasn't hungry for dinner but I think it was because I filled up on smoked salmon appetizers and the fabulous pitcher of cosmopolitans whipped up by Mac-son and mac-sweetie.

Bizarro Christmas

At this point I'm wondering if I should set the Christmas dinner table on the deck. It's mid afternoon on the Saturday before and I'm opening the windows and doors and sweating. It's hot in the house. At least I won't have to scramble for extra firewood. I'll be damned if I'll build any fires this weekend.
My mother should be arriving in a cab any time now so I need to get myself ready for the talkathon. Mactech-son & girlfriend (she, being an unexpected guest who was shut out from going home to Denver as there is some cataclysmic weather happening there) are out and about in Manhattan. Mac-Tim is shop-working, combining a property visit in SoHo with his usual last-minute creative gift picks. I just got back to the house with an armload of roses - $12 for 2 dozen so I bought 4 dozen and holiday greenery from KeyFood.
I'm making my cooking lists and schedules which are essential when you are cooking for 30. I think the three whole fillets will be enough but Mac-Tim picked up a whole spiral-cut ham this morning at the excellent Polish market on 5th Ave -just in case.
In a pinch, Fairway is open 'til 9:00 on Christmas Eve so I'm not worried.
I got out the creché and dumped it on the mantlepiece and decided to leave it just as it fell - a visual metaphor for my holiday season and my holiday season affect.
It will be chaos but it will be good.

Be Hopeful For Better Things

Hopeful is what we have to be, when we're really "quietly scared," to quote an esteemed colleague. All in our circle seem to be quietly scared about one thing or another these days. And we're all dead tired as well. Another year has bolted past us like third graders on their way to the yard and it was a year marked as much by things that didn't happen as things that did.
And still we keep on.
Thanks to all of you for being there, for every kindness for all the music and especially for all the laughs. I need that the most.
"So here's hoping all the verses rhyme, and the very best of choruses, too."

The Year at a Glance-A Meme

The opening sentences from my first blog post each month in 2006.
I "caught" this from Unwellness.
It makes the year seem so short. And it's a fair snapshot of what I blathered about in 2006. Work, The Weather, Travel, The Past.

JAN First day back at school after the holidays...D+
FEB If you're going to feel plowed under anyway, you may as well have a snowstorm.
MAR I was really into The Lives of the Saints in my early adolescence.
APR The picture above is of many thousand year old cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument, NM.
MAY I would rather delete by hand the stupid generic advertising and anonymous comment posts, that land on occasion on my blog, than put people through the maddening task of typing nonsense security words.
JUN Leftover Stories to Tell is a tribute to the late, depressed, anxious, dyslexic and brilliant Spalding Gray.
JUL I'm liking the new head of BCS.
AUG There's been a lot of complaining about the heat this week prompting questions of "What do you hate more, NY summers or NY winters?
SEP It is cooler this morning but the sky is exactly the same as it was that day.(9/11)
OCT I could tell you about the dinner party I hosted to raise money for the school, you know, What was my menu? Who were my guests?
NOV Steve Earle played his first Brooklyn gig ever on Wednesday night, at SouthPaw.
DEC I've often felt the school year starts as a slow torturous climb up a sheer precipice, its summit reached sometime Thanksgiving week. The rest of the year is a hurtling bumpy slide down the other side. (ok, 2 sentences in this case)