Hope everyone had/is having/will have a great holiday. The blog here is not. The comment spam has continued to the point where I’ve closed the comments and pings for now. I won’t have time for two blogs for the next few weeks anyway, so any blogging I can do will be at Blogger, where word verification has stopped the spammers, at least so far. I’ll revisit the whole thing in a few weeks.

Today was the day to get the office gifts finished once and for all. This is a category of Christmas shopping that drives me nuts. It’s not a cut and dried kind of thing. It’s hard to know where you draw the line for office gift exchanging. The only thing you can be sure of is, someone who you haven’t got a gift for will give you one.

That wasn’t too big a problem for the last few years. I was the receptionist and everyone gives the receptionist something. The receptionist is not expected to reciprocate in most cases. As of late Wednesday afternoon I stopped being the receptionist and am now in the accounting department, at least temporarily. This is all good. It involves a raise and an office for as long as it lasts. But I’m completely out of synch in the gift category.

I don’t mind giving up the Christmas gifts that the receptionist gets, except maybe for that really nice American express check that one of them gives me each year. Overall though, I’m over gifts, especially if it means that I don’t get the silverplated snowman tray from one particular supervisor for a third year in a row. Nothing says, “I don’t give a shit.” like silverplate, unless it’s the same silverplate gift as the year before. I can’t use anymore spa gifts either. I don’t use them at all as a matter of fact.

I don’t think I did a great job of choosing gifts for my co-workers either this year. It seems like my brain is on hold this year. Or I just didn’t have it in me to keep going to places until I saw just the right thing. I hereby resolve that next year I will figure out who gets gifts and start looking for them by August. Or even better, order them over the internet.

In between holiday tasks I’m redesigning my son’s band’s site and trying to reign in this baby shower. I promised to start the new project for the old client right after the shower. And of course, I have to learn the new job. Personally, I’d be more than happy to just hang out in my little corner of the world and blog. I need to get less of a life.

If you remember where you were when you heard, then it was probably one of those sad occasions that rocked your world. My husband had started to work and heard about it on the car radio. He turned around and came back to tell me. I was in the livingroom with the baby.

Now that baby is a musician himself and is heading north as this it written to spend another winter on the road. That leaves his mother to contemplate the bad roads conditions he and the other band members will have to brave in their old van as they drive from city to city, sometimes in the dead of night. Always on too little sleep.

John Lennon had paid those dues long, long ago. He’d gotten past the stage of dying of self-inflicted wounds, too. Who would have guessed that he was going to have to pay for his stature as a generational icon with his life?

So, we went to my brother-in-law’s for Thanksgiving dinner, bringing along my mother and sister and huge quantities of food including an Un-Turkey. The Un-Turkey was for my sister. She felt we should bring the whole thing so she could share. Every year she’s sure someone else will want to try it. Every year, no one does.

Upon arrival we learned that a relative was hovering at death’s door. It was an aunt of my husbands - the families lived next door to one another until Florida sucked them in. We thought she’d come through a recent surgery just fine, but there were complications. It was a sad but classic case of “The operation was a success but the patient died.” They took her off life support the day after Thanksgiving. And it really was sad. Her husband, children and grandchildren are going to miss her very much. It was way too soon, too.

We spent Monday and Tuesday commuting between work and the wake and Wednesday was the funeral. Returning to normal life I found the following:

- In two days 72 message had appeared in my spam folder. That’s in the e-mail account that I use and check every day. I’m afraid to look at the others.

- Some as yet uncounted (and undeleted) spam comments have been posted to this blog. This is becoming a constant annoyance. I don’t have time to moderate in a timely manner and I certainly don’t have time to deal with this. It makes me think that maybe I should just do this whole thing on Blogger.

- I have a newsletter to take apart and post parts of to an organization’s site. Also still working on the band’s redesign. I think I’m onto something. Now I have to put it together in a less rough draft.

- Huge piles of laundry accumulated. Clothing multiplies in the hamper, but then makes itself scarce when you’re looking for something to wear. There is no way we could worn the number of items that were in the hamper. In fact, I don’t think we own that many.

- My holiday to-do lists have grown to frightening proportions. I have to attack them this weekend. They’ll probably attack right back.

I have to confess something. The thing I like best about the holiday season is when it’s over. I don’t have time enough in the day to live my normal life at the pace I would like. Providing holiday cheer is really too much to ask.

So, semi-hiatus has probably begun again.

Preparations are done. We’re almost on our way with sweet and mashed potatos and stuffing in tow. My sister-in-law and her family don’t do sweets. When they come here they bring a casserole of mashed potatos mixed with stuffing. It’s not Thanksgiving dinner for them without that. Unfortunately, our going there means bringing three dishes to make it Thanksgiving dinner for our family. Thanksgiving is such a food holiday that you kind of have to have your favorites.

That’s not the end of it. My sister-in-law is such a good baker that bringing desserts is usually a coals to New Castle kind of thing, but I’m bringing sugar-free chocolate pudding pie for my diabetic husband. That and the tofu turkey with the wheat gluten gravy for my vegetarian sister and we’re good to go. They’re never going to ask us to come again. I can see that coming.

My mother is getting dressed. She’s asked us where we’re going every half hour on the hour for about two weeks now. I think she’s got it now. Just takes a while. She’s focused on getting dressed now. Her outfit will be wasted on us, I’m afraid. We do our holildays in jeans, mostly. She just never noticed.

We’ve had a talk about avoiding too much political/religious discussion. Or at least not starting it. And not getting overly passionate if it does come up. No yelling. I made the rule. I think they suspect I don’t actually have that authority though. I think that’s everything. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that my sister will bring a book and fill conversational lulls by reading it. OK..over the river and through the traffic we go.

Played hooky this afternoon. My sister and I were extended invitations to the gypsy run-through of Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, at the Schoenfeld Theater on Broadway. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Broadway show - actually on Broadway, that is. I’m so glad I got to see this one.

What an experience it was. The gypsy run-through is a pre-preview, where the audience is made up largely of Broadway people. There are plenty of luminaries. Rosie O’Donnell, Liza Minelli and Hughie Lewis were there and those are just the ones I noticed. But a lot of the audience is made up of young Broadway dancers - the gypsies. This particular show is for them, about them and their lives and stars a woman who is a legend to them all. The outpouring of love, to and from the stage made it an extra emotional event, but I can’t imagine that it won’t touch all its audiences. Chita Rivera was touching, funny and still dancing in her early 70’s - and with 63 screws in her ankle as a result of being hit by a cab, no less. She carries the whole show on her shoulders, looks great, and doesn’t give out any diva vibes whatever. The friend who took us says that everyone who’s worked with her says she’s wonderful. Not everyone in that business gets those kinds of reviews from their peers. By a longshot.

The show is not just entertaining. It’s informative, too. Chita talks - and sings and dances - about her co-stars, the various choreographers she’s worked with, as well as giving very personal glimpses into her own life.

In the show, she maintains that “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” That formula has certainly agreed with her. See the show if you can. Besides being fun, it’s just a really nice experience. It would be unthinkable if this show wasn’t a hit. A full description of the show can be found at Chita Rivera’s website. The show officially opens on December 11th.

Blogging will probably be pretty spotty for the next few weeks. The season has begun. There are two trips into the city this week alone, houseguests next weekend and that doesn’t include work or Thanksgiving Day. Then there’ll be the rush to get ready for Christmas. My daughter is helping, though, because she has organizational skills. I don’t know where she got them. She’s like Marilyn Munster - the normal one. It really helps to have people with different skills and abilities in the family. She came downstairs this morning to discuss gifts and shopping.

We have a number of birthdays surrounding the holidays. In fact it’s kind of non-stop from this week through early February. Make that late mid to late February starting this time around. That’s when our grandson is supposed to make his appearance. In a half hour’s time she had plans for gift giving and shopping organized for most of those occasions, including for extended family. She made a chart. I know that sounds obnoxious, but we really need that kind of help.

In an effort to be as efficient as my daughter, I thought that my husband and I could get one thing out of the way. We’ve been invited to an extra event right in the middle of it all. Now, my husband greets root canal with a great deal more equanimity than he does even the most low key socializing. The holidays are pretty stressful for him. An extra thing - with a somewhat different group of people - I knew how he was going to feel about that. But it’s something that we sort of have to go to. Or at least it’s something that means a lot to someone we care about. So, I suggested that we have the fight now.

The pattern we follow is that he agrees to go to things like this when I tell him about them. Sometimes he makes a face, sometimes there’s a deep sigh, sometime he says it sounds like fun. That varies but the day of the event is always the same. He’ll get pensive. He’ll try not to be grumpy, but some grouchiness will show through. I always bite and ask him what the matter is, even though I know perfectly well what it is. Then he says he doesn’t feel well. I ask about that. He says he doesn’t think he can go to whatever it is. Then it’s on. We go around for a while. We’re both upset and in the end, we go. We often have a pretty good time.

He agreed to have the fight today instead of in a couple of weeks. He tried to get into it and showed self-knowlege I didn’t know he had. He said all the same stupid stuff he says when it’s spontaneous. I ran through my roster of reactions. We kind of rushed through the script a little but we other things to do today. This is one of the great advantages to a long marriage. You know your conversations and fights by heart can get them out of the way quickly. You can even do them by yourself if your partner isn’t available. I have a lot of arguments with him that he doesn’t ever even know about. The sad thing is that I don’t always win, even when I’m having the fight by myself. My husband is stubborn, even in absentia.

I’ve been trying to plot a new design for the band’s site. I’m not coming up with anything. Or rather, I’ve come up with half a dozen things that I lay out and really think I’m onto something - for about a day. Then I hate it. In search of inspiration I must have looked at about a zillion music related sites. That got to be hard work after a while.

Of course, a couple of things don’t help. I’m not really a designer at all for one. I’ve got some art background, but no design training, which is a different deal altogether. I started doing this when it was more of a homebaked type of thing. There was no Flash and if you had music on the site it was a .wav file that lasted a few seconds, or a midi file, which sounded really bad. Hell…I think tables were new. Most people who put websites together weren’t trained in design then. It’s a different deal now. It’s been redesigned before, several times, in fact. But that was before they started giving me creative input.

Of course, the band itself is not much help. The creative input I get from them is vague at best. They decided they need a redesign in honor of their new logo and I can see that. I asked what they’d like. What I had in mind was being pointed toward sites they like and an idea of what kind of look they think best represents them now. You know..sleek and sophisticated, earthy, funky or what. The only one who had an answer said, “Round!”. It seems he doesn’t like right angles. The music doesn’t have right angles, you see.

On the upside, I did come up with a favicon for them. It’s my first favicon. Of course they never asked for one and I’m not at all sure they know what a favicon is, so I’m not sure that counts as progress.

I’ve been addressing invitations. Since they’re shower invitations I don’t actually know most of the people on the list. I just have assorted lists of names and addresses contributed by friends and in-laws of the showeree. Never has the inadequacy of our system been more clear to me.

In the distant past, we looked at the hodgepodge of feminine courtesty titles and it wasn’t good. And it was sexist. Men were all simply “Mr.” unless they used a professional title such as “Dr.” Things are more complicated in countries with an aristocracy, but so far in the U.S. the only aristocracy is wealth. Women’s titles, however, were indicators of marital status. “Miss” indicated the lack of a husband and “Mrs.” indicated that the woman in question was the property of one. So “Ms.” was coined to address that issue. Unfortunately it carried heavy political baggage and wasn’t universally adopted. Also, we don’t adapt to change when there’s still time to do it in an orderly fashion. After all, we’re still not using the metric system in the U.S.A. We prefer to wait until things have gotten totally out of hand. “Ms.” has become the title of choice for women who identify themselves as feminists and divorced women.

So, looking at this list of all female names, I have no idea about the marital status of a lot of them. And even if I did, it wouldn’t really help. When you address someone as “Mrs.”, you’re supposed to follow that with her husband’s name, not hers. “Mrs. Zelda Fitzgerald” is wrong. You’d need to write, “Mrs. Scott Fitzgerald”. But I don’t know her husband’s name, nor do I know if she’s the only Mrs. Fitzgerald in her household. She might live with mother-in-law or daughter-in-law. That’s one of the things “Ms.” should be perfect for, but frankly, it pisses some people off. Some married women prefer to be called Mrs. And when I answer the phone at work a surprising number of women identify themselves as “Miss”. There are more types of marital status than there used to be, too. There are the old standbys of married and single. Divorced has been around in large numbers long enough to be a classic now. But there’s also “married but keeping own name” and “divorced and returned to own name” and you have to know which it is to get it right. So, my mail is just going to Zelda Fitzgerald. No Mrs., Miss or Ms.

Thinking all this over made me realize why I’ve started to dislike sending holiday cards. Addressing them has gotten too complicated, too. You used to be safe just knowing the marital status of the recipient and whether there were other people in the household. A card could go to “Mr and Mrs Scott Fitzgerald” and family, for instance. If you weren’t sure about how “Mr. and Mrs.” would be received, “The Fitzgerald Family” was a reasonable cop out. Now you have situations like my own daughter’s family. She was divorced, reverted to her own name, remarried and kept it and her daughter who is a product of the first marriage, has her father’s last name. That’s three for three. One last name for each person in the household. I’m not sure about the dogs. Not every family includes a married couple either. I haven’t figured a solution to this one, other than not sending cards on purpose instead of just as a result of procrastination.

The Ageless Project is on BloggerBuzz. BloggerBuzz quotes from the AP article by Carla Johnson. Congratulations to The Ageless Project for getting some well deserved attention.