An attendance of STR Nicholas

Happy After-Solstice and Merry Hanukkah, everybody! Ah yes, this is the time to indulge in all the great holiday traditions of doom--after all, it is very nearly Christmas Day! (Please don't whimper, it will all be over soon.) For your enjoyment, here is the traditional mutilation of a popular Christmas poem which some of us find ourselves quoting at random moments throughout the month of December. (This mutilation was achieved by running the poem through Babelfish's English-to-German translator, then dragging it back to English again. Though this machine translation dates back to 1999, Babelfish probably has not gotten more amusing since being taken over by Yahoo.) Enjoy!

An attendance of STR Nicholas


' Twas the night before Christmas, when by the house a creature did not agitate itself completely, a mouse do not smooth; The socks were hung by the fire-place with Obacht, in hopes that STR would be Nicholas there soon;

The children nest LED quite comfortably in their beds, while sights of the sugar plums danced into their headings; And mamma in their ' kerchief and I in my protective cap, had agreed upon even down for the hair of a long winter,

When on the lawn such developed out a Geklapper, I rose from the bed, in order to see, what the material was. Away to the Window I flew like lightning, tore opened the shutters up violently and threw up sash.
( The moon on the chest of the again-pleased snow... )

Happiness Meme!

kaukomieli tagged me for this one, and something tells me that I may have been tagged by someone else earlier and then forgotten it, so I guess I'd better do the meme now! For those who do not know what this Happiness Meme is, the standard version is as follows:

The rules are that for 8 days
you have to post something
that made you happy that day.

Tag 8 people to do the same.

Well, I'm exceedingly bad at doing things when tagged (there's a list of abandoned memes languishing somewhere on this computer, wondering what they ever did wrong to make me go away), so probably should not tag anyone else. But if you want to do this exercise, then please consider yourself tagged now!

Anyway, since I saw kaukomieli's post yesterday, I'll do two days' worth of happiness in this post. Yesterday's happy thing: Going to the Ethiopian restaurant for the third time. It was a pleasantly warm and busy place on a chilly afternoon, with Americans and African immigrants sitting around enjoying their lunch specials and ignoring the smooth jazz muzak. The food was spicier this time, which was a pleasant surprise. The female half of the husband-and-wife team who owns the place spent her time alternating between making sure the customers had plenty of water and listening to a spiel about some company that supplies soap, paper towels, toilet paper, and such to restaurants (the company representative was sitting at the table behind me, so the conversation was hard not to overhear). It was good to have comfort food in a warm and friendly environment yesterday.

Today's happy thing: My space heater still works! While those of you from colder climes might laugh at our version of early winter weather (the temperature did make it above freezing, after all), this room is one of the coldest in the house and feeling a constant chill was getting old. So, warmth is good. Also, I did find enough energy to push myself out the door and do a little shopping, and serendipity rewarded me with the Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World soundtrack. Never saw the movie, but any soundtrack with pieces by both J.S. Bach and Iva Davies is okay with me.