Tuesday, December 19, 2006

And the fairies came

Funniest aside on a home decorating show: HGTV's Design on a Dime designers Spencer Anderson and Brice Cooper (I believe), were adding the finishing touches to a tablescape for an Old World Christmas decorating show. To Brice’s question about the significance of the holly Spencer was tucking under a yule log candleholder, Spencer replied, “It was revered because it stayed green during the really cold months when everything else died and they [the Celts] thought if they placed it in their homes it would invite fairies to come in…” Both designers and the segment dissolved into laughter.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

It is us

Yes, peons, Time magazine's pick of this year is us. Well, they dubbed it You. Does that mean they are them? If so, who are us?

I might be tempted to voice an opinion on the subject, but I'm too busy checking Ihateameren.com to see if our state government is finally going to do something to make sure Ameren doesn't leave more than a half million St. Louisans without power for a week for a third time this year. And checking eBay to see if in this federal government declared "good economy" I've sold that $4k worth of items for a couple hundred dollars. And perusing blogs and news sites to find out what other hidden agendas will pop up around the Baker-Hamilton committee report that may mean one or both of my sons will end up ankle deep in Middle East sand. And finding out if the new medication my third-in-one-year primary physician prescribed will coexist with my other medications prescribed by other past and present physicians according to people who have really taken the drug, not just drug company literature. And posting questions on chatboards to see if there is a way to keep my husband from creating a wind tunnel through his nose and mouth (thus passing his lungs) when he falls asleep with his CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine on and his jaw drops or whether the CPAP is just another way for health insurers to bypass more expensive procedures. And then there's the search to try to find out where the hell the USDA was when all that E. coli infested greens made it to the end-users...

Time says all this is "a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail." Far as I can see, it can't get any worse. And we may end up with fewer of them. Whoever them may be...