Skip to content

Year: 2005

Four Days till Christmas: Music

December 21, 2005 • • 2 Comments

The decorations are up, and now it’s time to break out those once per year CDs and listen to some Christmas tunes. We have hundreds of CDs, but only four Christmas ones, so here they are:

  • Jingle Bell Jazz. It came out of the bargain bin years ago, but it really is good jazz with some cool takes on the classic caroles by Duke, Miles, Brubeck, Herbie Hancock and others.
  • Yule Be Miserable. This one came as a birthday gift a few years back from some friends who know me well. Click here for a good look at the cover. This is a great drunk and passed out in a bar with Santa blues and jazz collection featuring the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, BB King, and Billie Holiday. I look forward to this one every year.
  • Merry Christmas from Yo La Tengo. This one came from Yo La Tengo’s website a few years ago, but doesn’t seem to be available any longer. It’s three Santa songs that rock. I love Yo La Tengo, and I’d go to their Hannukah shows if I lived in New York.
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi. This one is, for me, the sound of the season.

I always look forward to these CDs each year. I suppose I could listen to them at other times than Christmas, but then they probably wouldn’t be as fun as they are when I only listen to them for two weeks at the end of the year. Well, the CDs are playing, the decorations are up. What’s next? Christmas TV. Yes!

Five Days till Christmas: Decorating

December 20, 2005 • • 3 Comments

In order to celebrate the winter holiday of my choice (Christmas) over the next few days, I’ll be posting about Christmas and Christmas-related things that I enjoy, starting with decorations.

We usually keep it very simple because we’re lazy about such things, but we eventually get it together and do some work just in time to leave it all up for a week or two. We don’t decorate excessively since the cat likes to test his gravitational theories by knocking things off tabletops, and the dogs enjoy chewing the tasty Christmas decor. Yes, simplicity is the way of a Brush Christmas.

The tree has been an interesting issue for us. We haven’t had one since 1997 when our first dog ate the forbidden fruit from the lower branches of the tree and developed knowledge of the difference between good-to-chew and bad-to-chew. Instead of a regular artificial tree, we’ve been using these cool wooden trees:

They’re simple, set-up and take-down are a breeze, and – I think – fairly hip in their understated way. This year, however, since we now live in a house with a room from which we can exclude the hounds and cat, we’ve set up a regular tree.

But you have to wait until Christmas to see it. Ha-ha! I can feel the suspense building already.

Searching Is the Perfect Gift

December 19, 2005 • • 2 Comments

I learned about this over the weekend:

GoodSearch smaller logo

Goodsearch is a search engine that donates a portion of its ad revenue to the charity or school of the user’s choice. You simply select your favorite charity on the search page, do your search (which is powered by Yahoo!) and eventually the organization that you selected should receive a check. If your favorite isn’t listed, I think you can enter it for them.

I’ll be searching on behalf of The Periwinkle Foundation, a nonprofit based at Texas Children’s Hospital that provides a free summer camp for childhood cancer patients. I’ve been involved with Periwinkle for 17 years as a counselor and video producer, and I love having the opportunity to help them out every time I search. Hopefully they will soon need buckets to haul all the cash around.

So give it a whirl. Help out your favorite nonprofit or school and let your search be part of your gift.

Weekend Cat Report: King of the Ottoman

December 18, 2005 • • 2 Comments

Morrison watching TVThe greyhounds are taking the week off in order to give Morrison a chance to share some of his adventures. He’s a twelve year old black-and-white goodboy who is probably more outgoing and gregarious than either of the dogs. He is also in charge.

Last week, we got an ottoman so as to kick up our feet when watching movies, but Morrison quickly realized that what we had actually purchased was a king-size cat bed. The hounds have attempted to turn it into a greyhound bed, but as much as he likes them and will often sleep next to them, he has had to draw a bright line and make his stand here upon the ottoman. So the dogs have been chased off the ottoman and generally reminded with a good hiss about the workings of the heirarchy around here.

After conquering the ottoman and deciding that the couch is better anyway, we all settled in to watch The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, a thriller in which a group of cruel Catholic school boys set out to poison a beautiful panther with narcotics and then frame it for tearing up their teacher’s classroom. The film spends too much time detailing the mundane and trivial lives of the twisted cat-hating altar boys and not enough time focusing on their innocent (“Animals are without sin”, we are reminded at one point in the film) victim, the majestic cat. Morrison found himself at the point of tears when the cat succumbed to the drugs, but cheering mightily when the cat’s friend came to rescue his buddy and engage the cowardly human in combat. The battle scenes were a bit tame and went by too quickly for Morrison’s taste, but he loves movies in which justice is done even when the filmmakers attempt to align the audience’s symapthies with the bad guys. Hopefully there will be a sequel that focuses on the panthers attempting to put their lives back together.

A Logic Problem

December 16, 2005 • • Leave a comment

I remember nonsense like this from the GRE many years ago:

Cat and Dog 2 are both black and white. Dog 1 and Dog 2 like to play and roughhouse. Cat has diabetes and so must have access to food 24/7. Human 1 and Human 2 are gone for large portions of each day. Dog 1 and Dog 2 love to eat Cat’s food. Cat also has arthritis so his food must be on the floor so he doesn’t have to jump if he doesn’t want to. Dog 2 can jump over gates that Cat 1 can walk through. Dog 1 gets free run of the house, but would eat Cat’s food if given half a chance. Dog 2 likes to chew on things she shouldn’t. Human 1 and Human 2 should…

a) become veterinarians and work out of the house.
b) keep Cat confined in a single room while gone knowing that he probably doesn’t care since he sleeps all day anyway.
c) confine all three separately in different parts of the house.
d) write silly logic problems about it.
e) both a and b
f) both b and d
g) b, c and d
h) a, b and c

We’re going with ‘g’ for now.