Friends – Page 10 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Thank you Santa!

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Christmas eve was spent in the company of two of our bestest friends, Jim and Greg Henkel.

I forgot to get a good picture of it, but Greg is wearing a shirt that Cynthia made for him as an Xmas gift. The fabric is Hawaiian and has pictures of islands, palm trees and BATTLESHIPS. Greg’s a huge fan of the dreadnought so it was the perfect gift for him.

Cynthia had great gift from her sister waiting under the tree on this chillsome Xmas morn.

It’s a giraffe marionette.

It’s a pretty well known fact that Cynthia loves giraffes and some of you may might recall her adventures/antics/shenanigans at the Texas Renaissance Festival as the “Crazy Puppet Lady.”

And I got the coolest present EVER!

It’s a collectible set of GI JOE Xmas ornaments that are replica pieces from “The Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb” set which came out in 1971. This is what the original looks like:

It was a gift from Cynthia’s mother. She has the idea that I should have a GI JOE tree if Cynthia has a giraffe tree. We’ll see. For now I have them in my collectors case with the REAL GI JOE’s. I especially like the back of the ornament box which features the actual graphic from the original box.

Here’s hoping Santa brought you something nice this Christmas!

Traditions

This is the second year in a row that we have spent part of our holidays with Carl and Suzanne. They visit annually from Holland to visit Carl’s family.

They were our most gracious hosts when we were in Amsterdam a few years back and it’s always nice to have the chance to catch up.

Apronicity

Cynthia and I met up with Allen “King of the Oldies” Hill and his lovely lady, Andrea, for dinner last night. We dined at BYOB Lebanese restaurant called Cafe Mezza. It was our first time to eat there and it was quite good.

Cynthia wanted to make an apron for Allen and personalize it. Since Allen’s primary marketing trademark is a wearing a tuxedo and tennis shoes Cynthia came up with the perfect thing:

It’s called the “Allen Hillpron”

Tanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving at our house over the last few years has been a rather relaxed affair.
Cynthia cooks up a very traditional meal, usually a Turkey and all the trimmings and we invite a few friends over to join us for dinner, drinks and conversation.

This year we invited Owen Finn over for dinner. Owen is a recent transplant to Houston from Galway Ireland. He transferred here to our Houston office to take a position that had opened up managing our customer facing services. Services like external tech support for our software and our maintenance renewals.

I had recently gone out drinking with Owen and another co-worker who was visiting from the Galway office. I did my best to keep up with two drunk Irishmen but was completely outmatched.

The evening was extemely fun and as I related it to Cynthia she suggested we invite Owen over so we could treat him to his first Thanksgiving. Owen’s here in advance of his family who will be moving here in January so it was a good bet he would have been on his own that day.

Owen is incredibly funny and a great story teller. He’s got this thick Irish accent and when he says words that begin with TH he just pronounces them with a hard T sound. Thursday becomes Turrrsday and Thanksgiving become Tanksgiving.

We arranged for him to come over at tree minutes to tree on Turrsday for Tanksgiving.

It was a great time. Jim Henkel joined us later on and we sat around drinking coffee and telling jokes and stories.

At one point Cynthia broke out the Book Of Lists which is a compendium of interesting facts and began quizzing us.

One of the questions she asked was “What are the seven stages of drunkenness.”

None of us really knew the seven stages. Well, we knew from experience, but not formally.

Turns out they are:

Verbose
Grandiose
Amicose
Bellicose
Morose
Stuporous
Comatose

After Owen and Jim had left Cynthia and I got to talking and she decided that what Owen needed was the list of the seven stages of drunkenness. And not just a writren list, oh no.
She would immortalize them in cross stitch.

She got some graph paper and drew it out and then dug up her cross stiching supplies and turned this out:

Click image for full size

I’m giving it to him tomorrow.

Geek Gathering – Nov 2006

phliKtid

With all the fuss of fundraising and prepping to go to Austin this weekend we really didn’t hype the Geek Gathering all that much.

Still we managed an excellent turn out.

Russell Holliman of MobilePodcast.org who has been tangling with Apple over the name of his company, Podast Ready, found some time to join us. Always a treat. Plus he promised some swag after modeling the new company shirt for us.

We also saw Lambo and Sketkar of Astrocast.net fame make an appearance.

Lambo and Sketkar

All in all, a great evening. I had to cut and run to get home and get some sleep before heading to Austin for the Celtic Festival this weekend. More on that later.

DÃa de los muertos (y viejos amigos)

I received an e-mail from my old friend Rich Davis indicating that his mother was in town visiting from Seattle.

Rich and I go back easily 30 years or so. We were inseparable best friends for a good portion of our adolescence. I knew his whole family and even lived with the Davis’s at one point.

It was good to see Mary. It’s been at least 15 years or so since I have seen her. She’s looking great! She had bypass surgery and has lost over 150 lbs and seems to be full of energy and great humor.

When people my age and older get together to reminisce the conversation quickly turns to what I call the “Litany of the Dead” where the two parties pretty quickly catch each other up on who’s no longer with us. I gave up the gory details on my little brother, my mother and my father who had all passed since we saw each other last and she filled me in on her husband, her mother and her daughter.

A grim but necessary conversation and ever so appropriate on this, The Day of the Dead.

Mary shared with me the story of how when her husband had died she had to make the decision to take him off life support. She expressed some of the agony that comes with making that decision and the doubt surrounding whether or not to try prolonging the life.

After he had passed she collected family members to go out and get some dinner. They went to a burger place and order some food and the most amazing thing happened when she received her change. She got this dollar bill (which she later had laminated):

If you click it you will see a larger view and you can read the handwritten text which says:

“Today is the day that I died, a day that was one of the best”

It gave me chills just holding it. I call it the “Dollar of the Dead”. It’s not every day that the dead communicate so clearly. What a blessing!

Feliz DÃa de los muertos everyone!

Goodbye Texas Renaissance Festival, we hardly knew ye

As we are in the heart of the Texas Renaissance Festival season I must confess I am of two minds about not being hired this year.

One the one hand I have the entire series of fall weekends to myself. That means we get to play the Austin Celtic Festival and I can go to the Airshow and the Quilt Festival and do all those things I have been deprived of in the fall as a result of 15+ years of dedication and sacrifice to the festival.

But there are things I miss. There are some very good memories tied up in that experience.

I was poking round the Internets and I found some pictures someone took that time Istanpitta pranked us by dressing as us and parodying the Flu Pandemic a few years ago.

Click for larger image

Seeing Sahira dressed as Joe was about the most ridiculously funny thing I have ever had the opportunity to behold.

Geek Gathering

Last Friday’s Geek Gathering was a near miss for me. I completely spaced and almost forgot to attend the very event I organized. It’s not the heat, it’s the senility.

I arrived fashionably late to Tropioca to find a few gathered geeks. Groovehouse, KD5, Barrett and a few others scattered about. Glad to see it going on without me.

After a bit phliKtid showed followed shortly by Jamie who was on her cell phone and apparently being asked a technical question. Groovehouse and phliKtid came to her rescue with an Internet connected laptop.

There was much keyboard clacking and tongues clucking as information was relayed via the phone to Jamie to Groovehouse and phliKtid and then input into the computer. Answers were found and relayed back via the computer to human to phone to human interface.

Success!

I’m glad I managed to show up as we had a special guest come and hang out with us.

Long time friend, Fish fan and award winning Houston blogger Charles Kuffner of Off The Kuff fame.

It appears that technology and politics mix quite nicely over dessert and bubble tea.