HOW THE ANGEL GOT ON TOP OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

With many thanks to Baxter Black for my favourite Christmas story ever.  This fairy tale answers that age old question, “How did the angel get on top of the Christmas tree?"

Santy wuz lyin’ there in front of the fireplace, laid out in his Lazy Boy with his feet up. Suddenly he looked up and glanced at his watch.  It was ‘leven thirty.  It wuz Christmas Eve and he had to be outta there by twelve or he wouldn't get all the toys delivered on time.

He jumped up and run to the back room. He tore through the closet lookin’ for his red suit. He shook the moth balls outta the sleeve and slipped into the britches. He heard a great big RIP. He backed up to the mirror and he had tore the seat right out of them britches.  He glanced at his watch and it was 25 to twelve. So he skinned off the britches and run 'em down to the little tailor elves and said, "Boys, sew this back up!" And they did.

Santy come in and throwed on his coat and hunted around in the closet fer his boots. He couldn't find ‘em 'n holler’d, "Maw! Where's my boots at?" She said. "They're out on the back porch where you left ‘em when ya came in last Christmas.  An' shurnuff, he run out on the back porch they’d built on the trailer house ‘n’ there they were. He’d pulled ‘em off wet last year and they’d dried and curled up. He stuffed his feet down in ‘em an’ dadgum, if the heel didn't fall of the left boot.  Santy glanced at his watch and it were 20 to twelve.  He ripped them boots off and took 'em down to the little cobbler elves and said. "Boys, hammer this back on!" And they did.

Santy slipped on his boots and run into the house, grabbed his coat and took out across the yard to hook up the sleigh. The yard light had burnt out and somebody'd left the fresno parked in the driveway.  He hit that sucker at a high lope an' went head over heels an’ lit with a great big war whoop, spooked the reindeer an’ they went over the top rail into the beet tops! Santy glanced at his watch an' it wuz a quarter 'til twelve!

The little cowboy elves saddled up and brought the reindeer into the barn, put 'em in the hitch and hooked 'em up to the sleigh. Santy jumped up in the buckboard seat, cracked the whip ‘n’ the reindeer took off and Santy just sat there! The tugs had broke on the harness! Santy glanced at his watch. It was 10 till twelve.

Santy said "Boys, gather up them reindeer and I'll fix the harness." Then he hooked the team back up leaped in the sleigh and slid on down in front of the house.  Just as they pulled up to the house, one of the runners fell off the sleigh.  Santy looked at his watch. It was 5 till twelve

They welded the runner back on and Santy run in the house. He grabbed that big bag o' toys, slung ‘em over shoulder…Yup, you guessed it. The bottom fell out of that bag and toys went everywhere!

Santy wuz down on his hands and knees, scramblin’ around stuffin’ them toys in a Safeway bag when a little angel come flyin' in the door with a Christmas tree over his shoulder.

He said "Santy. Where do you want me to put this tree?"

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

Winter Day Market

This morning the sun was shining brightly; not a could; not a whisper of wind.  It was -19C (-2F) but quickly warmed up to -15.  The soft white snow covered a multitude of sins and crunched underfoot.  A perfect day.  So Tanya and I went to the market which is held every Sunday morning from 7 to noon.  She bought a sweater and gloves for Masha and a turkey for Christmas (mine), a goose  for New Years and an old duck to add to kholodets.

Kholodets is like headcheese in that one boils whatever until the meat falls off the bones, adds gelatin to the juice and lets it set.  It is eaten with hot mustard and is a major holiday treat at our house.  Since the main ingredient is two ox-tails, I suppose you could call it tail cheese but it doesn't sound like a big seller.

Lina is home sick with a terrible cold.  There is no heat at her office and if she brought an electric heater she would have to pay for it herself which would not be easy since she hasn't been paid for two months, we learned today.  The funeral and headstone business is pretty dead in the winter other than ceremonies.  Instead of telling some people they were laid off until spring, the owner just stopped paying every one.

The roads were plowed and sanded in town and behold! We have another stop light at a bad corner.  Not sure what is going on here.  But something strange is in the works.  Bank machines are always short of cash.  People are pulling everything out that they can. Rumours abound of something terrible happening in the new year regarding banks and currency.  Word on the street is that some government employees have not been paid for a couple months in some oblasts.  The PM and entire cabinet resigned just prior to a meeting with the IMF and I have been too lazy to track down why and who replaced them.

Today was our 6th anniversary so we threw a chicken in the oven and Andrei, Tanya and Masha came for supper. Tanya is 20+ weeks and starting to show. She goes for another thorough check up on Dec 25th.  Over 35 and almost 10 years since the last one, means the health system here gives her special treatment.

Andrei and his mother do not always see eye-to eye, so to speak.  He and I get on well, as we have a common enemy.  When they were going home tonight I said to him "Thank you for your mother".  His reply just cracked us all up. "Na zdorovia"  which means "To your health" and the tone was "You are welcome to her".

Anonymous has become annoying

I have made some changes to the comments section to deter Anonymous.  I didn't realize that word verification was turned off.  I also set it so that you can only comment if you are registered.  Whatever that means.

If anyone has problems writing comments to my blog posts.  Let me know by email if all else fails.

My apologies to those who have been plagued by anonymous comments to my blog, though I do not understand how that works.

Wish I'd Said That!

"You will, Oscar, you will". ~ James McNeil Whistler

When the white missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land. ~ Desmond Tutu

America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real, but the moon landing was faked. ~ David Letterman

After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box. ~ Italian proverb

Men are like linoleum floors. Lay 'em right and you can walk all over them for thirty years. ~ Betsy Salkind

The only reason that they say, 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats. ~ Jean Kerr

When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife. ~ Prince Philip

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing. ~ Emo Philips.

Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself. ~ Harrison Ford

The best cure for sea sickness is to sit under a tree. ~ Spike Milligan

Lawyers believe that a man is innocent until proven broke. ~ Robin Hall

Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror. ~ Jean Rostand.

Having more money doesn't make you happier. I have 50 million dollars but I'm just as happy as when I had 48 million. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive today and all the impersonators would be dead. ~ Johnny Carson

Home cooking. Where many a man thinks his wife is. ~ Jimmy Durante

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder. ~ John Glenn

America is so advanced that even the chairs are electric. ~ Doug Hamwell

If God had intended us to fly, he would have made it easier to get to the airport. ~ Jonathan Winters

I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it. ~ Robert Benchley

Zhovti Vody in better times

Zhovti Vody (Ukrainian) or Zholti Vody (Russian) in better times before the disintegration of the USSR, was a thriving city of about 80,000.  It had several uranium mines and possibly other ores too but am not sure and two large factories making electronics for the Soviet military. As such, it was a closed city in that you could not come here without clearance, if even then.  I don't know how that works but I know that Russia still uses the closed city system.

These pictures are from the website Odnoclassniki, sort of  a Facebook for pictures and messaging.  Tanya has found many of her old school chums and we have looked at pictures from all over Russia.

No idea where this fountain went

Memorial to the Great Patriotic War

Petrovskovo St before the trees grew

The Zhovti Vody bus depot

The theatre before the trees grew

Everyone headed for the football game. Local team was the Avant Garde. Shashlik and bliney took the place of hot dogs and hamburgers

The movie theatre in the days when it showed movies.

The main of three hospitals

Khmelnitskovo Blvd before they put up Bogdan's statue

The far end of Khmelnitskovo blvd.

Leaving Zhovti Vody for Krivii Rih (Ukrainian) Krivoi Rog (Russian). 

Note: I corrected the mix-up of names from the original post as I had the Ukrainian Zhovti as Russian and the Russian Zholti as Ukrainian.

Where have you been?

The answer to that, from Wayne and Shuster's "Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde" was "I've been a broad".  I think they wrote the entire skit around that line.

I have been crunching numbers by the thousands, reorganizing them sixteen ways to breakfast and drawing nice pictures to see if any of them will tell me anything. when you have, just as one section, one country, one state, six counties and 43 vegetables, over 11 years, price and production, you can see how the numbers add or rather multiply.  And there are four or five sections. I am slowly getting close to a first draft, at least.

By the time night came I was too tired to blog or read blogs or think about blogs. So tired I was making stupid mistakes like copying one year's set of data into another year or one crop's data into another crop.  Stuff like that is catch-able and easily fixed but it takes time.

My computer had been acting up for some time and I was sure I had a virus but Kaspersky couldn't find it. When your msconfig file is missing, that is a sure sign something is rotten  in the state of Dellmark. Checked the internet and found SUPERAnti-SpyWare highly recommended.  So I tried it.  Found one serious something and things are running a bit better. When I have time, I will explore further.

Snowed yesterday.  And well it should have, since much of Europe was pretty much shut down and Kyiv got 70 cm.  We got 4 cm of wet snow only and then +1C temps, enough to melt and make everything either slushy or icy depending on where the salt trucks had been.  We have two shiny new sanding and snowplow trucks in our fair city.  AND a new real garbage truck on our route; no more tractor and wagon or old beater 3 ton.  Things are looking up.

We were late getting our garbage to the curb on Tuesday and had a fair bit as we had cleaned out the attic.  Tanya called the driver who turned around and came back for us.  That kind of service you don't get in North America, I bet. Cost us a whole dollar tip.

Went to town for groceries today.  Hadn't been for three days.  Timing was awesome.  Bread, donuts and such were warm from the oven/deep fryer.  Cheaper to buy food from the deli than go to a restaurant. Same benefit - no cooking and no dishes.

I will catch up on my blog reading as I miss my regulars, but it will be a few more days.

Playing with words.

A friend sent me this.  Said she didn't want credit unless it was a line of credit.  They have been around before but just in case you missed them, here they are again. (Sort of BOHICA). Washington Post is supposedly the source but who knows after five or ten years.

Take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

  1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

Alternate meanings for common words.

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v.. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men