If You Were A Tree

Several weeks ago (well before Thanksgiving), I found myself at Fashion Island early one morning for coffee. Usually, just being there is a surreal enough experience in its own right. But on this particular morning, I got to see how the mall's "real" Christmas tree gets constructed. I thought it was fascinating, and took some pictures.

Size Does Matter

Tulkinghorn, Legal Widow: "You can tell the firm is feeling twitchy when the size of its official Christmas card increases."

I, Two

We celebrated my son's second birthday yesterday with a balloon bigger than he is and an addition to his unstoppable vocabulary: "I twooooooo!!"

My elder baby, Bag and Baggage, is characteristically put out: four today and I have a no cake rule in effect, at least until later in December. Poor thing.

Tank You

"[I]t's easy to observe things well in Rome, because there's so much time lying around all over the place."

—from Analog Rome, one of the tightly crafted and eminently enjoyable short stories comprising David Maizenberg's Invitations to a Bridge Burning.

It's self-evident, but I've been living in the opposite of Rome lately. No time to even watch Rome, despite all the reruns and recyclings, which is probably for the best—there's only so much blood and incest I can handle. (I did happen to catch Pullo's fight with the gladiators in the arena. The British influences are clear; can you say Black Knight?)

But as things wind down a bit for the holiday, I did want to surface to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all and sundry. The post title references a recent but frequently used addition to my son's vocabulary, uttered almost never in the context you might expect—"thanks for that"—but instead in a distinctly highhanded (perhaps British influenced?) manner that hints broadly at what's down the road—"I'll thank you to remove that offending item immediately," sort of thing. But I am thankful he's liberal with the phrase, whatever the context.

So wherever your holiday travels may take you, enjoy the fare, the company, and, of course, grandmother's condominium.

Else There'd Be Nothing On

We had darn well better Save the Net or there may be precious little left for non-Netty media to broadcast or report. Between networks regularly monitoring and reporting on blogs (and I think we can expect more of this across the board), to tonight's Bravo special on Outrageous and Contagious Viral Videos — can mainstream media keep its audience from defecting to grassroots media by repackaging it? Dunno, but it's not shy about trying.