Some Blog Site

I’m on holiday this week, so no real blog post.

I will take this time to mention that around here, we don’t put the wise men at the Nativity, because they didn’t arrive until a couple years after Jesus was born. But I think you should be allowed to have the wise men at your Christmas display if you note they are the wise men from two years ago. Then you get into all sorts of time travel logistical problems, such as shouldn’t the baby Jesus then be the toddler Jesus, and how can you have the baby Jesus and the toddler Jesus in the same place? Maybe it’s best just to keep the Wise Men apart from the manger to show the time distance that way.

Some Wife was rather inspired this year and made Christmas cookies. Lots of them. A lot of types of them. So, for your viewing pleasure, here they are. Unfortunately for you, they are not for your eating pleasure. Unless you’re family or a neighbor.

These are in alphabetical order by what we call them.

Carmelitas

These have a plain dough base, with carmel and chocolate in the middle, and a crumble topping.

Chocolate Crackle

These are chocolate dough, with chocolate chips in them, and a powder-sugar dusting.

Chocolate Mint

These are chocolate cookies, but with an Andes mint in the middle.

Circle Pretzels

These are just circle pretzels with a Hershey’s kiss melted into it and then a couple M&Ms dropped on top. They’re small, so it’s easy to eat too many.

Coconut Macaroons

These are coconut and chocolate, not unlike an Almond Joy, but without the almond. I would say Mounds, but Almond Joy is better known. And the chocolate is only on the bottom.

Frosted Cookies

These are the easiest to make, because they are ready to bake. GFS has a box of frozen cookie dough already cut into Christmas shapes, all we do is bake them and then frost (and sprinkle) them.

Fudge Puddles

These were new this year. Plain cookie base in a mini muffin tin, then fill with fudge and top with a pecan. Very good.

Graham Brittle

This has a variety of names. It’s a brittle, made with a base of graham crackers and topped with chocolate and toffee. Always very popular.

Lemon Crackle

The lemon version of the chocolate crackles above.

Lime Glaze

These are a plain cookie base, with a lime glaze on top.

Marshmallows

These are marshmallows, dipped in chocolate, then rolled/coated with something while the chocolate is still wet. Half of them got sprinkles (to look Christmas-y) and half of them got crushed graham crackers (to imitate a S’more).

Peanut Brittle

It is just what it says – peanut brittle. This is the microwave recipe, which tastes just as good as the stovetop method, but is waaaaaay easier.

Raspberry Bars

A perennial favorite. Vanilla cake mix for the base (but really dense, don’t follow the cake directions) and raspberry jam and chocolate chips.

Rice Krispie Treats

I have written about these before (see A Christmas Snack). In general, we like the wreath cookies made with corn flakes, marshmallows, and green food coloring, then topped with red hots. But the recipe has not cooperated the last couple years and we end up with a sickly-looking sticky blob of corn flakes. So it lieu of those, Some Wife made these. They still have cereal and melted marshmallows, so it’s close.

Thumbprints

I think everyone knows about this one – make a plain cookie, press a divot into it with your thumb, then fill with jelly. Ours are overachievers and have some icing on top too.

White Chocolate Thingies

One of my favorites, and not everyone likes white chocolate so there’s more for me. Melt white chocolate and mix it in with Cheerioes, Chex, pretzel sticks, and M&Ms.

Not pictured, because it hasn’t been made yet: Chocolate-covered caramel corn. This one can’t be made yet, because if she did make it now, it wouldn’t last until it is needed at the Christmas gathering.

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering, and no, the link there is not to my guest post). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

Cheering for Bannerman

Many of you may be wondering who Bannerman is. Kids these days don’t know their history. Bannerman was 20 years old when I started writing this guest post over a decade ago.

Bannerman is a song by Steve Taylor. Not Tyler, Taylor. Also popular for the song “Lifeboat”.

But Bannerman the song is about Bannerman the person who was ubiquitous in that era: the guy who holds up the Bible verse behind the goal posts during football games. I don’t know how that guy was able to make it to every single football game, or how he managed to get tickets in the same spot in various stadia, but that guy was consistent.

He may have retired or something, because I don’t see him at every game anymore. Or maybe the ticket prices are keeping him from attending multiple games every weekend.

I also wonder if he thought of himself as a missionary
“What do you do?”
“I’m a missionary.”
“In what country?”
“In the USA.”
“Oh, which people group do you minister to?”
“Football fans.”

Some Wife and I have different philosophies on some things, one of which is turning on lights in hallways.

I prefer to have light so I can see to not step on whatever things the kids have strewn about the hallway.

She thinks its a waste of electricity for such a short distance, especially during the daytime when there’s enough residual light.

We went back and forth for a while. Years, in fact. I leave the room and turn on the light; she follows and turns it off. Or vice-versa. Not that she was following me just to turn off the light – it’s just that if we are going somewhere that’s how it usually works out.

I got tired of flipping the light switch, especially as there is plenty of light available, just not in the interior hallway. If only there were a way to get outside light inside the house.

Behold, the magic of skylight tubes! They are perfect for a situation such as our upstairs hallway, where there is no place for a window to the outside, and the ceiling has an attic above it.

So I bought one to install. That took me a couple of weekends working on it part time, and had a bit of a learning curve. Plus the attic was tall enough that I had to buy some extension tubes.

But I got it in, and it worked. But the light wasn’t impressive. A number of reviews had said that one skylight tube looks bleak, but add a second one and it is much better. The sum is greater than the parts, or something like that.

So I bought another one and installed it. Installation was about 4 hours one Saturday this time – much quicker the second time around.

Here are the main steps, in case you’re interested.

• Cut a hole in the ceiling drywall
• install the interior diffuser
• go into the attic, find the interior diffuser, and mark a spot on the south-facing roof that lines up with the diffuser.
• cut a hole in the roof
• go on the roof and install the exterior dome and flashing
• go back in the attic and connect the diffuser and dome via shiny tubes
• clean up

I must agree with the other reviewers – having two skytubes is more than twice as good as one skytube.

Here are the before and after pictures, although I don’t have any with just the one skytube.

Before, with the bedroom door fully shut.

Before, with the bedroom door mostly shut. This is how it usually was.

After, with the door fully closed.

After, looking from the bedroom doorway.

End result: I’m pleased with them. They do what they’re supposed to do, and now Some Wife and I don’t disagree on the hallway light switch. The skytubes were more expensive than the electricity we’re saving, but overall it was worth it.

Thanks to a recent TV ad that shows Michael Bolton singing a version of “How am I Supposed to Live Without You” but with slightly altered lyrics, I was inspired to write this blog post.

I don’t know why it popped into my head this way, but I think there must have been some other TV ad that played or referenced the song “Grandma Got Run OVer by a Reindeer”, and I noticed the two songs fit together well.

Behold:

And it goes the other way too, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader, to put the words to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” to the music of “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You”.

It’s not perfect though. For one thing this is just the chorus. I have better things to do with my time than to fit the verses of these songs together. Plus no one knows the verses anyway.

And the Michael Bolton song has 5 lines in the chorus but the Grandma song has only 4. I removed one line to make it, and I’m guessing no one noticed until I pointed it out.

Our local library hosted a class recently, so I took Gamma and Delta there. The class was called Cranky Contraptions and was actually run by a nearby museum / science center.

Here is Delta’s result – a geyser:

They’re called Cranky Contraptions because the design is based on a crankshaft, and you turn the crank to make the kinetic sculpture move.

Here’s a different view of the geyser:

And for one in motion, here’s a GIF of Gamma’s marshmallow roasting contraption:

It was a fun class, and the boys liked it more than they thought they would. We were about the last ones there. So I recommend it as a project. If you want to try this yourself, it’s easy enough. Try this link for more ideas on cranky contraptions.