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The redecorator

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When we put the tree up a week or so ago I emailed my little sister to tell her about how nice a tree it was, and mentioned in passing that the cats had, so far, shown absolutely no interest in the tree at all as we were hanging ornaments and draping it with strings of lights and garlands. This in itself is a little surprising since usually when we are doing something new in the house the cats have to be right there in the middle of it to investigate. My little sister’s response was that this state of affairs was bound to change at Oh My God What the Heck Was That in the morning.

The cats, however, have been uncharacteristically cooperative this year. I realize that upon saying this I may just be jinxing myself, but so far only three ornaments have left the tree – and those are all the soft or nonbreakable ones which we deliberately hang near the bottom so that if (and when) they come loose there’s no danger of broken glass or broken memories. Two of the ornaments have been little stuffed critters, so naturally they have joined us upstairs. A much larger stuffed critter – a holiday moose with very long legs – has also been catnapped and dragged upstairs. I suppose we could be upset but it’s hard to be upset when you’re laughing. This is just what Rosie does. We live in state of constantly traveling stuffed toys, arranged artfully up and down the stairs (see picture below), piled in little clumps at the foot of our bed, or left on the rug in front of the bathtub. There is always humor to be found in her latest rearrangement, as well as in her methods of acquiring new material to cart around the house.

Last night Richard was packing our lunches for today – lunches that included raw carrots, baby bell peppers, and pea pods. Apparently he dropped one of the pea pods on the floor without noticing. In other houses with cats this pea pod might have remained where it was, or have been batted about on the floor, or even chewed and left for dead. In our house, however, nothing is ever certain except that the cats will continue to keep us on our toes.

This morning he found the pea pod in his slipper. Sometimes it is not just the stuffed toys that travel. Rosie has been doing an awful lot of purring. I think she’s quite pleased with herself. I have to admit that we are too.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Not exactly holiday cheer

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Ever since news that the proxy bid seemed to have actually worked, I – and a lot of others, I am sure – have been obsessively checking the news for word on whether or not the hostile takeover would succeed. Yesterday, all of our fears were realized. After 18 months of fighting and nastiness, Oracle has won. They will be purchasing Peoplesoft. Damn.

In case any long term readers had not already figured it out, the Big Fish I worked for several years ago was Peoplesoft. And believe me when I say that I harbor no love for Peoplesoft in this whole thing. They swallowed up my previous company and made huge promises that they would not lay people off and that they would not shut down a number of aspects of our software, and that they would continue to support the original customers. And then once the ink was dry on the papers and no one was listening to the Little Fish’s concerns because no one cared, they broke every single promise. At Little Fish, we consultants had at least been treated like people and not just numbered money making machines. At Peoplesoft, however, we all got a rather nasty dose of big company culture. It was made quite obvious to all of us that they did not give a damn about us, unless we were bringing in money. I – and a lot of others – got out the fastest way we could. Yes, we took huge and painful pay cuts and some of us had to move, and it was hard, but we were the lucky ones. Others stayed – familial or other obligations meant that they could not afford to take such drastic drops in salary. Some of those who stayed are my friends, and I have worried about them, each of them, the entire time, even as I thanked whatever deity or higher power might be responsible for at least letting me escape.

So now Peoplesoft finds themselves on the opposite side of the fence. Our merger (with Little Fish) was at least pleasant and mutual. The one with Oracle is not. But the board of directors is not motivated by what is good for their employees and their company – they are motivated by money. Despite the fact that Oracle’s very own rabid dog spokesperson (Larry Ellison – that loving, caring person that he is completely incapable of being) came right out in the beginning and said that the sole reason for the purchase is to put Peoplesoft out of business, and screw all the people he would be laying off in the process, the board of directors suddenly got it into their heads that gosh, maybe Oracle cares about the little guy after all and will treat all their people nicely (maybe even as ‘nicely’ as they treated the employees of every smaller company they swallowed). It was just a coincidence that this happened once Oracle upped their offer one final time and all the board members will go home fat, rich, and happy. Oracle can make all the promises it wants about supporting existing customers and continuing to develop existing software and trying to avoid layoffs. When the ink is dry on the papers and the tech world no longer gives a damn about the fact that this takeover was hostile, Oracle is going to be able to do whatever it wants, and I firmly believe that Ellison will get his nasty little way.

I know that this sort of thing is the very heart of capitalism. But it does not make it any easier to watch and accept. There’s a lot of good people who are going to have a pretty huge axe hanging over their heads for the next few months, and I hope that one of these days, the board members who make decisions like these – who screw over so many people who deserve better – get a triple helping of karma (or at the very least, a horrible full-body rash that itches worse than anything they could ever imagine, and lasts as long as possible). A lot of people are going to be hurt because of this. But why should Oracle care. And really, while I wish that I could just smirk about how turnabout is fair play, after what Peoplesoft did to us, it’s hard to hold onto determined vindication when people I know are in the way.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Handiwork

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Today has, except for a brief interlude called work, been all about food. It started this morning when I put together lasagna. Our social group at church is having a holiday potluck tomorrow night and I knew that I would not have time to do this any time between now and then. In order for me to get a lasagna into the oven so that it has cooked by the time we have to be at the church tomorrow night to open the doors and let everyone else in, the lasagna has to have already been put together by the time I dash home from work, which means that since I knew I’m not going to have time tomorrow morning since I shall be dutifully exercising, and I knew I was going to be spending any spare kitchen time tonight making cookies, the only time left to assemble a lasagna was this morning. So I rushed around doing that while Richard made coffee and packed lunches, and then I wrapped it in aluminum foil and stuck it in the fridge to wait, and we rushed off to work, where I discovered that the simple fact that I built a tiny little database to store very limited data about our projects means to some people that I must also have intimate knowledge of every little detail about every single project this company has ever done. Ha ha ha. Fun times, folks. Fun times.

The act of putting together lasagna and dealing with noodles and tomato sauce and minced garlic made me hungry for pasta all day. So when I got home from work I immediately began chopping up onions and peppers and garlic and mushrooms, tossed them into a frying pan with some tomato paste and a few sprinkles of random herbs and spices, let it all simmer together so all the flavors could blend, and then served it over whole wheat spaghetti, with grilled chicken and parmesan cheese on top. For an experimental, throw-it-together-quick meal, it turned out pretty good.

And yes, I did casually toss out that ‘baking cookies’ comment, didn’t I. One of the activities at the potluck is going to be the painting of sugar cookies for the kids (and also any adults who feel the urge to play with icing and sprinkles). The woman who suggested it wasn’t sure if she would have enough time to bake enough cookies and asked me on Sunday if I’d be willing to make some too. I was a little distracted at the time, and not thinking too clearly, so the word ‘sure!’ came out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing. So much for our self-imposed holiday treat moratorium in our house. I had intended to go to the monthly knitting circle tonight but realized that if I was going to churn out a few dozen cookies I just wasn’t going to have time to do both. Sigh. So instead of working on last minute Christmas presents and hanging out with other yarn-obsessed persons we ate dinner and watched the second half of the Earthsea miniseries, and then I dragged out the big bowl and the flour and sugar and shortening and cookie cutters and made half a batch of cookies. Considering that the original recipe makes enough cookies to feed a small army, half a batch is still a lot of cookies.

But it was actually kind of fun. Christmas is really the only time each year anymore that I do any kind of baking, beyond occasionally dumping a can of pumpkin and a box of spice cake mix into a bowl, stirring it together, and dumping it all into a pan to cook for half an hour. Plus there was admittedly a little selfish part of me that was glad I was making cookies to bring because I really do not like regular sugar cookies. They tend to be bland and a little too crispy and too sweet and I have never quite seen the point. But this recipe, which we have always called sugar cookies, isn’t the same as every other sugar cookie in the world. The cookies come out thick and soft in the centers, with just a hint of crisp at the very edges, and a deliciously delicate hint of nutmeg in the dough. My parents and my sisters like to frost them and my mother even sometimes covers them with coconut (yuck), but I prefer them plain, or with just a sprinkling of brown sugar on the top.

There are now bells and stars and Christmas trees cooling on towels in the kitchen, and the air is filled with the smell of cookies and nutmeg. There are splotches of flour all over my shirt, and quite possibly in my hair (rolling out cookie dough is a messy process). Making cookies really is one of my very favorite things about Christmas. And so I suppose I have just really been looking for an excuse to have at least one small baking frenzy. They aren’t gingerbread men, and no cookie press or raisins were involved, but they are, at least, cookies (and quite tasty cookies too because a good chef *always* samples) and they will just have to do.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Fudge decadence

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As I write this we are watching A Wizard of Earthsea on the Sci Fi channel, and it is, quite surprisingly, not too bad. The dialogue is a little choppy and contrived at times, and I think I really want to smack the main character upside the head, but apparently that was the way he was in the books too. I read the entire series, years ago, back when I was junior high, most likely, and all that I recall about them is that they were ever so slightly depressing. I read the series, in fact, several times. Do I remember a single thing about the plot at all? Of course not.

As in most cases like this, however, as soon as Richard said he wanted to watch the miniseries I decided to hold off on rereading the books until after the series has ended. I did this for the Lord of the Rings series and was able to enjoy the films completely without obsessing over anything they might have changed in translating from print to film. Okay, I’ll also admit that I didn’t exactly want to read those books again because they are very long and very tedious, despite the fact that I liked the story. But it’s a good rule to live by. I know my enjoyment of the Harry Potter movies has been seriously marred by how recently I’d read the books. That doesn’t stop me from occasionally dragging out the entire five-book series and reading them from beginning to end, non-stop, during a very long afternoon, knowing all the while that I will regret this as yet another Harry Potter film makes its way to the big screen.

The rest of the day has been fairly uneventful. I got up and did not work out because my workout partner (my mom) was in Seattle to go see The Nutcracker with a certainnearly-four-year-old granddaughter and that was as good an excuse as any skip the exercise. Instead Richard and I hunched over our breakfast and wrote up shopping lists, which we divided into two – one for him to take to the Co-op in Davis and one for me to take to the regular grocery store, since the Co-op does not believe in carrying mundane things like fat-free, aspartame sweetened yogurt. While I was there I noticed that our Safeway now carries all three varieties of the No-Pudge brownies, which meant that I had to buy the two we had not yet tried, go home, and immediately mix them up and toss them into the oven. We had plans for something with fish for dinner, but instead we had brownies – raspberry and mint (not in the same brownie, obviously) which, as decadent as that sounds, was actually a very low Points dinner – so much so that I think maybe I might just need one more piece. Possibly now. Hmm.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Preparation

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Richard’s been fighting off an upper respiratory infection for nearly two weeks now. It looked yesterday like things were getting a little better, but then this morning he was right back on his nebulizer the instant he woke up. Ah, the joys of asthma. I feel a little guilty because it’s my fault he’s sick this time around. I got it first, after all, and one of the perks of cohabitating is that if one of you gets sick, the other’s bound to catch it eventually. Except that I – being asthma free – tend to get over it a wee bit faster (well, aside from the whole my-sinuses-hate-me-and-are-trying-to-kill-me-by-making-my-head-implode thing), while he’s left to spend days on end trying his darnedest to hack up at least one, if not both, of his lungs.

Despite the hacking and the wheezing (on his part) and the impending sinus pressure (on my part), somehow we both made it to choir practice. The cantata is next week and I have been dutifully listening – and singing along to – the rehearsal CD in my car on the way to and from work now for weeks. I think I have this thing just about memorized. I also think I may have just about reached my limit for O Come, O Come Emmanuel for the year.

The children’s pageant was this morning and it was delightful. The two youngest boys were sheep, and weren’t too sure about the words to the songs or whether they were even supposed to be singing, and were more focused on whether or not they wanted to leave their sheep ears on their heads or not. One little angel kept fidgeting with her sparkly tinsel halo the entire time she was singing. It was all the typical things that happen during a pageant that make it so much fun to watch.

After church Richard and I zipped off for the weekly run to Costco to pick up a few huge sacks of rice for the food drive, and then came home to finish off the rest of the Christmas decorating. For the past few hours Richard’s been either climbing around on the roof or teetering on ladders and stepstools inside and out putting up all the lights. I stayed inside, since me and heights don’t mix, and instead of untangling lights compiled a list of people who will be getting cards, and then spent an hour or two addressing and stamping and signing. My handwriting isn’t so great to begin with; after an hour or so of addressing and signing it will be a miracle if anyone can actually decipher our names at the bottom of the cards. This is why the majority of people get a typed letter from us each year instead of something scribbled in a card, since I figure they’d probably much rather be able to actually read what we’re telling them.

The lights are up now – Richard just called me to come see them, so we both traipsed outside and stood in the middle of the night-quiet street to take it all in.

In the dark the lights are the only decoration that’s visible – along with the sparkle of the lights on the tree through the bay window in the living room. It’s cold outside and the fog is rolling in again, as it has been for the past few days. But our house now has the welcoming glow of tiny white lights in every room I walk through, and the smell of pine still lingers in the air if I stop and focus long enough to find it.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Tea tree day

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Today was the tea group’s December meeting. Amusingly, it was at the same place I went with my sisters and my mom the day after Thanksgiving, so at least I was familiar with how to get there and what to do upon arrival – pick out a tea, pick out a teacup and saucer, pick out and put on a fancy hat.

I am still feeling my way into this group. The friend who introduced me to them was unable to come so I felt a little bit lost sometimes during the tea. But they are all very nice women and we chatted a little about little things like kids and pets and decorating our houses for Christmas. I may not have any stories about my own kids to share but I can always draw on the cute things the niece/nephews have done. And it was rather interesting to hear at least one or two of the other women talking about their decorations, which included things I would not be caught dead displaying in my own front yard (Inflatable snowmen! Moving lighted deer!). However, in circumstances like this I keep my mouth shut and remind myself that everyone is entitled to their own idea of what is festive, and I am sure that a majority of those women would probably have their own thoughts on the fact that we have a stone dragon perched on our roof all year round.

The tea place provided us with a huge amount of food – so much that I think most everyone ended up taking at least one of their scones home. I had peppermint tea this time because I am discovering that it is one of my favorite flavors of tea – like drinking candy out of a cup when I stir in a sugar cube. One of the sandwiches we were given was an English chocolate sandwich, which was a little odd because one does not normally associate sandwich bread and chocolate filling together. In the spirit of the season they gave us tiny little gingerbread muffins dipped in white chocolate, with bits of candied ginger in the middle, and scones shaped like Christmas trees and filled with bits of cranberry, lemon, and mint so tiny that even I (as a confirmed dried fruit hater) could actually enjoy it.

After we drank copious amounts of tea and nibbled great piles of tea sandwiches and tea cakes, and somehow found room to stuff in tiny slices of dense chocolate cake drizzled with chocolate, we exchanged tea-related holiday gifts and talked about Christmas cookies and made tentative plans for the next tea in February, and wished each other happy holidays, and it was time to go home.

Time for phase two of the day. I was home long enough to change and check my email and poke at the cats and then we climbed into the car and headed down to Richard’s parents house to help decorate their Christmas tree.

They had an old friend of his dad’s there, who seemed to fit right into the family like he’d been there all his life. They also have a very new (three months old) Border collie puppy who was oh so very excited and bouncy. It is very hard to remain serious when a very wiggly Border collie puppy is trying desperately to herd you as you walk. It usually did not work (the herding, that is), so he usually ended up just trying to eat our shoelaces. He also did a lot of jumping and bouncing, all with mouth open and eyes wide. He was just adorable to watch – and also a little exhausting – all that energy!

We chatted and gave Richard’s mom her birthday present (a copy of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which I’d already read back when my boss got a copy and let me borrow his (because we are both grammar and punctuation nerds and he knew I would find it as amusing as he did). We ate dinner and then we decorated the tree. I took my customary spot behind the tree, in the corner, and people handed me random ornaments to hang (they have a LOT of ornaments) while the friend kept the puppy distracted with balls and toys and even his own hands to chew. And then we sat down to admire our work and eat creamy peppermint and chocolate chip experimental pie and I cheered on their cat as she poked carefully at a few branches (because she normally does not do cat-like things, like attack Christmas trees), and somehow, as things inevitably do, we ended up discussing computer stuff for a little while. Also there was some knitting talk because Richard’s youngest sister has also been bitten by the yarn bug and has concocted a scarf that is quite possibly 20 feet long and over a foot wide, along with a selection of very soft and fuzzy hats. And then we realized that it was getting late, and so Richard and I hugged our goodbyes and gave the wiggly puppy one last pet, and came home.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Little mentions

Last night there was choir practice. They’re borrowing a baby grand for the cantata and last night was the first time we’ve sung with it. It’s…different – for one thing, the way it’s pointed I’m sure the congregation will be able to hear the piano, but we choir people – the ones who *need* to hear it so we can get our notes – are basically out of luck. But there are a number of us who are reminding ourselves that it is only temporary and that perhaps we will figure out how to work with it by next Sunday, when we actually have to sing this thing, and with all the other instrumentalists who will be there with us, perhaps one of them will be a good enough piano substitute that us basses and tenors will be able to muddle around and find at least one or two of our notes here and there.

Today was perhaps one of the longest mornings at work – something all of my coworkers agreed with. However, it was long not because we were all incredibly busy, but because at 1:30 we were all going out for our holiday lunch at a very, very nice place, and we were all anxiously watching the clock pretty much the entire time we were there. We’re all used to eating lunch at noon, so by the time 11:30 rolled around someone started making microwave popcorn and the rest of us swarmed to the kitchen to join him, so we managed to not gnaw the legs off our desks and made it to the appointed time still in one piece.

Lunch was wonderful. Oh, the food was incredibly delicious – like it always is at this place – and the service was spectacular, and the desserts were to die for. But what made it so very wonderful was that the six of us sat around the table and talked and laughed and it was as if we were all the best of friends meeting just to hang out, and not just coworkers. It’s something that I have really liked at our office – the fact that everyone seems to get along so well. I don’t see that at the other offices in our company – perhaps because they are just so much larger that it is harder to form those bonds between more than a few people at a time. But I am grateful to have it where I work.

It was a very, very long lunch. We started with salads and moved on to the main entrees, and then could not pass up on the dessert. By the time we left it, we had been there a little over two hours, and we stepped out into a gorgeous, if slightly chilly afternoon. If I’d had my car I might have just opted to stay in Old Sacramento a little longer, just to wander around and enjoy the sun. But instead I piled into my boss’s car with the rest of the crowd and we twiddled our thumbs in the parking garage as every other person in all of Old Sacramento decided to leave right at that very moment as well. By the time we made it back to the office it was just about 4pm, which was a little humorous because the deal had been that after our office holiday event they were going to just close up the office and we would all get to go home early, but really, 4pm is when most people start trickling away anyway.

I came home without having to deal with Friday afternoon traffic – which was a nice change from most weeks. Richard walked in a few minutes after I did. We settled on the couch – me with my knitting and he with his writing, and ate dinner and watched Maid in Manhattan, which was just as cheesy and predictable as I had expected. Outside, the fog is rolling back in and with it, the cold, and there are flannel sheets on the bed upstairs, just waiting to keep us nice and cozy and warm tonight. There are cats all around us, taking every available space on the couch between us. It is a very nice way to end a lovely day.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Anything but love

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I finished downloading all the files from World Bank today – a task which has taken me three days to complete. There were close to 600 of them, now all residing as lovely Excel files on our server. I’m not sure exactly when we will ever need to access a 44 year history of number of televisions owned per 1000 persons, or how much a 3 minute telephone call costs, or a running total of how many cell phones per 1000 people each country has accumulated (oh, and just in case you were wondering, Luxemburg has, on average more than 1 cell phone per person. I admit to being extremely curious as to why) in our business, but some of the data was pretty interesting to look at. Also some of it was a little scary. These people track everything. And I do mean everything.

One of my coworkers just recently bought a truck, so he and I loaded all the food donations (and counted out all the cash and change into an envelope) and we took it all to the Sacramento Food Bank to drop it off. It took a few false starts before we figured out where to go to drop it all off, and our total donation seemed like a pretty small pile on the big cart they wheeled out for us, especially when compared to the long line of people we saw inside, waiting patiently for their names to be called so they could be given bags of food. But the guy at the donation spot thanked us profusely and wished us happy holidays and when I got back to the office I reminded myself that there are only 6 people in my tiny little office, and that every great thing has to start small, and that even 230 pounds is better than no food at all. And then I ate a piece of chocolate and felt better, because chocolate is always good for what ails you.

After work I zipped off to the allergy clinic for my weekly shots, and then Richard and I met at Ben & Jerry’s for dinner. I realize, especially after yesterday’s entry about how we were going to be good and virtuous and forgo the Christmas cookie baking, that having dinner at an ice cream shop may seem a little insane, but there was a really good reason. You see, they’ve got this really cool promotion going on right now where if you buy a sundae you can get one of four gorgeous ceramic glazed bowls for only a few dollars more, and the instant I saw one of the bowls in real life I knew that I must have the full collection. They are holiday themed, but they are lovely pastel colors with snowflakes in the bottom, and words along the side – Peace, Love, Harmony, and Joy. Last week when we went stopped by for a scoop I bought the Harmony bowl. However, when I got home, I managed to accidentally knock the box off the kitchen counter and broke our Harmony into tiny little pieces. Earlier this week we went in and they had just brought out Love, so we split a sundae and got that one. And I figured if we just each got a sundae today then we’d only need one more bowl and we’d be all set, and also we had vegetable stew and fruit for lunch, and very low-point pumpkin spice cake for breakfast so ice cream for dinner was actually not so out of the realm of healthy eating possibilities for the day.

When we went in and ordered our sundaes he asked us which bowl we wanted and I told him we wanted anything but love, which was kind of amusing to say out loud, and I related the little story of our shattered harmony, and then for some obscure but much appreciated reason the guy behind the counter decided that the bowls should not be shattering into itty bitty pieces and so he gave us another Harmony for free. And then he gave us our sundaes and we ate our ice cream and he gave us the remaining two bowls, and now I have the whole set, plus I got to eat ice cream for dinner, and it all makes me very happy.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Taking a cookie pass

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It occurred to me this morning, while sitting at work and slowly downloading several hundred files of all manner of fascinating data from World Bank (like the average number of cell phones per 1000 people in every country in the world, or the number of people per country who live on less than $1 per day), that I should be thinking about cookies by now. After all, by this time in December in years past I have already mapped out the days on which large quantities of baking will take place in our house, if the baking has not already, by this time, begun.

And then it occurred to me that this year, for some odd reason, I have had no desire to bake any cookies at all. Usually by now I am overwhelmed with the need to exercise my domestic talents. Putting up the Christmas decorations and the tree is usually all it takes to flip that switch inside my head and before you know it I am buying my yearly box of raisins for eyeballs for the gingerbread men, and dragging out the cookie press, and dithering over whether or not I will have enough walnuts to make yet another batch of powdered sugar-encrusted teacakes. But this year, that switch seems to have remained mysteriously off. I am full of holiday cheer – even wearing holiday socks or earrings occasionally to work – and the sight of the tiny lights sparkling in our tree fills me with joy. But I have absolutely no desire to get busy with the baking. And this is coming as sort of a shock.

I know that, in part, this has to do with the fact that this year we have been realizing that we need to take the healthy eating and exercise programs more seriously. Richard has high blood pressure, and his doctor is worried about his cholesterol, and I’ve got diabetes and heart disease on both sides of my family that I need to be actively guarding against. The tradition of baking huge quantities of cookies to snack on is not exactly conducive to keeping on the healthy track. Plus neither of us really has any outlet for foisting all those cookies on other people any more. Not only do we both work in extremely small offices, but more and more now, all our friends and coworkers (and even family members) are becoming just as concerned with their own health as we are with ours. So piles of freshly baked cookies, even just warm from the oven and possibly oozing melted chocolate everywhere, are not met with the same degree of enthusiasm as when we were all younger and blissfully ignorant of our levels of triglycerides and where what we were putting in our faces ranked on the glycemic index.

Ironically, while I am pretty much feeling no desire to bake cookies, I have been obsessed for the past month with the thought of trying to organize a cookie exchange. Only the fact that there is not enough time to get it together, nor enough of my friends who actually bake, has stopped me from doing any more than just idly mentioning out loud at random intervals whenever I am around them. It would be so easy. You show up bearing however many dozen cookies you want, divided into dozen batches, and you get a ticket for every dozen. Then you can exchange those tickets for cookies that someone else brought, thereby saving everyone the hassle of having to make more than one type of cookies for the holidays. It would work out so wonderfully, I am sure of it, assuming that I really had any desire to actually bring dozens of cookies back into the house for us to stare at longingly before they eventually went stale or we surreptitiously inhaled them, all the while pretending that large piles of holiday cookies should be a staple in any program geared toward healthy eating and possible weight loss and muscle gain.

I emailed Richard, since I figured it was only fair to make sure he wasn’t going to be disappointed if pans of fudge and boxes of cookies did not magically appear on the kitchen counter. Luckily he shares my ambivalence with the need for holiday treats, so it’s official. Despite dreams of cookie swap parties dancing in my head, this year the cookie cutters will remain in their boxes, and the sprinkles will remain in the cupboard, and the remains from last year’s raisin box will have at least another year to turn into little raisin-shaped rocks before I eventually take pity on them and throw them away. It is going to feel a little odd to not have the occasional gingerbread man to look forward to, or fudge to nibble, but I think this is probably for the best. I may eventually break down and suffer an attack of baking frenzy later on this month, but instead of making cookies I shall instead channel all that energy for good, and instead of cookies will use the time to ‘whip up’ a batch of cinnamon apple chips (they take several hours of cooking at a very low temperature so it’s not exactly a quick adventure) for healthier holiday snacking. We’ll keep the larder well-stocked with sugar-free, fat-free pudding and fat-free whipped topping to ward off the need for something sinful and sweet. And maybe next year I’ll find a little bit of that enthusiasm for baking that I seem to have lost, and the holidays will once again be filled with the smell of gingerbread and mulled cider and cookies and all the millions of calories that make the holidays that much merrier.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Bring on the pounds

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My office has done a few things together, for charitable work. This past summer we spent two (very long) Saturdays doing construction work for Habitat for Humanity – and best of all everyone still seems interested in doing it again. Plus my boss and at least a few of my coworkers seem really interested in being a little more socially and environmentally conscious. So when I started tossing around the idea of trying to challenge the other offices to see what they could do as well, my boss was nothing but encouraging. We bounced some ideas back and forth and ultimately decided that if we were going to try to get a company-wide charitable event, it was best to start small. After all, it needed to be something that everyone could participate in as much or as little as they were comfortable, yet benefit local communities, not require sending things off to one central location. So we decided on a food drive. There are food banks in every city where our company has an office, and food drives are one of the easiest things to organize because it requires nothing more than some cheerful encouragement, and maybe a poster or two.

There are five offices in our company, and I was able to pinpoint one contact person in most of the offices who thought the idea of a company-wide food drive was a great idea. All offices, that is, except one. I was actually a little surprised when I was passed from person to person, all of whom made it obvious that they were not the slightest bit interested, nor did they think they could get any excitement about it from the rest of their team.

It was rather discouraging. It’s kind of hard to do a company-wide event when one fifth of the company doesn’t want to take part, and for the rest of us to go ahead with it anyway would make things uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure quite how to proceed, until I finally managed to find one person who was willing to coordinate, even if not very enthusiastically.

The five of us put our heads together and set goals for our own offices, based on what we thought we could accomplish. I set the goal for my office a little high, but I had faith in my coworkers. We kicked off the food drive in mid-November, and in our little office, 50 pounds of food showed up on the very first day. But then, over the past three weeks, that’s been about it. Emails from the other coordinators showed similar lackluster donations. I started to worry that maybe this wasn’t going to work out as well as we had hoped.

Yesterday, however, the Monday of the fourth week, my office, at least, pulled through. Not everyone was in yesterday due to schedules or vacations, but those who did come in showed up with huge bags of rice and beans. Suddenly we were within pounds of our goal. This morning, the money donation jar has lots more change in it, and a few sacks of citrus fruit pushed us comfortably over our office goal, three whole days before the end of the drive!

I’m not sure how the other offices are doing, and if they’ll also see big final pushes for donations. I’m crossing my fingers though. It would be really nice if we managed to pull this off. I know that a food drive isn’t much, and there’s a lot more I wish that I could encourage the other offices to do. But if this food drive succeeds it will be the first time they’ve managed to get a company-wide event to work. I figure for food banks, every little bit helps. And I have to admit that I’m proud of our office for not only meeting, but exceeding our goal. I guess next year we’re just going to have to set our sights a little higher.

This has been a Holidailies entry.