We were enjoying KLSR-TV’s annual Christmas dinner, and the traditional gift steal game began. The first opened gift, promptly snatched by newslady Natasha Chughtai, was a leopard-patterned snuggie.

Those blankets with arms looked kind of nifty on the infomercials. I whispered to Tim I wouldn’t mind having it. He winked and gave me total discretion when our gift number came up.

I suppose it was my annual free-Margarita glow. Wobbling over in high heels, I held out my hand to poor Natasha, who had stashed the snuggie under her table. But the gift was still up for grabs by the game rules. It could be stolen once more. I got it.

Later I felt badly and told Natasha with all sincerity she could have it back, but she laughed and said keep it. She was happy with her glowing wall stickers or whatever gift she finally got (my brain was still fuzzy at the time).

Now of an evening I am saved in the recliner from cold and our cat Westley’s heavy shedding. I can scratch beneath his purring chin while under cover. In fact, he sees me grabbing the snuggie from the closet and he’s in position to pounce and commence kneading my chest. I sigh, deflect claws carefully, and reflect on the one time in my life crime paid.

My cousin Lydia’s wedding last weekend, officiated by my dad, was dubbed “traditional untraditional.”

Then there’s this little guy, whom you may have wondered about in an earlier picture. GORT (“Goes On Road Trips,” also a reference to The Day the Earth Stood Still), who actually lives in Seattle, was roped into cheering for the Oregon Ducks last Saturday as they pummeled the Huskies. No wonder poor Gort looks confused.

1. Comedian Eddie Izzard has been running marathons around the UK all summer. I mean, he has run one every day, six days a week. Amazing. You can read the story with a couple side interviews here.

I came to enjoy Izzard’s stand-up humor almost against my will. He’s irresistible, though, his imagination making connections everyplace as he rants about computers and describes queuing up at the supermarket. There’s cussing, yeah, his f-word is an adjective. But by the time I got sucked in to the videos of his my kids were watching, I’d become much more comfortable with our cultural, colorful word phenomenon than I used to be. I’d made some conscious decisions about what I think language is doing in different circumstances. Now, what a guy is doing in heels onstage may be another matter, maybe. But at least he had the good sense not to run in them. Go, Eddie!

2. A post, over on Fresca’s blog, about, um, Cheesus. It turns quite thoughtful regarding ignorant arrogance and, as often do things at her site, serves up a perspective free from blind obedience to one cultural/political side or another. But the opening and the close are at least as funny as Izzard’s best. You kinda have to see it.

I guess a good question of the week might be:
What sort of stuff brings out your best belly laughs, providing as good a workout as a London marathon in the rain?

Mom and Dad celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary the day before Tim and I tied the knot, in Tacoma, in a church with an English style chapel, back when people were recovering from disco and in between Stars Wars, A New Hope and Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back.

Life’s interesting. Technology surged forward last century, all of us caught in its tractor beam. The universe whipped by. We landed here, where foods come in pouches and people stare at their palms to socialize and we’re chemically sanitized each morning.

I’m not complaining, really. The choice to opt out of techno-experience still exists. Though my usual routine is to continue sampling gadgets and programs and Trader Joe’s tasties, sometimes, in spite of myself, I take a different path.

I don’t, for example, receive texts from anyone. I don’t think my cellphone has that capability. (Tim bought it for my birthday, um, possibly not long after the disco era’s demise.)

Last summer I stopped eating gluten. Not my plan at all, but after a glorious night of food poisoning, I decided to try recovering via my daughter’s new food regimen. My digestive system loved me for it.

Most recently, as in this past week, I started trying a shampoo-free lifestyle. This I also had not planned, though I’ve been intrigued by Marianne’s posts about using baking soda and apple cider vinegar on the hair. I’ve always had strong allergies to some hair products. The “sensitive” products cost quite a bit, and I buy mine at the mall. But they ran out of my “sensitive” product at the mall and don’t know when more will come in, so one recent morning I did the salad treatment to my head. It felt, I kid you not, really good. The hair’s soft. No scent lingers. Most importantly, no itching happens.

So far, I’m still using one product, a dab of mousse on my stubborn, kinky bangs. But that sounds like nature, anyway, right? Bulwinkle, anyone?

I’ll let you know when I stop showering and move into the back yard with my snakes, so you can give me a wide(r) berth.

According to our newspaper’s TV Week, the reasoning behind the change is “the network wants to bring in people who may not think of themselves as science fiction fans, but flock to movies such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘Star Trek.’”

Hm. It also says they want to appeal to more women and young people. Yeah, I guess guys like my dear hubby have been their staple. But I’m there, too. I liked, read, and watched sci fi stuff even before Tim and I viewed Star Wars for the eighteenth time. I don’t necessarily appreciate being lumped with fans of teen vampires (though I stuck with the teen vampire slayer, Buffy, until about season six on other channels). It’s nice to know Syfy will continue to produce intriguing fare such as Battlestar Galactica (need to catch up with that one, someday, and find out what all happened after season two).

Another big reason for Sci Fi’s change is the fact that Syfy “is a name we can trademark.” I see. Is it just me, though, or does the lettering remind one of…Strawberry Shortcake? They’re taking out Science’s “c”, anyway, so why not Sifi? Siifii? Oh, well. Enough pondering of such universal questions for one afternoon. Back to intellectual pursuits like reading bloggy friends’ posts and Facebook. Or was that MyFace? Blyfry?

Eureka, one of my hubby's current favorites on Syfy.