COLLARDS!

Money, money, money!
The Publix up here did not have the packaged pre washed collards, so I had to do all the work. Fine, its fun, tradition and all. Three big bundles. I cook mine with bacon, other people use all sorts of meat, but the guy at the ONE WAY bbq in East Point, which had very good collards, used bacon, that is where I got it from. Onion, I used one sweet and one big normal white, some jalapeno, not too much, a little garlic. I had a yellow bell pepper so I just cut it up and tossed it in the pot.( many, will I am sure, complain about this, but I am just that daring of a guy!)and then chicken stock, some use water, i went the chicken stock route.

Bacon, Onion, Garlic.. all cooking away, the house smelled out of this world!


big ole sink full of chopped collards!
THIS MANY COLLARDS:

Becomes THIS many Collards:
HAPPY NEW YEAR , YALL!

Happy Christmas, to Kyle, from Kyle:

The Dunwoody video store, the oldest one in Atlanta!, is closing after 28 years! His loss is my gain, as I got the full set of BRIDESHEAD REVISTED for 12 dollars. I do hope we still have a hooked up vcr. I don't think Neil has ever seen the entire thing, SO, some snowy day in Mendon, will be spent lost with Mr Waugh.

time after time

Whew!
I have just lost all track of time. Today is: __________.
I'm fine with New Years Eve, but other than that, a little lost. My dear , dear friends, Susan and Paul DO NOT HAVE CABLE TV! and since I tell what day it is by which person is hosting the C-Span morning show......
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31st, 2008..... there.
Let's backtrack, see just how we got to this advanced date, all on our own:

• Thursday, December 25th: Merry Christmas! We drove down here, a really vile motel 6 and the waffle house. Move on......
• Friday, December 26th: We arrived all safe and sound to the brand spanking new town of Dunwoody! Then did our running around , downtown.
• Saturday, December 27th: A very rare gathering of the ancient tribe of bip-kip-bobeye-bubba and tuna at Dana and Steve Mosley's lovely Gwinnett County home. A full blown beer soaked time was had by all. Many, MANY surprises, and those that know me well know how much I love the surprise. Laura and John were not there, Thad and Denise were! surprise! Angela and Binky are leaving Connecticut and moving back to Atlanta! Surprise! BG's mother pops in on us.... surprise! It was a very fun night, gumbo, dancing, and more beer.Even breakfast. The Mosley's know how to show a homeward boy a good time

Sunday, December 28th : WINDER! We couldn't make it down for Christmas day, but had made it a few days later. Always good to go home, even if just for a day.
and the new PRIDE OF WINDER:
Monday, December 29th: did nothing, hung out here in Dunwoody
Tuesday, December 30th: We went to see BENJAMIN BUTTON , (I'll write about it later) came back here, got pizza and watched more movies.
Which brings us up to date, and it's looking like today is chock full of promise!

Milledgeville , Georgia...1983

the ATL

Sorry blogging universe, that I have over the last few days been that oddest of all creatures, a NON blogger. Odd that in a house that is FULL of computers, getting time on one is limited! That and we have just been busy. ALL will come in time. The weather is pure Chamber of Commerce, warm, bright, sunny. Koda and I have been loving it.
Some random shots of our first day... MORE to come.

Satuarday December 27th Dunwooday, Ga. 7:45 am

Shorts in December!...." Ah, yes, I remember it well.........."

WE ARE HERE

A little, ( a lot ) of trouble with some Erie Lake Effect, but as soon as we made that left turn in Cincinnati , clear as a Christmas bell! No trouble at all, and no real traffic on Christmas day. We spent the night in somewhere Kentucky in a motel six. Now and forever, I am going with the stains were red paint or nail polish. A little fog in lower Tennessee this morning, other than that.. and the ubiquitous traffic on 75 coming into Atlanta.. it was a long , but uneventful trip. Happy to be in fashionable Dunwoody!

MY VERY FIRST WHITE CHRISTMAS !!!

I am as Southern as you can get ( git ). SO, This is the very first snow I have ever seen ON December 25th . We, as a rule, are in Atlanta by now, but this year, the weather did not let us. We are driving down tomorrow. Well, again, weather permitting , right now we have gale force winds! Santa will need Rudolph tonight !

It has not been above freezing here in a week or so , UNTILL Chirstmas Eve, it was close to 50 today and rained. So, the two feet + of snow , became sort of two inches of slushy snow, BUT, its there. No more dreaming of it for me. I have seen it......

Midnight Mass at St. John's Honeoye Falls, New York

I thought it was just lovely. I very much appricited being with friends at our small little church, instead of in Atlanta at a big ole whopping church where we only know one or two people. Lovely music, Grady and Dahn did a fantastic job all around. 

Put a little Christmas spirit in even my Grinchy old heart. Thank you to Grady and Dan for the Christmas treats!Thank you very much to everyone there. 

The choir sang as every one came in:

CHRISTMAS EVE III

( can you tell I am putting off packing ? )

CHRISTMAS EVE II

The word "agoraphobia" is an English adaptation of the Greek words agora (αγορά) and phobos (φόβος), and literally translates to "a fear of the marketplace."

CHRISTMAS EVE

So, so many questions:

• why is Christmas on the 25th?
• where did Santa come from?
• why the chimney?
• red suit?
• AND.. it is DONDER.. not DONNER....

Winter

In the spirit of the season...

Of Obama... We are all one. 

Lovers, haters, black, brown , purple and blue. 

Even hatedgators.

 "Don we now our gay apperal" and all.....

From dear sweet Harry and Trixie , spending the holidays down in slushy Brooklyn:

The greatest klezmer Christmas song ever!

Return to the great Jewish themes of outsider-ness & redemption with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"--- in Yiddish! The greatest klezmer Christmas song ever! A Yiddish "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," performed by San Francisco's Kugelplex. ...

One damn frozen chicken stuffed into your pants and you use it for the rest of your life.....

We are coming to Atlanta... not sure when, but we are on the way.......

( I wonder what the date was when I stopped drinking canned Budweiser )

1-800-FED-EXxx

Hurry! If you act now , it can be over nighted for that perfect last minute stocking stuffer....
The Sarah Palin 2009 Calendar is now available.

This high quality 13 month wall calendar features:

• Over 50 photographs of Gov Sarah Palin and her family
• Never before seen photos
• 13 pages of high quality gloss paper
• Closed dimensions: 9"x12"
• Pre-drilled hole for hanging
• Cellophane wrapped
• Produced and printed in the USA

Merry Christmas, eh?

"The first day of winter brought wind-chill warnings, snow and a bevy of storms to cities across Canada on Sunday, potentially laying the groundwork for the first cross-country white Christmas in nearly four decades."

And on the other side of the lake , it is snowing like crazy, again/still.....

red and green plagiarism ! ( blue and silver?? )

It was not enough that the b.day bubble crowd kicked my frozen upstate New York tuckus in the Christmas song smack down, NOW I am going to steal out right from them!:

"Don't put it in your pocket, it'll melt, cause its gelt".....POETRY! 

Happy Hanukkah, Y'all...

Tonight : LATKES!

Winter Solstice

Happy Solstice to all our Druid and Pagan readers. Very cold with lots of snow here in Upstate New York. Could have been much worse:
ANCIENT GREECE: The winter solstice ritual was called Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women. In very ancient times, a man representing the harvest god Dionysos was torn to pieces and eaten by a gang of women on this day. Later in the ritual, Dionysos would be reborn as a baby. By classical times, the human sacrifice had been replaced by the killing of a goat.

" I need me a baby, H.I. "

Pookie, of the North

Mendon, New York 3:00 pm

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow......

A foot or so today, a foot or so on Monday...

After a while, this could add up to some real snow. It is NASTY out... very cold, very windy , very snowy. YUCK

when worlds collide

 From AMERICABLOG:

"Obama reminds me a little bit of Richard Russell Jr., the longtime senator from Georgia who — as historian Robert Caro has noted — cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, tolerant politician even as he defended inequality and segregation for decades. Obama gave a wonderfully Russellian defense of Warren Thursday at a press conference. Americans, he said, need to "come together" even when they disagree on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he said. Russell would often use the same tactic to deflect criticism of his civil rights record. It was a distraction, Russell said, from the important business of the day uniting all Americans. Obama also said today that he is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays, which is — given his opposition to equal marriage rights — simply a lie. It recalls the time Russell said, "I'm as interested in the Negro people of my state as anyone in the Senate. I love them."

Fine....

Twenty Four hours of sturm und drang, a full day of gay and lesbian hand-wringing angst over President Elect Obama's decision to pick Rick Warren to give the Invocation at his coming Inaugural. Seems like a great big chuck under the wheels of that bus that a HUGE number of the glbt set worked so hard to drive while you were running Mr. President. But fine.....

Bring that bitch ass Hawaiian shirt wearing, pride of backward Orange County to the stage. Bring him more to the forefront that he already is. Let's see him in his full anti gay, anti woman's right to chose, anti EVOLUTION ( wtf??) self. Shine that light on his California Baptist College degreed self at the party with the pride of the Ivy League. Let him come up there and give his candy coated hate to the world, the more the man talks , the more transparent he becomes. A man who time has passed by, the tiniest of footnotes in history. A small man who found a great big old church of lemmings to lead. Let him start off the whole show, because you are going to close with the real deal. 

I , like every other awake progressive in the country was pretty much shocked by this choice, but it really should not have been a surprise. President Obama is not , as I said on this blog 1000 times any more than a damn good politician. If parts of America saw him as more than that, that's our own fault. But, that said, I was feeling pretty blue ( and again angry ) about the choice until I read Pam Spaulding's blog this morning ( if you are not reading her, start.. she is VERY good )

Reverend Joseph Lowery will be giving the benediction of the Inauguration. He will wipe the floor with Mr Mega Church. He is on the side of the angels. Watch this clip of him at Mrs. King's funeral. Listen to what he has the righteous anger, and faith, and stature to say, in front of President Bush. This is a man of light, this is a man of God, this is a man who " gets it" .

Bring on your paunchy yuppie preacher , We have this:

and speaking of (P) rick warrens......

BUON NATALE!

Fun party at Dahn and David's tonight , for a good cause. ( other than a yummy Italian feast!) With out pal Jennifer's help the house looked most festive and inviting. With some cash raised for the MDG crowd. Everyone gets a the gift of giving a mosquito net this year!