I was surprised to see this same blog post title on K.C. Lemson’s blog today, and having been raised on Tom Lehrer, I had to check out her link. It is as visually charming and interesting as Tom Lehrer’s music and lyrics are to the ear and mind. I wonder if they will do the Russian cities next, or (egads) the Irish Stew song!

On CNN.com this morning:

Thousands dead in Iran quake

MORE TOP STORIES • 10 missing after mudslide hits campground • Five GIs killed in Iraq insurgency attacks • China rescuers reach ‘death zone’ • 111 dead in West Africa air crash • Man rams car into house on Christmas, kills self, 2 kids • SI.com: Hawaii Bowl becomes brawl bowl

This is my big sister, Jill. It’s funny that at 42, I still refer to her, my older sister by only a few years, as “my big sister”, but she is still the mother hen of us three siblings. My sister worked as a Sun corporate and institutional sales rep for many years and was very successful. She’s a phenomenal sales person and business woman. She finally had it with high pressure and high tech and left (before the bust) and started her own business. SHe manufactures dog “toys” – not just to play with but for working dogs as well. Within one year, she had her product in nearly 200 stores. RIght now she is in nearly 500 stores (that’s 2 years). I helped her out by doing a website for her when she started out which is pretty cute. It’s just Frontpage and some asp, but she had some great ideas about how it should be organized and I played with the design until I was satisfied enough to put my name on it. That’s www.katiesbumpers.com. But really I wrote this because she just sent me some pics for the site and included some beautiful pictures of her and one of hte products, a bag for the dog toys, called the “Oval Office” (for all your important stuff). And I just wanted to show her off and show off her awesome products which she researched and designed on her own. Though we had the usual rough time in our teens that most siblings do, Jill and I are very very close now and I know that I’m so fortunate to have that kind of relationship with her.

I have made so many new friends this year through blogging, attending conferences and the many community related things I have been involved in (INETA, other user groups, MVP, etc etc).

There is now way in the world I can think to send individual holiday cheers to each and every one of the people I would like to.

So hopefully a good chunk of those people read my blog and know that  I am wishing everyone a Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy [fill in the blank if your not covered] and all good wishes for happiness and success.

Also to Steven and Amy, THANKS!!!!

Truly,

Julie

I read at night. I read novels. It is how I clear my head of bits and bytes and problem solving.

I just finished reading Life of Pi. You don’t need to hear from me how marvelous this book was. In looking for this jpeg, I stumbled upon an essay by Yann Martel on www.powells.com about his writing the book. If you have read the book, you must certainly read this essay. It can answer some possible lingering questions.

Now I have begun a collection of short stories called “The Interpreter of Maladies“ which coincidentally is also of Indian theme. This collection was written by a young woman, her first publication, for which she won a Pulitzer!

I also read a number of other books based in India in the past year.

I seem to get on tracks like that. I recently went through a slew of books by Chinese authors and then a handful of Japanese. It is not by design that I do this – just happens that way. The book I read prior to Life of Pi was The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe. This gorgeous book was written in the late 60’s and Oe won a Nobel prize in the late 90’s with this book being noted as one of his highest achievements.

…when it’s time to get out my ruby red slippers for hiking…

Anybody that I have ever met that has these boots (http://www.koflach.com/Koflach Degre) feels the same way about them. My magic boots.

I have not been able to stop thinking about this. Fellow blogger, Liz Lawley, who I admire a lot, wrote yesterday about a recent terrible tragedy in her family. Her sister’s new husband (of 6 months) was killed in a head-on collision when the driver of the other car swerved into his lane because she was busy doing something to her bagel. Think about that next time you are drving while…[searching for a better radio station/eating your lunch/talking on the phone/settling a kids fight in the back seat/checking your email/trying to dial a phone #, etc.]. Pull over if you need to be so distracted for god’s sake. Although I start to cry every time I think about this, I also have some sympathy for the girl (driver of the other vechicle) who just wasn’t using her head – but now has to live with the horror of what she is responsible for for the rest of her life. It’s too high of a price for everyone to have paid. And I am just as guilty of this type of occasional inattentiveness as most people.