this morning i saw the most AWESOME youtube video ever...
isn't that amazing? if you are saying no you obviously didn't watch the whole thing.

well this has spawned my 7 year old to want to be a lion. now more than ever. she has in the past been a lion or tiger... but today she took to buiding a series of caves around the living room.and then inside the cave we find the lion in its natural habitat. all grumpy and hungry. it is a fearsome thing!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or almost...

i have not been overflowing with joy this season. it's difficult to get in the mood when its rainy. i don't remember anyone recording the song "i'm dreaming of a soggy christmas..."

beyond the gloom the skies have provided it has been a good year. our tree overflows. our friends are warm of heart. and my daughter sings "Rudolf the red-nosed Reindeer" unceasingly.

traditionally this time of year brings to mind...
brown-paper-packages-tied-up-with-string. i cannot say how much i love this simple presentation. i am sure my wife has gotten tired of, or will get tired of, all her presents wrapped in old grocery bags and various kinds of twine. but i continually am reminded of Julie Andrews singing and dancing around Austria. both in nostalgia and in aesthetic this particular expression of the season warms my holiday spirit.

also i find great enjoyment as we decorate the tree and begin to pile presents under its flashing lights. the age old argument of artificial versus fresh loses all manner of battles in our house. neither L or i grew up with a fresh tree, neither of us likes picking up dead needles and both of us are gifted with a black thumb when it comes to keeping things alive...

greatest joy is from the moment of actually hanging decorations. i know if my parents read that they probably find themselves wanting to spit at me. i was a nightmare when it came to decorating. i am sure there are horror stories passed around kith and kin to warn others.

i do find that my daughter is more than enough comupance for how much hassle i laid on my mom and dad. we have a tradition of putting up a tree for the family and then a small tree in her room. what this means is that while i am trying to unwrap decorations with my wife, our daughter is grabbing all the decorations that she wants on her tree. this leaves two or three ugly ornaments for the big tree and the broken hobby horse. i find myself patiently explaining that the ornaments are her's only in that they were given to her, but that they belong on the tree. after this interchange once or twice i find myself growling and N is pouting. i find myself transported in mind back to my living room at age 9. my father patiently hanging mirrors all over the innards of the tree and me trying to hang lights and tinsel and ornaments at the same time. though i know he was ready to strangle me, he never did. he was always patient. and this reminds me that i am enjoying the tree and my daughter is just excited. i have to remember that she is so little that her body just can't contain all the excitement trying to come out of it.

All these ideas of christmases past set the warm home for other wonderful and and new traditions that make the season more intimate. our little family spends a lot of time talking about Jesus and his birth. my daughter reads the story of the Nativity roughly a million times through various tellings. and to my wife's dismay N and i sing carols and seasonal songs almost all the time. all this is good. what is next is great though.

on christmas eve we all get our new christmas pajamas. and snuggle around the tree. there we open one single gift each (a leftover tradition from the Hill House that i absolutely adore). and then we watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. watch is too timid of a word. we celebrate The Nightmare Before Christmas. watching, singing and laughing together. it is one of our most favorite times of the holiday season.

bedtime follows and then Santa comes. when i think about all these joyful things and the amount of wonder still present in my 7-year old. i can look outside myself and see that there is joy and warmth to have.

i wish you all a merry christmas. have a pint of eggnog for me!

so i am so excited i may pee myself. and i am sorry for all of you that read that first line and are offended, but i had no other way of truly expressing my excitement!

as a formative and depressed teen i listened to them. as a moody and mysterious artist i worshiped them. and as most of my other music tastes slipped into "adult contemporary" catalog they drifted into never-never land.

i used to describe them as rolling around naked on a beach of broken glass while the tide broke over you. and Rolling Stone magazine as one of their last pertinent remarks on contemporary society before getting lost in boy bands and briteena ranked loveless as the best album to make love to even above barry white, in essence agreeing with me and my glass beach metaphor.

i am so excited that i may once again get to roll naked in the broken glass and breaking waves of My Bloody Valentine. they are back!!! and there is an album!!! its real!!!

ummmmm. i don't know what else to say. i'll talk more about my love of my bloody valentine later when i have cooled off and can make coherent sentences. in the meantime lets talk about who wants to help send me to glasgow next summer!?!

so i got a new job last summer. and i think i told EVERYONE about it. carried on and on and on. i wasn't the least bit shy talking about my new job.

over the last six months i have struggled with that initial feeling and moment to moment fluctuations in my feelings about the job.

i have not at anytime regretted my decision to move to the new firm. in fact it has been a very good decision (at least for my career and attitude if not for my pocketbook).

this is not to say that i do not have my grumbles. i have felt guilty having grumbles considering the amount of noise i made last summer when i got the job.

what i am saying is this. i feel unappreciated. and i think it has nothing to do with my firm. i just find myself in a career where very little is actually rewarded. of late i find myself working on a project that continues to get less and less interesting as the neighborhood it is in presses harder and harder to make it look like the 1920's and the owner tries to squeeze more and more profit out of its maximized footprint. it is work and i feel blessed to have it. but i do also crave excitement and sexy form.

on top of making the building less interesting i found myself backseated this past October. originally the project was supposed to be a team of me, an intern and a woman architect who is 30 years my senior. some drama later and a conflict or two between the partner in charge and said woman architect and the team got stirred. now what once should have been primarily my possession has been given to a man architect 20 years my senior and a glorified intern 5 minutes older than me. i have more on my resume and more in my experience than this boy, but he has been with this firm for 6 years and is therefore my boss. the woman is no longer part of the project and i am left working for these two guys that want to use me as a drafting service.

so i have found my professional feelings have been hurt. i have been sent back to the kiddie table and it pisses me off. grrrr and whatever.

i want find myself in a position that instead of thinking less of me and being shocked that i can do more than the expectation, asks for more. i want to be put in situations that challenge me and make me stretch. i'm tired of the kiddie table. i want to be so challenged that failure is still growth.

sorry for the rant. sorry for the lack of contentment.

i wanted to take a moment and show off the pretty little bike i built. very fast and light. was lovely.

that's right i said was. i sold it to finance christmas.

everyone enjoy the pictures...