This is the card that came in the package Mom ordered online for Rachel:


Either Mom is really confused or Macy's is.

Judy Brush is beginning to feel much better. She even got to have some solid food yesterday (the first since Christmas Eve). Rachel and I will be returning to Sacramento tomorrow to visit for the weekend.

We would like to thank Chris, Noah, Paul and their families for the enormous amount of help they gave to move Grandmother Brownsey to Ingersall. We couldn't have done it without them.

Mom and Dad

Rachel said she would like to see some evidence of "general Christmas glee" from the Brownsey households posted on the blog.

Alternative Christmas meat. Rachel's Uncle Larry made a 17 lb. standing rib roast.

Post-Christmas meat picture:

Christmas is over.

I added a link to the Brush Family blog that has been launched primarily to provide updates on Judy's cancer treatments. You can find this at http://brushnewsnetwork.blogspot.com.

Happy Christmas! It's a rainy day here in Sacramento.

Christmas Meat

Also,
Edamame Salad
Chicken and Beef Taco Bar
Lemon Chicken
Mashed Potatoes with Manchego Cheese
Broccoli

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas- we have 3 feet of new snow on the ground.

The garage doors were installed this morning. They came with a complementary 8-10" of snow.

Belle Isle by Grand Ole Party. I don't believe the cat has any particular political affiliation.

Power came back on at about 8:00 pm monday. 87 hours approx.

No power from 2:00 am Friday morning until 4:30 pm Sunday. Freelance crews from the South flew in and used six rented trucks from NJ to clear the lines in our section. The power went back on on the first try. The damage was not as severe as in 1998.








Chris

YayElectrical fire Thursday at 4:30AM on the corner of Niskayuna Rd.

finished except for overhead doors.

Happy Birthday Chris 12/11/1968

Check out the list of food themed movies. There are some good Netflix possibilities.

See the link for descpriptions.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=226540&ac=Food&pg=2
(1/2 way down page 2 and all of page 3).

- "Big Night": Tony Shalhoub
- "Eat Drink Man Woman":
- "Ratatouille":
- "Tampopo":
- "Babette's Feast":
- "Mostly Martha":
- "Waitress":
- "Sideways":
- "Like Water for Chocolate":
- "Chocolat":

garage update. 12-9-08.

Vly Pointe attacked our mailbox with their sign. Our mailbox post broke in half. Now we have a sign.

Kitty likes Christmas.

Happy birthday to Petranella Cornelia Bol Brownsey.

Elliot and I goofing off.

I thought I was requesting Harvey (1950) from Netflix, and instead I got Harvie Krumpet (2003). I think that the error was mine. Anyway, Harvie Krumpet is a 23 minute claymation short about the title character. I recommend it in the way that I would recommend The Station Agent and I Like Killing Flies. Don't watch it with the kids around. Just one question, is that what it is like to grow older?

Powell's Books now has a subscription book club, IndieSpensable, which includes a staff selected new book along with other goodies, delivered once every six weeks. See www.powells.com/indiespenseble.

The November issue of PLoS is available, you may find the table of contents here.

One article of interest is an example of biology intersecting economics (which really happens more often than we may expect). Anna Dornhaus wrote a paper presenting evidence that suggests that ants that are specialists in certain tasks are actually no better (and sometimes worse) at their jobs than generalist ants.

Some claim that the social structure of ants are a parallel example to humans to argue that worker specialization necessarily increases productivity. Never mind the perils of cherry-picking taxa from different phyla to draw general conclusions about life, it seems that one of those taxa commonly selected for comparison to human societies may not even possess some of the traits that make it an interesting comparison. At the peril of making an inappropriate extrapolation, what might this say about a liberal arts education? You may find the article here.

We watched some Coast Guard activity at the mouth of Big River in Mendocino. Dad wanted a closer view of the activity, so he tried to get swept off the headlands so the helicopter and motor life boat would come back. We later discovered that we could get a full tour of a 47 foot Motor Life Boat by simply knocking on the door of the Coast Guard Surf Station. Perhaps much less exciting than dad's way, but much easier and this way we all got to see. (Mom stayed in the car).

There was an old woman, who lived in a tree. She had some many children, she lost all her marbles.

We went to the Sacramento State Railroad Museum on Friday. They had a Southern Pacific cab-forward 4-8-8-4, manufactured by Baldwin in Philadelphia. This particular engine ran on diesel. SP realized that the traditional design was suffocating their engineers when going through the tunnels over Donner Pass, so they just moved the cab from the back of the engine to the front. There was a heavy representation of Baldwin Locomotives. We did find one non-Baldwin, a GE diesel-electric switcher (that ran) manufactured in Schenectady.