It has been lip splittingly dry at work this week. Between that and the bitter, cold temperatures,  my skin is a flaky wrinkly mess.  This is the only thing I hate about winter.  I don’t know if age makes it worse or if I have just become more aware of it as I age, but it certainly seems to happen more often now than it used to.  Why hasn’t anyone invented a body suit that is coated in skin moistener?  Between that and the lack of a cure for cancer, I am beginning to lose faith in scientists.

Any successful party is sure to have lots of leftovers, some of which are bound to be perishable.  You have your chips and dips which no longer have a container.  There’s usually cakes and crackers left sitting out.  Salads and fruits that won’t last long.  All of them need to be eaten.  The day after.

So let it be known that on January 1st, 2014, I ate the following: 10 deviled eggs, half a bag of pita chips along with some sort of cheeze sauce, 4 slices of pretty disgusting cold pizza, a handful of pistachios, a slice of really stale cake before I threw the rest away, some mixed vegetables and their accompanying dip, 6 peppermint cremes, lots of pretzels, and more cookies than I can count.

Also, there were a couple of wee ones at the party near the beginning and an hour in, you’d swear that an all night rave had just occurred.  I should start a new tumblr, awesome party or 4 year olds, where people have to guess which was responsible for the mess left behind.

My left work shoe has developed a squeak and it is driving me crazy.  It started off as just a small noise when I pressed down on my heel as I walked my normal gait.  Soon, it became even louder and then it started happening as I press on the ball of my foot too.  I can’t figure out where it’s coming from at all.  My non-squeaky right shoe looks exactly the same as the left.  Stop squeaking, shoe!  Just stop!

You may think this is just a harmless little annoyance, but you’re talking to a person who needs to rearrange his pockets so his keys and loose change don’t jangle as he walks.  This is my vision of hell.  Of course, my other vision of hell is shopping so it will be interesting to see how long it takes before my one hell becomes more tolerable than my other hell.

The citizens of the United States are a fairly charitable people.  Our giving of money and goods to charities is one of the best per capita.  Obviously, this is at least partly because we are by far one of the richest countries.  Our vast wealth makes us so far removed from the people on the receiving end of charity that we don’t consider the ramifications of our giving.  (As an aside, volunteering your time is a great way to help you get closer to the people you are helping.)

Nowhere is our charitable aloofness more clear than our response to natural disasters.  Take the recent Typhoon Haiyan which devastated the Philippines.  There was an enormous outpouring of goods and money from the United States to help with the response to the typhoon.  Can anyone point out what is wrong with that last sentence?  If you asked, “Why in the world would you send goods half way around the world?”, you win a cigar.  We were sending C-130s full of goods to the Philippines.  It certainly makes you feel good seeing all of those boxes lined up waiting to be loaded on a plane, but you are actually causing more harm than good with those goods.

Here’s why.  Local economies are often devastated by natural disasters.  This devastation can reach much farther than the track of the storm.  By sending goods, you are destroying any opportunity for the local citizens to make much needed money.  By sending 100,000 shirts, you are denying 100,000 from being sold locally.  This is especially egregious because the purchasing of those shirts can often be done with less money than it takes to send it over in the first place.

The lesson to be learned is you should never, ever, ever give goods that are destined to another country.  Heck, you should probably never give goods that are destined for another state most of the time either.  The answer is give money.  As much as you can.  And don’t mark that money to be used only for a certain event.  The charities that help in these instances are much better equipped to spend that money where the money will do the most good and be able to purchase exactly what they need and when they need it.  The charities can take your money and buy 100,000 shirts locally and be able to take advantage of scale and likely lower prices and have even more left over to buy other necessary supplies as a result.  All while helping the local economy get back on its feet.

To sum up.  Be generous with your money.  Be generous with your time.  Save the giving of goods to local charities.

Dancing is pretty awesome.  If it didn’t always seem to happen at 10 PM or later, I would do it much more often.  With dancing, you can do things like this:

For more fun from the swing dancing world, check out this list of the most watched amateur swing videos of 2013.

You know how Friday afternoons at work always seem to drag on and on like a sentence that doesn’t quite want to end even though it should have ended long ago but the sheer weight of it seems to make it continue ever more slowly as the words tick by until you just wish that it would all just end already and release you from this never-ending torment?

Yeah, take that and multiply it by infinity and that’s how the Wednesday before Thanksgiving feels.  First off, four day weekend!  Am I right?  Then there’s the fact that work is like a ghost town only it would be more interesting if there were ghosts somewhere.  And since much of my job is interacting with those non-existent clients and answering their non-existent questions, it translates to even less to keep me occupied than usual.  Not to mention that the whole interwebs is also already in Thanksgiving mode and the most interesting thing to read is a post about whether cranberries are better fresh or in a can.  Answer? Cranberries are evil and should be burned.

There’s also the anticipation of seeing family and stuffing myself full of delectable dishes and Dionysian delights.  And don’t forget Second Thanksgiving.  If you do not celebrate Second Thanksgiving, you really should.  What you do is take First Thanksgiving and do it again only bigger and with a lot more strangers.

So yeah, all in all, today is full of ugh.

My grandmother died yesterday.  She was the last of the grandparents to shuffle off this mortal coil.

There is a bit of surrealness to her death.  Most of you don’t know this, but this will mark the second time that she has died.  The first time Grandma died, Grandpa was still alive but mostly immobile.  The family hired nurses to help Grandma with Grandpa’s care.  Grandma, in true sit-com fashion, would fire them one after the other.  No one was going to take care of Grandpa except her even if it kills her.  And it almost did.

One evening, Grandma was in the kitchen and fell and hit her head really badly.  I don’t remember how she was found or how she got to the hospital, but I do remember the phone call to gather everyone to her side before she died.  We were all expecting the eventual phone call saying Grandpa had died.  None of us were expecting this phone call.  It was devastating.

All of the local family was able to gather by her side before she died and the neurologist came and explained the situation.  There was a lot of internal head trauma from the fall and there wasn’t a lot they could do.  All there was left to do is say our goodbyes and disconnect her from the machines that were giving her artificial life.  There was lots of crying and comforting and hugs as we attempted to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events.

Then something strange happened.  She twitched.  I didn’t think much of it when I saw it, but another doctor also noticed it and muttered something under his breath and quickly left.  Next thing we know they’re prepping her for surgery.  What happened next is a bit of a blur.  I remember a waiting room and frayed nerves.  Then the neurologist comes in and says that Grandma’s not out of the woods yet, but she’s appeared to be doing ok and it was a miracle that she was alive.  He actually used that word, miracle.  I chalk it up to plain old Grandma stubbornness.  She still had a husband to take care of.  What, she’s going to let someone else do that job?  Oh, hells no.  And while she certainly couldn’t take care of Grandpa by herself anymore, she had many good years of life to live still.

This time around, the family’s psychologically, if not emotionally prepared for it.  She hadn’t been doing well for quite a long time.  That doesn’t mean that there isn’t this doubt in the back of my mind.  That I’ll get a phone call and hear that, once again, she was only mostly dead.

Grandma was an amazing woman who led an amazing life.  She had strength when it counted and managed to raise a remarkable family.  The one question I wish I could have asked her before she died is, “How did you do it?”  I am fairly certain that her answer would be “I just did.” as she shrugs.  Her physical presence will be missed, but her absence will not be felt.  As the family gathers together for Thanksgiving this year, all I have to do is look around the table and see Grandma in the faces of her children, hear Grandma in the stories that we will tell, taste and smell Grandma’s cooking in the food that will be passed, and feel Grandma in the cries we will share.