Judebert.com

Last Christmas Eve, I took on the part of Santa for a friend's homeowners association. They invited me back this year, and naturally I accepted. This year's gig was very similar to last year's.

The most unique part is riding on the fire truck! Santa rides in the rescue basket with a fireman and tosses out candy to all the waiting kids. Luckily, they leave the basket down. It's still quite a thrill! After all, how many people do you know who got to ride on a fire truck?

This year I ran out of candy to toss, I'm afraid. But that's not so bad, because the kids at the last stop get to come inside and meet Santa. My friend hosts the Santa Court, where she sets out milk and cookies, eggnog, and candy. The kids all get to sit on Santa's knee and tell me what they want.

I can't wait for next year!

But at least we don't have to worry about it. Eri's biopsy came back negative; she's perfectly healthy.

We went out to celebrate at Sho Gun, a Japanese steak house down the street. A good time was had by all.

Okay, so it's coming up on Christmas. That alone is stressful, because you can't find any time to shop. The schedule gets so mad, you can barely find time to sleep! In fact, my average is down to about 6 hours a night. And then we try to squeeze in making fudge for gifts, and holiday cards and letters. But it gets worse!

Eri had her first mammogram, and they found microcalcifications -- that meant a biopsy was necessary. We had to make a choice between a "needle biopsy" and a "full biopsy". (Money and medical choices. Now, that's stress!) And of course, our youngest daughter was sick when the appointment came around, so we felt guilty letting our friends watch her. Review season is here, and I've taken so much time off work I don't know how I'm going to be rated.

Now we're all sick. And I'm playing Santa on Christmas Eve! "Here, kid, have a nice cold. Merry Christmas!"

Maybe it'll wind down by the end of next week. Until then, ugh.

Serendipity just released version 1.2.1! It's got several interesting features, but the Serendipity Bulletproof template raises the bar to the professional level. I helped develop the image chooser for bp, so I got a sneak peek.

Bulletproof allows you to modify your blog's template almost trivially. It works in all browsers. It has tons of options, including multiple color sets. Some of the predefined options look really slick. Several developers have been collaborating for months to complete it. In my opinion, it's a giant leap ahead of anything else for any blogging platform.

I'll be modifying my site to use bp soon. Expect some appearance changes!

So, we saw "Enchanted" this weekend. (There was some family trouble, so we almost missed it. The penalty: she had to pay for her own @*%! movie.)

While there were several fairy tale cliches, they were all supposed to be cliches; that's kinda the point. It's Disney making fun of Disney, and they did a fairly good job, I must say.

I don't want to give anything away, so I'm not saying anything else. If you like the same kind of movies I do, "Enchanted" is well worth your time.