So last night Morgan and I were getting ready to do Havdalah. I was finding the service in my Siddur when Morgan made some noises: "Blah Blah Merlot Blah Blah Havdalah tonight?"

I gathered that she was stating a preference for which wine we should use. I imagined she was talking about about a bottle of Galilean Merlot that we opened a week ago and had not finished. So I said "Yes."

The next thing I hear is Morgan coughing as she runs to the kitchen. She is pouring wine down the sink and the smell of Acetic Acid fills the room. The bottle she has in her hand is from a Baron Herzog Merlot (From Languedoc) that had a little bit left in it and had been sitting, uncorked, on the bookshelf for so long that I had come to regard it as part of the furniture. To say that it had become vinegar would be an understatement. This stuff smelled like the solvent one uses to make joints in Plexiglass.

Had I been paying attention, what I would have heard was "Hey, do you want to use this rancid Herzog Merlot for Havdalah tonight?" It is really a question that should have answered itself in the negative. It should not have survived conscious attention long enough to get asked. But it did, and I spaced it.

We did Havdalah with some Ocean-Spray Cran Grape and I spent the rest of the evening making her drink Bicarb to neutralize the acid.

So guys, when noises come out of your SO's mouth, PAY ATTENTION! Otherwise you never know WHAT's gonna happen.

morgan1 just put up a good thoughtful essay on the Mel Gibson "Passion" and the differences between American and European Christianity.

Go read.

Today as I was leaving work I cleared my desk of the papers and vessels that accumulated over the past three days, so that I would have a clean desk to come into come Monday. A year ago today I performed a similar task, but for a different reason: It was the last day of my assignment to a food processing company, and it was my final clearing out of my stuff. On December 31 2002 I donned my coat, shut the lights, and stepped off the precipice into an uncertain future. 2003 brought me another six months of unemployment, with a brief stint at a construction design company for flavor. Finally, in July, I landed where I am now - a health insurance loss control company. It's not my ideal place, but cleaning a desk I would be coming back to in 2004 was certainly an improvement over last year's leap at the abyss. So I am grateful to have four days off in which I can relax rather than too many days off filled with anxiety.

2003 was a strange year for that. When morgan1 and I tilled the ground and planted our tomato seedlings, zucchini seedling and leek sprouts in the spring, we had no idea if we would still be on this land in the fall to taste those home-grown tomatoes, Zucchini and full grown leeks. She had been laid off two days before Christmas, 2002. After passing seven anxiety ridden months coming up with all sorts of contingency plans, though, we each stumbled into our current jobs; the home grown tomatoes found their way into salads, appetizers, and Morgan and I. (Mostly Morgan; her love of tomatoes is immoderate, perhaps even a little intemperate). The leeks were roasted, braised and stewed for many a Shabbat dinner, and even put in a curtain call in the stuffing at Thanksgiving. The zucchini met a similar fate, spending much of the summer being grilled and served with vinagrette alongside tuna steaks and cod fillets. It too made an appearance, as zucchini bread, on the Thanksgiving table, having been sliced and frozen expressly for the purpose. That's important to us, having produce from the garden on our table at Thanksgiving. Especially so since this year was so difficult that planting the garden was a tremendous leap of faith. But it doesn't end there, for tonight we will be sipping sparkling cider made from the pitted fruit of our senescent Bartlett pear tree. Our land has been kind to us, and we have escaped being cloven from it.

Cat-Tharsis went from concept to reality this year too. Much of my time unemployed was spent developing the concept, developing my artwork (which still bites, but has been improving) and developing the software that runs the site. I thank kevinjdog and rain_luong for the inspiration, morgan1 for all the help with world building and artistic guidance, and Unit423 of If Then Else for the advice and encouragement. And I further thank kevinjdog for a variety of opportunities to exercise my creative faculties. They've really kept the juices flowing.

What really got Cat-Tharsis out of development and onto the web was the need to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of Morgan's cat Rodent Baby. When I drew this strip I knew I had to display it, so that was the impetus for going live. Rodent was a high strung little cat, bound to hiss, growl, and spit at every tomcat she's met, but very loving and even a bit needy. Morgan had Rodent longer than she's had any other creature currently living with her, myself included, so the loss was, indeed, profound. Rodent herself seemed content to go, and, we think, has even given her blessing to the kitten, Maeve, that came into our lives in October.

All in all this has been a year of want and of bounty, of death and of life, of turning corners, renegotiating old friendships and forging new ones. I can't really say I'm sorry to see it goes, but I'm curious what the new one will bring; I am greeting it with greater hope than I've had in a while.

Yep, morgan1 and I went to the Lord of the Rings yesterday. It was a long, engaging film and an all out assault on the American bladder. ( my thoughts are behind the the curtain )
And then I stood up to let people out and the effect of gravity on my bladder negated my plan to watch the credits roll. Morgan learned that Viggo Mortenson did his own singing.

For about a year now, I had a badly screaming belt on my Saturn SW1. Sparing the play by play of the events that moved this onto the front burner, I decided that this was the weekend and today was the day that would change. The problem was not the belt (although it was frayed) but was, in fact, the belt tensioner - basically a spring-loaded idler pulley that exerts pressure on the belt to maintain belt tension. The pivot of the the tensioning arm has a bushing which had become shmushed, rendering the tensioner incapable of exerting sufficient presure on the belt to keep it from slipping.

So why did I wait a year to do it? Because the first procedure I found for doing entailed supporting the engine with a block of wood and removing the engine mount. If one was lucky, this procedure chimed, one could maybe avoid having to pull the power steering pump. So my next door neighbor, a mechanic who takes the occasional job said that If I got the parts, she'd do the work for 100 bucks. Sounded good. We agreed on the Friday after Thanksgiving (also morgan1's and my anniversary). The day rolled round, no word. Turns out, she had the flu, and although she said she'd get to it the next day, she did not look like she would be doing anything but sipping hot beverages and taking bedrest anytime soon.

( So I did it myself, details within. )

Then came the moment of truth. I turned the engine on and loaded the electrical system and fired up the AC, not a peep, and no parts went flying. I put the splashguards back in, remounted the tire and drove morgan1 and me up to Baker's Square for a celebratory dinner.

Drawing the strip was tough this weekend, because my mood was very weird and I could barely stay focused. Wound up finishing my pencilling tonight, which is also when I need to upload. So I inked quickly using Copic's new fountain pen which I picked up at Wet Paint on Saturday, instead of my usual Tachikawa dip pen in Higgins eternal ink. It saved me time which was at a premium, and the pen worked well. Way better than Tachikawa's fountain pen, which clogs if you look at it wrong. But generally, I prefer the dip pen. It forces me to work more deliberately. At some point I'll probably review the Copic fountain pen in arttips. I bought it mostly for sketching, rather than serious inking, but it does the job nicely and stands up well to the eraser.

The other thing that made getting the strip out a little weird is that my graphics workstation is wonky. For the past week or so the house has been filled with this, er, smell, whose source I have been trying in vain to locate. Then the spontaneous reboots started happening. I noticed the computer seemed a little toasty, and there was no exhalation from the Power Supply fan. So to get my stuff done I opened the case and I nearby window. This held my CPU temp at a nice stable 94F degrees, as opposed to the 140F it was reaching before rebooting spontaneously. So tomorrow, I guess I need to snag an ATX power supply somewhere. Ah well, it'll be a great opportunity to actually USE the power driver morgan1 got me for my birthday.

Marriage Protection Week Fun snagged from morgan1

My partner morgan1 has just joined LiveJournal and has some some thoughts on some of the recently announced arrests of Guanto staffers.