Our lovely little family spent a beautiful Saturday together, watching cartoons, playing in the yard, and driving around town in the Beetle. The only thing marring it was the fantastic hangover I had most of the day.

Bill did his best to help me cope, making me breakfast, keeping Joe entertained and well fed, canoodling with me during Joe's naptime, and--best of all--not making me feel guilty about drinking one too many PBRs at Market Street's 80's night. Two is definitely my limit from now on, especially when I'm on my own, without a chaperone to help ensure I don't make an ass of myself--for added to the woes of yesterday's crapulence were the pangs of anxiety in hoping my bar mates, whom I work with, still respect me after all my drunken blather and frenetic flailing on the dance floor.

Ta-dah! Welcome to the newly-redesigned Bird's Eye View, courtesy Bill. I hope you will find it a bit easier on the eyes, and I welcome your comments and suggestions.

I promise to write a more compelling post soon, but for now, please check the links to the left for reading material.

My apologies for the posts being so few and far between as of late--and so short on content.

I'm currently trying to finish an afghan I started and put down months ago and must finish before Christmas, as it is a gift for dear friends. We're also working on getting the house ready for the annual Martino-Morris winter soup party, an all-day event set for December 18th. We've invited just about everyone we know in town, which means around 10 people will actually show up.

Last night, Bill started working on my site redesign. It looks beautiful so far, and I'm looking forward to the switch. As you've probably guessed, I'm not very talented in graphic design--or at least not nearly as talented as my husband, who has a degree in that field. (My degree happens to be in professional writing. Go figure.) Bill usually offers his talents to friends and family in trade for goods or services instead of cash. So far I'm at a loss on how to compensate him, although I'm sure he's got plenty of ideas.

Me in My Modest Costume So here's another photo taken with our new camcorder. It's not the best quality, but it works.

This is me in the modest Hanukkah costume (see this post) I made for our service last Sunday, The Light of Life, "an intergenerational holiday pageant focusing on Yule, Divali, Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa."

The skirt is a batik fabric (which went on sale two days after I bought it--darn it!--at least the skirt pattern was only 99 cents), and the head scarf is a piece of faux silk (read: polyester), tied in the Jerusalem twist, of course.

Thanks to Greg at The Talent Show, I now have the link I've been searching for to add to my site--it's a link to a great logical fallacies index, which includes many more fallacies and examples than I've ever found in one place. Please check it out and amaze yourself at how many you read or hear in a day. Try not to watch Cross Fire right after you read it, though. That might make your head explode.

Happy belated birthday, Ben.
Since I seemed to have joined the list of slow-posting bloggers lately, check out his post today (Friday)--especially the last paragraph--for something good to read. There, Ben, I sent you readers for your birthday.

Joe's watching Elmo's World: Happy Holidays! (for about the 20th time) as I write this. It's a great little video about the various holidays celebrated this time of year (in America, anyway). The best part about this video is that it not only discusses the differences among the holidays by showing human families and muppets celebrating and/or explaining Christmas, Channukah, and Kwanzaa (and more), but it also delves into how all the holidays (and the people who celebrate them) are similar--perfect for the Unitarian Universalist pre-K RE teacher who is too busy to put together a lesson plan in December.

-How telling that a story on the future of network newscasting appears under the Entertainment section of CNN's website. Aren't we supposed to be informed rather than entertained by the media?

- I recently sent this article to a fellow liberal and friend from work who's an expert on brain mapping in psychophysiological studies, thinking he'd be amused that scientists had supposedly shown that Democrats had more empathy than Republicans. He was appalled, replying "These guys work at UCLA? WTF?" and, "These guys are completely talking out of their ass[es]." The article turned out to be another example of the pop-science fluff the media peddles. I should have known, though--especially since no scientific publication is cited, indicating that the study hasn't yet gone through the peer-review process, which tends to weed out crap like this.

-In case you missed it, listen to this interesting commentary recently aired on NPR:

All Things Considered, November 23, 2004 · Commentator Drew Westen studies the way that psychology and politics intersect, and he says the format of cable TV news -- throwing out a topic to two representatives of opposite sides -- capitalizes on a design flaw in the human brain. People believe what they want to believe, no matter what the facts are.