This morning I'm running late -- I got up to find another request from someone who visited my site, and foolishly went ahead and did their site analysis when I should have been getting ready. My class is being observed this morning, so more than ever I don't want to be late. So I am just going to offer you a happy and uplifting song for the day: "Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates."

And an inspiring photo:

There now, don't you feel as though you could accomplish anything today?

We decorated our Christmas tree while drinking hot cider and cocoa.  For some reason, we couldn't find the lights, so we have an unlighted tree. They turned up later, so I may just put them on over the ornaments, though we know that this is Wrong.

We talked and took naps and later we went out to see the lights.

Not many houses had lights up, actually; it's very early for this expedition. But the downtown lights were up and there was a festival air about it.

It used to be that all the trees and buildings were decked with little white lights, as you can see in the first picture below. It was an elegant look. Now, there are bright colored lights and camels and pony rides, and I am not making this up. It isn't an elegant fairyland any more, but we still enjoyed it.

It was 62 degrees, so it didn't require personal sacrifice the way it used to, either. Used to be you'd be completely frozen by the time you got back to your car, but we just had a pleasant stroll around the square.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, so I will begin  this year's virtual, musical Advent calendar with a lovely song which we'll be singing this morning in church: "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." Get sheet music here. You can get a really pretty pdf song sheet if you have the tune memorized. That sheet will print two to a page, so you can print just a couple sheets and pass them out to your quartet. Here are the guitar chords.

I'm assuming that you have a quartet because this song, while it has a pretty tune, is not nearly as good without the parts. This is because the traditional parts were created by the great Michael Praetorius. You should therefore strive to find enough singers for all the parts before singing it.

You can easily listen to it, even if you can't get together a quartet. All kinds of people have recorded it, from Chanticleer to Sting, Mahalia Jackson to Charlotte Church, Sufjan Stevens to Linda Ronstadt.

The words of this song are a bit mysterious.

It's a Renaissance German carol, and has the usual images of Jesus being born in the middle of a cold winter's night.

"Lo, how a rose e'er blooming from tender root has sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came a floweret bright
Amid the cold of winter, when half spent was the night."

There's no particular reason to think that the historical Jesus was born at night or in winter, but we have been thinking of it that way for centuries, so we might as well go with it. There is certainly no reason to think it was cold, what with the shepherds being out on the hillside tending their flocks and all, but at least this song doesn't involve snow.

It has been suggested that "rose"  ("ros) in German)is a corruption of "reis," or "sprig."  This would fit better with the line from Isaiah that inspired the song.

In the early 1900s, a couple of extra stanzas were added to this song:

"This Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere;
True Man, yet very God, from sin and death He saves us,
And lightens every load.
 

O Savior, Child of Mary, Who felt our human woe,
O Savior, King of glory, Who dost our weakness know;
Bring us at length we pray, to the bright courts of heaven,
And to the endless day!"

These verses take the dead of winter middle of the night bit and interpret it as a symbolic darkness from which Jesus brings us to light. Whether this is worth having to sing "and lightens every load" I don't know, but I think a tune this gorgeous should have as many verses as possible, so I say sing all five verses.

Advent, in case you were wondering, is the time for preparing our hearts for Christmas. We put a lot of time and effort into preparing our homes for Christmas and buying presents and stuff, but too many of us greet Christmas feeling stressed and miserable. You can easily find people who think of the holiday as something to be lived through.

These people are doing it wrong.

Advent is, for Christians, a time to live simply in preparation for the feast of Christmas, a time to give more than we usually do, a time to contemplate the Trinity. Whether you're a Christian or not, Advent is an excellent time to get rid of the things that interfere with your enjoyment of Christmas. Make peace with your family. Reduce your dependence on material things for happiness and a sense of self-worth. Take up a good habit or give up a bad one -- it takes 21 days, which is just about right.

I have to catch up on some work today, but I probably won't do so until after #2 son takes off this afternoon.

It has been so nice to have the kids home. Every time we can have the whole family together feels very special, since it's so rare.

Here was Thanksgiving dinner.

The kids are all still here, though #1 daughter is leaving this morning.

We girls went for a walk yesterday. We strolled around the cemetery discussing life, death, and the afterlife.

Also geese.

We had intended to undress the house from its Thanksgiving look and decorate for Christmas. Then, we thought, we'd put up the tree (we use an artificial one in deference to my husband, who doesn't see the point of putting a tree in the house) and decorate for Christmas.

We didn't do any of those things. I worked for half the day, and then we hung out and watched The Big Bang Theory and knitted. I've actually got the front and the back of #2 son's sweater finished. Sleeves only, now, and it could easily be finished by Christmas.

We had a couple of turkeys, one roasted and one smoked.  We also had three pies. Store-bought crusts, I'm sorry to say, but there it is. It's the modern way. So yesterday we mostly just ate leftovers.

We had a lot of conversation. it was fun.

I hope that we'll get out to see the lights tonight. We have kind of a big touristy Lights thing here, often with people playing music and singing. I've been among the singers down there, myself.

So, yeah, that's basically what we did.

#2 daughter went out with a friend to a farm. "Going out to the farm" is something people do in groups around here. #1 son often "goes out to the cabin." It's nice, I think, to have a place to go to in that way.

Since I didn't do much work yesterday, I ought to be working today. However, there are lots of kids and dogs, and it might not happen.

I will then be severely behind again. But it'll probably be worth it.

I think I need to grade papers, though. My students' rewrites of their big research paper are due on Monday. Those who turned in their drafts on Monday when they were due got feedback in plenty of time for them to work on the rewrite. however, I know that my school inbox will be full of the emailed papers of people who turned them in late, and are expecting me to give them feedback in time anyway.

Today is probably the outside edge of "in time."

Thanksgiving was very nice. My parents came over, and all the kids and an extra guy, and we ate lots of good food and had good conversation. Later, we ate leftovers and watched a marathon of Pushing Up Daisies and played games.

We hardly ever watch TV in the way that I did as a child. We used to turn on the TV because it was, for example, Sunday night and Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" was on. The theme song went, I believe, "The world is a carousal of color, color, color" but we used to sing along, "The world is a cellar full of crayfish, crayfish, crayfish."

I have no explanation for this.

Anyway, that's how we watched TV: we'd turn it on to watch a program which was on at that time. The program was new, except during the summer, when reruns were shown for the benefit of people who had missed the first run. In the fall, the new episodes of the programs would begin again, and often there would be new entirely shows.

Now, we almost never do that at our house.

In the first place, most of what is on TV consists of reruns, and the times are largely unpredictable, and while we have a ridiculous number of stations available to us, we don't always have the stations that show the programs we want to see, and we're not home that much. Plus, you can't replay a scene on actual TV, and there are commercials.

So we watch TV shows on the computer or on DVDs. We often watch the whole season at once.

We played Cranium and Catchphrase, boys against the girls, and the boys won all the time. The extra guy did at one point say, "Was I supposed to be drawing those pictures with my eyes closed?" The answer was yes. We had all been very impressed with his drawing skill, and I guess he must have been wondering about us.

However, they had already won at that point.

It was fun.

The boys went off rock climbing this morning at first light, and won't be back till dark. I have to work. I don't know whether the girls are going to work with me or go off and play with frineds, as they are still asleep. When they wake up, I'll come back and add some pictures here.

It is either Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day, as you prefer.

I added another couple of jobs yesterday and so am very much not finished. #2 son arrived last night and I knocked off work then and there. I made beef stew and hot rolls for dinner, and we all watched "The Office" while catching up on his semester.

We don't hear from #2 son much. The other kids are Facebook friends with him, so we catch the high points, but not the details. It was good to talk with him. I also finished the back of his sweater and he gently urged me to speed it up.

I also went to the grocery. I'm making these two pies plus a French apple pie. That'll be today. Also I will make Jell-O. I'm going to make Sangria Jell-O and Ambrosia Mold, which Sighkey calls "Spanish Cream," a much better name. Tomorrow I'll do the vegetables.

It is possible that the house will be tidied. However, I have a whole lot of work to do, so it might not happen.

One thing I'm doing today is interviewing a surgeon who does Da Vinci surgery. This is robotic surgery. As far as I can tell, the surgeon doesn't touch the patient and perhaps isn't even in the same room. Our local university is big news in robotics, and this guy is a urologist and has, if I have accurate information, done this type of surgery on more penises than anybody else.

I'm also rewriting a website. And I have some more articles to do. I've also been asked to sing at a funeral. I would like to say no. I haven't answered the email yet. I'm not sure whether I can say no or not. I feel bad about wanting to say no. Let me know your views on this tricky point of etiquette and/or ethics and/or common human decency.

The holiday is beginning. My husband has the day off.

When my husband has days off, it often means that he doesn't get paid. His company likes to center layoffs around holidays, which I guess is relatively kind. That is, if you're going to be laid off temporarily, then it's nice to be able to think of it as a long holiday.

#2 son will be coming home this evening. #1 son will, I think, have classes today but then he's off.

He is working on a paper about Othello. He's been sitting by the fire reading Shakespeare, occasionally looking up to discuss some literary point. It's picturesque as all getout.

#2 daughter is coming down after work tomorrow.

#1 daughter is still up in the air. She may come tomorrow. She may bring a fellow with her. She may bring dogs. We'll see.

I also received a Thanksgiving food basket from a client whose website I wrote in the spring. It was in an enormous cardboard box. It contained cheese and crackers and cookies and candy and tea and stuff like that. It was very sweet of the client, and a complete surprise.

So I'm feeling fairly festive.

I have lots of papers to grade, including my peer feedback on a colleague's portfolio, and a half dozen articles to write, and ongoing clients, and the Artsedge stuff to do. All should be fun. I plan to put beef stew into the crockpot and hope that the menfolks will do everything else that needs to be done around the house.

My local grocery had "stew packs" for sale this week: two big potatoes, a bag of carrots, and an onion, shrink wrapped for your convenience. They also have stew beef, all cut up already. And I bought a carton of stock, all made already. Last week, I got a bag of bread mix at the mill, so I'll throw that into my bread machine. This stew plan will be so easy.

Back in March I showed you my work stock and flow diagram. 

I had at that point four sources of work -- I was, as it happens, trying to reduce the number of sources to the minimum and to restrict it only to people who would give me 1099s, in hopes of making my taxes simpler.

Ha!

The thing about stock and flow is that it doesn't respond immediately. If you are filling a bathtub and it gets higher than you want, you can turn off the taps and open the drain and the level of the bathwater will go down -- but not instantly. And that's a bathtub, which is a pretty simple system.

If you sell things, you can't make stuff or buy stuff from your supplier and then sell it, and after it's all gone, restock. You have to sell steadily and also restock steadily, or you end up with stock (and therefore sales) problems. If you have a service business, then in order to keep your workflow up, you have to accept work while you're still working at capacity, or you'll end up with slow times.

Thus it is that I've accepted a job from a Hungarian fellow. He has hired me for one series of articles, with a view to having it be ongoing if it works out well.

He approached me at oDesk. I've been pulling back at oDesk, on the path to switching from being a freelance to being a company, but as I recall, December and January were slow for me last year, and I still have tuition payments in those months, so some work with definite paydays will be a good thing.

Today I'll be finishing up the Influential Men articles, and getting started on the next round for Artsedge, and doing everybody's analytics. Oh, and there's class today. And rehearsal. That's it.

Here it is three o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm just getting around to blogging. Shocking.

I woke up to a request for changes in one of my articles on influential men -- it was from last night, but I had left the computer around 10:00 so I didn't see it in time. I also had a request-for-interview from a Hungarian fellow who needs half a dozen tech articles done, so I was typing till the last minute and then zoomed over to church.

Where I had to play bells. I am still horrible at this. When we started rehearsing today's piece three weeks ago I explained frankly but pleasantly that I couldn't learn a piece this hard in three weeks. I was the only one who said so, though actually a lot of people were still messing up pretty badly today. I was the only one upset about it, though.

The director assured me that no one would notice. I begged to differ.

"You think they're all deaf?" I said.

"Nope," he said. He's kind of like Mark Twain, or at least like Mark Twain impersonators. I want you to have a clear mental image of this. "They just don't notice."

I didn't want to be rude. I wanted to say that perhaps this was what he told himself to make himself feel better. As you can see, my two goals didn't mesh. I compromised with "What evidence do you have for this?"

"People come up and say how much they liked it." He seem to feel that this clinched it.

"They're being kind," I suggested.

Yes, well, it was horrible. I lost my place repeatedly. The woman next to me did, too, and it was probably my fault. I need to quit the bells.

I came home after that (um... yes, there were other events during the morning, but they didn't make as much of an impression on me) and did an interview with another Influential Man.

The editor asked for a snappy introduction saying what all these influential guys had in common.

"They're all Republicans" didn't seem like a good answer. I had to think and go back and look, actually. They were mostly pretty interesting to talk to. A couple were charming. A few seemed very smart and deep. One or two seemed a bit dim, frankly. Some were golfers or hunters in their spare time, but two were musicians. Most were rich -- either for sure because they showed up on the "richest families" listing or I'm guessing that Senior Vice Presidents of investment companies get paid well -- but there was also a policeman in the group, and a guy who heads up a nonprofit working with inner-city youth. There were different ages and religions; I don't know about ethnic backgrounds, since I've mostly just talked with them on the phone, but their names suggested various different heritages. They had majors in school ranging from biochemistry to P.E.

But, when I reviewed those I've spoken with so far, it seemed to me that all of them said stuff about "giving back to the community" and about service. All of them expressed gratitude a lot. All of them worked hard and put a lot of energy into a lot of different things. Overachievers, all of them. They tended to win prizes and work for organizations. The leadership awards came up over and over.

#2 son has that kind of resume, actually -- as much as anyone does at 18. He always says that he gets the leadership awards because he wasn't good enough to get the real scholarships. He's at a school that turned up on about a third of the bios. He's thankful for his opportunities and volunteers in order to "give back." If he ends up on the "40 Under 40" list, I'll know that he's headed for "influential man" status.

#1 son plans to live in his basement.

I'm having trouble waking up today. I didn't work yesterday evening, because I was just too tired to do a good job any more. I had only serious books in the house, but fortunately I have a Kindle, so I could quickly download a frivolous book. Not a very good book, as it happened, but light enough for an exhausted evening. I lay on the sofa in front of the fire with my e-ink and relaxed.

This morning I got up at 4:20 to make my husband's coffee, finished the book, and then got caught up in online shopping. Not that I actually bought anything, but time slipped past while I looked at things and drank tea, hoping to wake up enough to do some useful work. I was largely looking at Japanese fairy tale fabric anyway, so I can't even claim that I was accomplishing anything in the way of Christmas shopping.

Artsedge was happy with my work and is hiring me on for a second go-round, and I was able to pick out my own preferred lessons, so I have three that I'm quite excited about -- Civil War music, fairy tale opera using The Frog Prince, and the science of sound. I hope to finish up the long series on influential men today. I've enjoyed talking with all of these guys, I must say.

And I have to do the grocery shopping. The cleaner came in yesterday. Things were so untidy that she had to sort of work around the mess, but at least it's clean under said mess, so I should be okay for Thanksgiving. I'm seriously thinking about chocolate pecan pie. That may just be the exhaustion, of course. Also, my hands hurt.

Maybe another cup of tea will help.