Today is J. R. R. Tolkien’s 110th birthday. To celebrate, the .Tolkien Society has organized a world-wide toast to the man in just over an hour from . Even if you’re late to the toast, the next time you slant a mighty beverage, raise a glass to The Professor. Hmmm… next year will be his eleventy-first birthday. Sounds like a good excuse for a large party at my place. Remind me later.

$200 poorer and lots of wire shelves richer, our new kitchen might get organized. Up until today, we’ve been cooking out of boxes and jumbled cabinets. It took a special run into Atlanta’s “Container Store” to get what we needed. Tomorrow, we’ll be picking up a Troy-Built tiller (a used Horse model) from a farmer South of us, and then we can start putting in garden beds.

I just finished a fabulous traditional Chrisrmas Pad Tai with my new family. I hope your holiday, whatever you celebrate, is just as nice. Gods bless us, everyone.

A fellow weblogger has answered the spammer needing time travel. Quite well, I should add.

According to witnesses, the United States army invaded a nation I’d never heard of yesterday. It might not be true, but what caught me was there’s a country I’d never heard of before. To my former seventh grade geography students: I missed one! Sorry. The CIA knows about it, though. Sounds like a rough place. UPDATE: Amazing. Someone there has scanned in one of the flyers passed out by the invading force and put it on the country’s official website. It’s in French. Here’s a translation.

Right after my nephew learned how to walk (or maybe as he was learning…), I taught him how to skank. When he gets old enough to read, he can hone his skills thanks to the Ska Workshop: Skanking 101, kindly pointed out by the good folks at RandomWalks. I once won a skanking contest here in Athens. I was in a tiny club watching the excellent Johnny Socko. Athens isn’t much of a ska town, so I was the only one dancing for all the songs. Had such a great time dancing that I didn’t even visit the bar. When they announced me as the winner, I went on stage to collect my prize: a vintage pack of early ’80s Michael Jackson temporary tatoos. I was overjoyed, and to show my appreciation, I moonwalked on stage. The held out a microphone and I gave my best MJ squeal. But then I moonwalked over some cords and fell backwards into the cymbals and off the stage. They laughed at me and made comments about how drunk I was and started the music back up. And I went back to skanking. I haven’t opened the tatoos yet. They’re a prized posession, sitting on my desk alongside my M&M-pooping; R2D2.

For future reference: Internet Gardening, a handful of interestingly looking gardening links.

Pretty much everything we’re planning on growing at the farm is at risk from predators. The chickens are tasty treats for the neighborhood dogs and the vegetables are in high demand by the deer. They’re repeat customers, sure, but they don’t pay the going rate. There’s a solution, though: eletric fence netting. There’s a lot of things to buy for the farm, but we have to wait for the first of the year so we get the tax deduction. This fencing is at the top of the list.

I’ve been known to enjoy the occasional Nestle Crunch bar. There’s something about that milk chocolate and crisped rice combination that I like. So I was mighty pleased when one of my co-workers received in the mail today a “Shaq-sized” Nestle Crunch bar from his girlfriend, a Nestle insider. The thing is a bit larger than a standard-sized bar. It weighs 9.25 pounds. We’re literally using a hammer and chisel to whack off bits to eat.

This has to be the strangest bit of spam ever to come my way (it should be noted that I do not have a “feedback form”):

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by Frank Young (webmaster@eti.com) on Saturday, December 15, 2001 at 06:00:04