substitute

The Vancouver Supercomputing Apartment sent me wonderful things, including a ROASTING PAN which will ROAST all kinds of things! Many thanks to stimps!

mendel and nyxie sure know how to pick a holiday card.

My sainted family gave me a little Canon digital camera, which will make it much easier to catalog horrible ads, ugly people, and cute animals.

I received books, which I shall read! Including some Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, and other delights for HI-BROW FOLKS such as me.

I did not get a rock.

Birthday:

Nice presents including a small friendly wide angle lens for my camera and a good book. Really good dinner at Onotria, a newish high class italian restaurant. The pasta sauce had WILD BOAR in it. I somehow imagined the chef taking the boat over to Catalina and chasing one around with a spear, then bringing it back in a suspiciously lumpy duffel bag and scaring the other customers.

The cannoli was good but not quite as good as the home made stuff redmaenad fed me once. The owner was wandering about and occasionally singing. There were lots of people there having wine events of some kind where they had those balloon glasses the size of their heads, which was comic.

My brother gave me a Skype phone but it's windows only, so back to Amazon it goes.

Today, I got the spam below, which pleased me to no end:

From: Bugger C. Displeasing (Williams@vflock.com)
Subject: popular programs for everyday use.

www.2qqn89qipp86lkkx722xp2kk.catodonnf.com