EmilyG, actually. 
But yeah. Isn’t his name pronounced the French way? Being from a French area, I always pronounce it that way. When I’m not using the name for him that my sister made up, which is “Michael Autotune.” 
Yeah, it’s Bublé so it’s hard to mispronounce unless you don’t get what those ‘funny little lines above letters’ are or someone omits the acute accent (accent aigu) above the “e”.
One of my very religious, conservative relatives posted an article on Facebook recently about how the “new tolerance is anything but tolerant”. The author was basically arguing that people who accept gays should also accept racists (and that Christianity is the only correct religion).
Regarding cooking woes… I finally got the cranberry sauce to set this year! Turns out that I had been using too much liquid, and that I hadn’t been simmering it long enough.
For the first time ever, my mother returned a tree to the lot yesterday. We got it in the stand with the help of some neighbors; the thing looked horrible once it fell out a bit (it was purchased fresh off the truck… even though we saw it open at the lot, the branches were still too compressed for us to see how crooked the trunk was). The lot was actually awesome about it… they sent some guys in a truck to pick up the bad tree and deliver the replacement. I’m very glad that she got the tree she wanted, but now she’s stressing because she feels like she’s behind schedule with her decorating. Meanwhile, I’m of little use at the moment because my sinuses are still inflamed from all the tree dust I huffed yesterday while putting the lights on the smaller tree (yes, Mom puts up two trees now).
Dear god.
My mother decorated the tree solely with angel ornaments. (Well, those plus lights.)
She had collected hundreds of them over the decades, and they ALL had to go on the tree, even the hideous ones. It took hours to put them on. It took even more hours to take them all off and carefully wrap each one in boxes/tissue paper/bubble wrap.
You can imagine the size of the tree we had to put up!
But I can now give Thanks that the idea of multiple trees never occurred to her.
Hey! Tomorrow is December, so we need a title for a new thread.
How about:
Yule find this thread full of mini-rants.
or
You got a mini-rant? Noel I do.
Doesn’t she know that she’s supposed to have multiple trees? See, there’s the showcase tree, where you pick a theme for each year. Maybe it’s just a color scheme, like mauve and silver. Maybe it’s angels. Maybe it’s birds. Anyway, this tree goes in the living room (or the most formal room you have), and the presents are supposed to follow the color scheme and theme. For instance, get a couple of rolls of different mauve and silver wrapping paper, and put an angel ornament on the box, alongside the bow. Then there’s the dining room tree, which goes on the dining room table. Again, a formal color scheme and/or theme should be followed, though the “presents” might be nothing more than small boxes, wrapped in the proper colors. Then there’s the family or heirloom tree, where you put all of those heritage ornaments, you know, the ones you got from Grandma or Grandpa, the ones that your kids made, and anything else. This goes in the family room. You leave space under the tree for the bikes or other bulky presents.
Or so I’m given to understand. My main concern, when setting up and decorating a tree, is to try to make it somewhat cat-proof. I have yet to succeed.
We have some friends who are CIA* impersonators.
They stop by a few days before Christmas, in Mountie uniforms with flashing lights on the car etc. and a check list** to see how compliant we are. We have a contest going with another couple to see which of us can have the least stuff. The other guys won last year with only one item; Christmas cards on display. The husband didn’t notice them when he did a quick “we got rid of everything, right?” check.
We ‘failed’ miserably 'cause my family was here and we did the whole Christmas decorating thing - even had an “impending baby Jesus”*** for extra points.
This year I have high hopes, but the other couple is cheating by leaving town until the 26th. 
I’m going to bribe the CIA with ‘spirit …s’ so we can get a big fat 0 too.
*Christmas Inspection Agency
**items on list include but are not limited to:
Tree
blinking lights
popcorn string
eggnog
carrots for raindeer
wrapped gifts
greeting cards displayed
candy canes
aroma (?)
and many more
*** Daughter was very pregnant
You sure about that? There was this one time that I thought the next day was November, but to my horror and surprise, it wasn’t. :eek:
Yeah, we don’t want another premature e-rant-ulation…
That was disturbingly stimulating. Now I’m not sure which of those 2 things should make me more upset. 
I could say the same about my name, yet I’ve taken to providing a pronunciation guide; that way there’s a chance I will be able to recognize it on the first try when foreigners call me on the phone. When I get a call in English asking for a name I can’t recognize but which begins with an M, I assume it’s for me. If they ask for Phillip (as some confused agent did yesterday) then that’s most definitely not me. Dude had messed up his piles of CVs.
Sorry about your name, Emily.
Convoluted story short*, I’m trying to decide who to hang with whose guts, between Middlebro, his wife and my mother.
- Any of them can turn “hello” into a drama. And since we don’t get a Thanksgiving, those 12 days of Christmas are a perfect time for trying to give ulcers to the rest of us.
** Oh, and what they’re doing to the Kidlet re. his grades and homework is butcher-worthy all by itself. They complain the kid works slowly, but when he makes a mistake in a group of 12 exercises his parental units make him repeat all twelve. Quote: “my classmates’ parents aren’t that strict, and the teacher said I have to do it at home but not during exams”. The teacher’s instructions were received once said teacher noticed the reason The Kidlet was turning in unfinished exams was not lack of time, it was that he’d found a mistake and erased everything.
Okay. I need to know, SOON, if there’s a theatre group event on Tuesday so I can start planning ahead for it. So I asked on the group’s Facebook page. Facebook now says my post has been “seen by” 15 people, including some of the higher-ups in the group. But not a single person has answered my post. Why is it so fucking difficult to answer a simple fucking question? I’m going to have to start PMing people if this keeps up.
You should’ve said “Oh, wait, that IS me… I spell Phillip with an M…” You could’ve gotten the sweet job they were about to offer him.
Nah, Phillip had already been screened. I’ve got an interview set up for Monday, but under my actual name.
Fie on you! After my last noodle disaster, I moved on to rice. I can make some kickass “toss random stuff into the crock pot” meals. They taste just like microwave food.
Bill is such a good sport about this, in a snarky way. He didn’t say “I told you so” that time I caught the sink curtains on fire and used the sink spray nozzle to put them out. (These were the lacy, flowing curtains that I wanted and he objected to because they would blow around when I had the window open.:smack:) He just bought 3 fire extingushers and mounted them on the walls.
If I judge something fit to eat, he always eats some and says something like “Thank you for trying to make dinner.” When I taste something and dump it out, he says not a word, just turns the oven on and pulls one of Karen’s casseroles out of the freezer.
I like it! I like it!
How about, “Christmas Sucks, and So Does All This Little Stuff I’m Ranting About”?
Update on the parent’s phone thing. My dad went out and got TWO iphones. One for him and one for my mom. HUZZAH! Now she gets what she wanted and we don’t have to hear endless whining for two years!*
- On the subject of her phone. We’ll still hear it on every other topic under the sun.
Flatlined, if it makes you feel any better, we had FOUR fire extinguishers …
… P S A learn to use them & know where they are, kids.
Are fire extinguishers the new colanders?