It's Steve (now in blog form)

Ben is a little weird about his clothing choices.  Here he is in a snappy collared polo shirt, yellow fireman galoshes, and no pants.  Way to go buddy.

I have some seriously mixed feelings about Christmas.  I like getting presents, but the process of buying gifts is far too much pressure.  I prefer Thanksgiving.  It a holiday designed entirely around a meal.  Good stuff.

Anyway, for those of you that didn’t get dragged over to our house for Christmas, here’s a recap.  Check out all of the pics here.

Ben had a good time getting his presents.  The Hundley was pretty popular.

Opening presents is fun, but not really as interesting as a bagel.

This is Kim’s sister Leigh and her boyfriend Mark.  He got roped into Christmas.  In the second photo you can see the exact moment when we realizes that he isn’t going anywhere for a while.

Ben likes a lot of things, but nothing quite so much as chocolate chip cookies and electronics.  I totally understand his point of view (we generally agree on most things although I think his view on a return to the gold standard are completely misinformed).  

Merry Christmas, everybody!

The good- After the rain passes, LA sometimes has moments when it’s crystal clear.  At those moments, it’s really very beautiful.

The bad- I came across this in the grocery store a couple of days ago (yeah, I take my camera everywhere now).  Just thinking about this stuff makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.  First, how lazy do you have to be for the standard mac and cheese recipe to be overly burdensome? Second, bacon flavoring? Take that, middle America.

The squirrelly- I’ve got squirrels in my trash can.  This is a combination of cute and horrifying.  It turns out that the squirrels in this part of LA carry the bubonic plague.  Stupid plague squirrels.

I was in Paris a few weeks ago for a conference and hadn’t gotten around to writing it up yet. Ben is asleep, Kim is out with her mother, and I’ve had a couple of cocktails so here are some random thoughts about my last trip to Paris.

I really like the Louvre- It is in no way an overstatement to say that the Louvre may be the best museum in the world.  From the architecture of the building itself to the collections, it is just incredible.  I’d been there before, but this time I made a point to check out some parts of the museum I’d never visited.

The Louvre was originally a fortress that was eventually modified into the structure that it is today.  There is a path to the lower levels that include some of the original donjon and the only remaining portion of the medieval complex.  They were uncovered during excavation to put in IM Pei’s pyramid in the courtyard.

I also made it to the Egyptian area.  Some of this really struck me.  How can you not like a culture that would sculpt happy/hungry hippos in a variety of colors?

They also have an impressive collection of Egyptian sarcophagi.  I’d not seen them displayed in a line like this with the lids before.  The interesting part is that a number of the lids were decorated on the inside.  That just seems like a practical consideration from a people that gave a lot of thought to the afterlife.

The Middle Eastern room was really something to see.  The corridor leading into it was amazing and I really like the happy Iranian.  Sadly, my picture of Hamurabi’s code failed to come out. Damn.

I was the biggest dork in France- In a land known for their abiding love for Jerry Lewis, I may just be dorky enough to develop my own French following.  I certainly made a valid try at it while I was in town.  I went on a Segway tour of the city on Sunday and it was amazing.  If you go to Paris, look up City Segway Tours.  Here’s their card.

Segways are great.  Over the course of about four hours on a very cold morning we covered a ton of ground.  Our guide would give us a bit of the history and then we’d zip off to our next destination.  The key to effective Segway driving, according to our guide, is watching out for the four P’s: people, poles, poop and poodles.   It was cold and snowing a bit, but I’d absolutely do it again in a minute.  This is my new favorite way to see a city.  Here are some of my best around Paris.

Check out all of my Paris pics here.

Poor Mike Seaver.  It turns out that he’s just an actor named Kirk Cameron (and doesn’t have a best friend named Boner).  It also turns out that he’s become the spokesman for some super hard core conservative Christians.  In this video he shows up with Ron Comfort.  

Ron’s gig is debating atheists.  He’s all about intelligent design.  Here he attempts to prove the existence of God with a banana  (a Christian god that is. Bananas provide no evidence of Allah or Buddha, so don’t even try it).  The fundamental design excellence of the banana must indicate a higher power.  Here, you’ll see.

An excellent point, Ron.  Allow me to rebut.  This is my friend the pineapple.  It has a ridiculous amount of segments around it’s circumference perfectly shaped for a plastic grocery bag.  On top, there isn’t a tab for easy opening, but rather a giant spiky crown that would desperately love to take an eye out.  The wrapper isn’t a good indication of ripeness necessarily and if you eat it at the wrong time acids in the flesh can literally sear the inside of your mouth and throat.  The pineapple a fruit intent on killing you if you attempt to eat it.  WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, RON??!?

Merry Christmas, everybody!

I took the family down the third street today to walk around and return some presents (I you think it might have been something you sent us, you’re probably right). While we were down there I saw some things that I really liked.

Cauliflower is kind of scary- I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about cauliflower. Obviously, it’s more important a vegetable(?) than I had imagined. The farmers’ market down there had types that actually made me do a double take.

Fractals are awesome self-repeating sets.  They are also apparently a flavor of cauliflower.  The guy in the booth said this is a young Italian cauliflower.  I think it’s an orbital fractal. Math types, any help here? Where are you, Kunal?

The purple and orange ones are some sort of crazy hybrid from Cornell in the 70′s.  People did a lot of drugs in the 70′s.  

Who says Hanukkah isn’t fun?- I’m totally bummed that I missed this