Elisa read at our church's Christmas Eve service Ogden Nash's "All's Noel that Ends Noel." Just find yourself a copy of that and try to read it. Not only did we have to look up some of the more obscure words in the text but we also had to listen to a clip of Nash to try to figure out what kind of accent he had that his rhyming scheme made sense. Anyway, Elisa did a wonderful job reading the poem and bringing it to life. We then had a great time talking to folks after the program. Kyle and Phil movie recommendation: The Lion in Winter.

Quiet week at work as I start coming up to speed on new technology. Speaking of new, I just moved up from a Toshiba Tecra to a Toshiba M200 Protégé TabletPC. Still learning it but it certainly seems sweet. I don't use the Tablet mode a whole lot, but I'm interested to see if I think differently when writing with the pen vs. typing with the keyboard. There's no way the pen can keep up with the keyboard, I know. The handwriting recognition is pretty good, though.

Return of the King: only a few things will get me up at oh-dark thirty, and being able to see Return of the King on the opening day for free (and free of crowds) is one of them. It was good. I shouldn't have read all of those reviews because so many critics gushed over the movie and I was expecting more than it was. But it was good, especially the Oliphant battle scenes with Legolas. I can't imagine how long the special edition of this is going to be on DVD (five hours?).

Brian Setzer Orchestra: Elisa and I headed to Seattle's Paramount for Brian Setzer's Christmas show. It was fun! Boy, I sure don't remember who opened for Setzer (Dan Hicks, or something like that?) but he was pure awful; it was the first time in a long time that I've been amongst people enthralled by a performer that sounded about as good as fidgety nails on a blackboard to me (that expression is in need of updating).

Anyway, Setzer was great and played his swinging version of various Christmas sounds, then dropped into some of his classics (both swing and rock). Great production.