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Shopping on eBay is sure fun these days. I’ve been using eBay since its birth, and generally speaking it’s a great platform to buy and sell stuff. But whenever I want to buy something that’s new I struggle because most sellers now use “new (other)” to indicate an item that’s been “lightly used”. In other words, “new” now means “used”. So it’s an exercise in wading through a ton of listings to find an item that’s actually honest-to-goodness new. Sigh.

Ben just dropped by my office with a Christmas gift.

Pizza socks!

Yep, they’re just as awesome as they look.

Thanks, Ben!

Zaque works at Get Air, a local trampoline park where kids pay $13 to bounce on tramps for an hour. The other day Laralee and I stopped by to see him (and also to see Get Air, as we’d never been there). He wears a spiffy “referee” sort of shirt and gets a whistle, which he twirls professionally on his finger.

Seminary started yesterday, so after a nice Christmas break I was back at it early in the morning. Luckily I was rewarded with a beautiful sunrise after class.

Now that we’ve hit the new year, it’s time for the scammers to start making their fake IRS threat calls. I had one this morning. As a general rule, though, I feel like I can hang up any call that begins with a computerized voice saying “Do not hang up!”

I saw some random statistic that something like 50% or more of calls these days are “robocalls”. What spam has done to email, robocalls and scammers have done to phones. Thanks, guys.

Physics still works, despite our ridiculous government shutdown, and two NASA spacecraft fulfilled their mission plans in the past few days even if there was only a skeleton crew to celebrate the accomplishments.

OSIRIS-Rex arrived at the asteroid Bennu and took a magnificent photo of it:

Instruments on the spacecraft have detected water ice, which has the astrophysics community abuzz. If an asteroid this small has water onboard, perhaps the substance is far more plentiful than we expected. That’s good news for mining and other futuristic uses of asteroids.

And New Horizons screamed past Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object a billion miles past Pluto. This is officially the most distant object we’ve visited, and although the picture isn’t breathtaking…

… it’s a monumental achievement. Scientific data will continue coming in, and we’ll be able to learn about the primordial solar system.

As a space aficionado, I love reading stuff like this. We’re doing cool stuff these days, even while our government leaders continue their petty bickering. Learning about the mystery and grandeur and, frankly, surprises of the universe around us puts some of that stuff in perspective.

Last night, Alex and I played in the Grass Roots INdoor Charity Hat Tournament, also known as GRINCH. There were 90 people on eight teams, and even though our team didn’t go to the championships, we had a good time.

Laralee came along to watch, and took some pictures with my camera. Since I don’t have a high-speed zoom lens, and the action is usually pretty far from the sidelines, the photos tend to come out a bit blurry or grainy. Still, she managed to capture a few good ones of me and Alex.

It’s clear from these nice shots of Alex and me scoring in separate games that we have the same form in our catches:

Here’s another one of Alex scoring without all the drama of a big leap:

And I’m reaching above Rhonda a second time:

Alex did a great job on the field, especially considering he hasn’t played ultimate much lately. (I don’t have a good excuse, as I play weekly.) It was fun to be on a team together.

Continuing the tradition of ghastly Christmas cards, I decided this year to do something completely different. Like the last four years, there was an added challenge of incorporating one of our kids who was away on a mission (Alex for two years, now Kyra for two). Without an opportunity for a “photo shoot”, I turned to the Renaissance.

After a bit of searching, I found a painting by Charles le Brun that would work. It was a family portrait featuring an incredibly homely group, with the added bonus of Charles painting himself painting (note the creepy guy in the mirror on the left).

This particular guy had more kids than me, so I had to do some cropping. I was able to remove a daughter, Charles himself, a dog, the weird bust and globe, and the marble head on the floor. The result wasn’t half bad:

Laralee thinks “her” hair looks awful (it does), and Zaque was less than thrilled about being a chubby naked baby. But all the girls who saw the card remarked “You’re so adorable!” which lessened the trauma a bit.

I had the cards printed on “premium textured” stock, thinking it might make it seem a little more like canvas. I’m not sure the effect was really there, but it was fun to hear what people thought of the card when they opened it.

For an added bonus, as part of a 25-day Christmas gift game with Kyra and her mission companion, we were asked to send a family photo. Naturally I couldn’t resist printing this and framing it for her. Apparently her companion thinks our family is weird. Go figure!

Christmas was, as always, a rousing good time. We spent some time in the morning opening our presents…

“Who needs a pocketknife when you have a katana?” said Alex as he cut through the wrapping paper and packaging tape.

Laralee was a little nervous about her 12,000-piece jigsaw puzzle:

I managed to score not one, but two ties: a snowman that plays “Jingle Bells” (of course) and a cat-taco-burger-space monstrosity that I love.

Zaque enjoyed the unicorn head we took home from our white-elephant gift party; it even included hooves and a little sound machine called “Emergency Horse: providing you with horse sounds when you need them!”

As usual, Kathy won the Coolest Packaging Award with her custom name tags:

After a traditional breakfast of cinnamon bread, we talked to Kyra for a few hours. She’s still in California, with 56 days left of her mission.

A game of Sheriff of Nottingham, some homemade pizza, and watching Miracle on 34th Street completed a great day. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!