Morning report

Yesterday morning—the morning after I'd bought a big 40 lb bag of icemelt salt and sprinkled it around—was bright and relatively balmy...almost shirtsleeve weather. The ice melted right away, and I almost didn't even need my jacket. Looking out the window just now, there's no ice at all out there in the parking lot; it just looks normal. Man, if I'd known getting the salt would do that, I would have bought it sooner. Oh well; I'm sure I'll need it again soon enough.

Yesterday was really busy at work. Had hardly a moment to myself all day what with all the backed-up calls. On the one hand, it does seem to make the time go by faster. On the other...I do like having time to read and catch a breather every now and then. I hope they hurry up and get more people trained to take some of this load off. Gaaah.

The last of my DVDs from Poker Industries arrived last night. Had a good old time watching Once a Thief again. I'd forgotten how utterly good that movie was. A little campy, but that's Hong Kong for you. And the last of the movies I was getting for a friend came, too, so now I can ship him the whole bundle...which means I need to make an early start of it today so I have post office time.

That being said, I think I'd best go ahead and shave and dress and stuff. Only four more days of work time 'til the vacation!

How much did those Twelve Days cost, anyway?

In case you were wondering about the total value of the gifts the True Love gave to the narrator of the song in the Twelve Days of Christmas, wonder no longer.

"The [Christmas Price] Index reflects the broader trend of productivity growth in the U.S. economy that has driven prices lower on goods while allowing prices for services to rise modestly," said Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors. "Whereas in the mid-1980s the cost of the goods in the song dominated the Index, the trend over time has been toward lower goods prices, such as the pear tree, and higher prices for skilled labor, such as the pipers," he said.

"The abundance of cheap labor in countries such as China have contributed toward increased pressure on U.S. manufacturers to outsource their unskilled labor overseas, and evolve toward higher-skilled areas, to maintain profitability. Unfortunately, the unskilled Maids haven't managed an increase in price for their services in many years," he added.

On a related subject, there are people who will tell you that the song is a coded reference to a Christian catechism. According to urban-legend debunker Snopes, this is actually not the case.

The key flaw in this theory is that the differences between the Anglican and Catholic churches were largely differences in emphasis and form which were extrinsic to scripture. Although Catholics and Anglicans used different English translations of the Bible (Douai-Reims and the King James version, respectively), all of the religious tenets supposedly preserved by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (with the possible exception of the number of sacraments) were shared by Catholics and Anglicans alike: both groups' Bibles included the Old and New Testaments, both contained the five books that form the Pentateuch, both had the Four Gospels, both included God's creation of the universe in six days as described in Genesis, and both enumerated the Ten Commandments. A Catholic might need to be wary of being caught with a Douai-Reims Bible, but there was absolutely no reason why any Catholic would have to hide his knowledge of any of the concepts supposedly symbolized in "The Twelve Days of Christmas," because these were basic articles of faith common to all denominations of Christianity. None of these items would distinguish a Catholic from a Protestant, and therefore none of them needed to be "secretly" encoded into song lest their mention betray one as a Catholic.

Snopes has a great section on Christmas urban legends, including the one that "Xmas" is a modern, disrespectful abbreviation for "Christmas". I think my favorite one would have to be the one about the pair of moleskin pants that turned into an ever escalating gag gift swapped back and forth. My parents had a tradition like that (on a much smaller scale) for a small ceramic statue affectionately dubbed the "Nudie Native"...I wonder whatever became of that.