It has been almost one year since I unwrapped my Gocco machine for Christmas and last night was my first time putting it to use. I’d constantly think of possible designs to print, but nothing ever seemed good enough and really, I never had a good enough reason to use it. Not until now.

Joe has completed his Masters project on cryptographic hash functions and we are due for a graduation party on the 21st of this month. Usually we wouldn’t bother with invitations, most of our get-togethers are just close friends and relatives. We just call them up and say ‘hey, come over! we have food!’ and that usually does the trick. Now though, a bit classier type of people (by classier I mean, Joe knows them on a professional basis only.) will be on the invite list, so we needed something more official.

I began my search for invitations on Etsy and found some cool silkscreened IBM punch cards. They weren’t really meant to be invitations, but I showed Joe and he suggested we just make our own. I thought ‘ooh! a chance to use my Gocco!’. So 15 minutes later, we had ordered a stack of old IBM punch cards from eBay. Last night Joe finally made me pull out the Gocco and get to work, but I had no idea what I was doing. The Gocco instruction manual wasn’t the greatest help. Thanks to Joe for figuring absolutely everything out, we managed to come up with some pretty cool invitations.

We used a pretty tree design from the classic computer science manual- Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming and an old school typewriter font for the design. We only had three colors to choose from for the Gocco machine, so we stuck with black, which ended up being fine. I like it’s simplicity.

The party is drawing nearer and I’m hoping to get the living room painted, tree up and decorated (along with the rest of the house) before then. On top of that, my grandmother calls today telling me the family is driving up to visit this weekend. Not that I’m not psyched about that, but there goes some precious painting time! Maybe I can enlist my family to be my paint crew?

My computer is mysteriously shutting itself down at random. I had written an account of our recent trip to England last night, it was just about finished. I am slightly annoyed at losing the post, because it took me a while to write, but to tell you the truth, it wasn’t very good. So in that sense, I’m not sorry to see it go.

The trip itself was both good and bad. I was expecting the weather to be less than wonderful, but it didn’t really hit me until we had to wander around trying to find our hotel in the rain. I breathed a sigh of relief as we stood in front of the hotel clerk, ready to check in. Only then did the rain begin to really beat down in a manner that is just mind boggling to a California native. It’s July people, the middle of summer and it’s cold, grey and pouring. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

We also couldn’t manage to get used to the streets running in the opposite direction. I was completely thankful for the big white painted letters on the crosswalks telling the pedestrian to look right or look left, because I swear I looked the wrong way every time.

Our first night we thought the British were completely mad. Our toilet in the first hotel we stayed in would not flush! It would gurgle for a bit and then give up. We tried holding the lever for a while. We tried pushing the lever down quickly…nothing. Joe reasoned that “well, we are in Europe and they tend to conserve more than we do. Maybe it’s just a hyper low-flow toilet”. But we both couldn’t manage to believe that.

Our shower also had about 30 seconds worth of heated water and had only one glass door when it should of had two. Again, we reasoned that we Americans are just used to wasting hot water and proceeded to make record time with the hair washing.

Luckily, it turned out that we weren’t crazy and the Brits weren’t mad (well, not that much…but who isn’t a little bonkers?). We finally figured out that the toilet lever took a very precise amount of pressure to flush correctly. It took skill.

And the shower problem came down to the fact that we failed to read their information on water temp. and didn’t turn up the water heater.

The half glass door in the shower, on the other hand, was meant to be that way. I guess it was just an attempt to be modern and cool, but really it just left me cold and the bathroom floor wet.

One thing that was very strange was that I had a very hard time talking like an American there. I’d keep popping out words with a slight British accent. I had to really pay attention to the way I spoke, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself with a half American/ half battered British accent. It wouldn’t take living there long at all for me to develop an accent. Funny how that works, and even funnier that Joe has no idea why I had such a hard time with that. I don’t really know either.

We didn’t really get to do much of anything. Most of our time was swallowed up at the airport, train station, finding a hotel, finding food or sleeping (never did get over that time difference). The LUGRadio conference was a blast though. It was a mass of geeks and nerds from all over the world. We even made friends with a few wonderful people.

All in all, the trip had many crappy aspects, no denying that, but of course it had some good moments and those will be the ones that I’ll remember most.

My Schlumbergias are blooming. I’m so proud. All on their own. I wasn’t expecting them to bloom at all since they are not getting the recommended light amounts, but they don’t seem to care. My bird’s nest fern had been looking sorry for the last year or so. I’d water it, but it just looked limp and had a grey cast (I kid you not), then my mom came for a visit and watered it and now it looks fantastic! It has regained its bright green color and is no longer mopey! My mother must have a magic touch with plants (even though that orchid of hers didn’t make it).

On a completely different subject:

I’m tired of all this “war on Christmas” crap. It’s all a bunch of hoo-hah if you ask me. Why on earth is it so hard for people to say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas” to take into consideration the other millions of people in this country who don’t celebrate Christmas? Why is it so damned hard to put up a Menorah next to the nine gigantic Christmas trees at an airport?

Now, I love Christmas. I love seeing all the Christmassy goodness hanging up around town. It gets everyone in the spirit, but I also wouldn’t mind seeing more Hanukkah decorations up. Ooh! Maybe a public Menorah lighting even! Any holiday event is a welcome event. Why not learn a little about another culture? Why be offended by it? Why not embrace them all? It might be fun to add on a few more holidays like Karthikai Deepam or Mawlid. I say the more celebration, the better. There is no war on Christmas, it’s a cry for understanding and acceptance.