Your tale of holiday Grinchiness, 2005:

Most of you know I sing in the choir down at St. Francis in Victorian Village — it’s the church Val and I got married in, and the group there is absolutely phenomenal for an all-volunteer four-part church choir.

It being the Christmas season, our director, Phil Adams, somehow was contacted by the folks over at the new Hyde Park steakhouse in the Short North, who asked whether we would be interested in caroling for them some night in December? An hour and a half of caroling, they said, and in return we’ll feed you, and make a donation to the church for the effort. We of course thought this sounded great, and after a not-inconsiderable bit of schedule comparison, we settled on a good Saturday night when most of the choir could be there.

So I go to check my email today, and there’s a note from Phil about tonight. We’re not singing.

Turns out that when Phil was working details with them yesterday, they somehow let it slip that the food the very posh and oh-so-fancy Hyde Park Steakhouse would be preparing for us was… takeout pizza.

Now, frankly, none of us would really have minded if it were McDonald’s, so long as it’s warm. But when they sold us this deal, they pretty much made it sound like “we’ll be more than happy to provide you with our signature steak dinners” in exchange for providing them with an hour and a half of four-part Victorian Christmas carols — and really, wouldn’t you make the logical leap that when a restaurant offers to feed you, that’s where the meal’s coming from? And if they’re willing to play hide-the-ball with dinner, exactly what would the “generous donation” to St. Francis have entailed?

When Phil tried to point out how he felt like Hyde Park had been a little disingenuous, shall we say, in arranging this performance, the manager basically refused to listen to him, rudely cut him off and told him that Hyde Park would just get someone else to sing Saturday night. And so we’re out.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter, y’old bag.

From the Washington Post:

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Most of the time, 16-year-old Zach Rubio converses in clear, unaccented American teen-speak, a form of English in which the three most common words are “like,” “whatever” and “totally.” But Zach is also fluent in his dad’s native language, Spanish — and that’s what got him suspended from school.

“It was, like, totally not in the classroom,” the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. “We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he’s like, ‘Me prestas un dolar?’ [‘Will you lend me a dollar?’] Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I’m like, ‘No problema.’ “

But that conversation turned out to be a big problem for the staff at the Endeavor Alternative School, a small public high school in an ethnically mixed blue-collar neighborhood. A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school.

Watts, whom students describe as a disciplinarian, said she can’t discuss the case. But in a written “discipline referral” explaining her decision to suspend Zach for 1 1/2 days, she noted: “This is not the first time we have [asked] Zach and others to not speak Spanish at school.”

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Okay, so, I’m not going to pretend that I understand this completely. Am I supposed to be seeing the implication that this kid is/has been a troublemaker for the school, and that he’s used Spanish to further his schemes? The Post story goes on to indicate that the suspension has since been lifted and that “speaking a foreign language is not grounds for suspension.” But without more context, that’s exactly what the piece leads one to conclude.

Would sure put a damper on teaching of foreign language, I guess — so what could possibly be the policy rationalization? I summon the Lazyweb! Help me understand this!

Our pal Mer over at the Elevated Umbrella goes postal on Martha Stewart’s Christmas-themed peppermint meringue recipe.

After spending about two hours making scratch brownies on Friday night before the Ware family Christmas party on Saturday, I feel your pain, Mer.

Lifted from Andrew Sullivan, today:

October 27, 2003: the White House’s official transcript records the following statement by the President:

It’s in the interest of long-term peace in the world that we work for a free and secure and peaceful Iraq. A free and secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact.

Which is fine. But that’s not what he actually said. (White House video is here, if you don’t believe it.)

“Eloquent” is probably not the word I would have chosen.

When I went to pick Carl up from daycare yesterday evening, his teacher smiled at me and shook her head bemusedly. “Carl led a little insurrection today,” she said.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Seems that Miss Tiffany was in the process of separating two children who had been somehow hurting each other (Carl was not one of them) and was putting one of them in timeout, over by the low wall that divides the room in half. Carl walks over while she is telling this child why he’s in timeout, looks at her and says, “I’m in timeout, too.” And then crosses his arms and sits down next to this other child.

And then another of the kids comes up, says “I’m in timeout, too,” and sits down next to Carl. And another. And another. And another. Until there’s a line of children all along this wall, all in “timeout,” all having followed our little protest organizer like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

We’re so proud.

AKA: Reason 543 we love our PT Cruiser!

We were the THIRD customers at the Boy Scout’s lot this year. Needless to say, a very eager Boy Scout was quite disqusted with 1) our faulty memory of what kind of tree we usually got and 2) our inability to tell him what it smelled like (we said pine, turns out the right answer was oranges) Anyway, we chose our tree blindly since they had just come off the truck that morning and were very tightly pressed. But our scout gave us a fresh cut while his brother scouts chatted us up and Carl loved all the action. He talked to and about the tree the whole way home. He sat in the 1/3 section of the back seat that we left in and the tree took up the rest of the car. Next year: two cars or a luggage rack – yikes!