Christmas Greetings and Musings

Hi, guys, Mike here. Since I appear to be the only one of the RS Team at a laptop this Christmas morning, I just wanted to wish any browsing bloggers who celebrate it a very merry Christmas. I hope this missive finds you well and happy, hopefully with loved ones.

Yesterday, with Jazz's permission, I did a little tinkering with the site's template. The most noticeable changes are that the blog column is about 65 pixels wider, the line spacing was tightened up from 1.6 to 1.3, the sidebar was futzed with a bit, and we got Jazz's photos up in the header. Minor changes included a tightening up of the extra whitespace that used to follow every entry (IE users will still see it, because MSIE's a piece of reindeer scat -- you should just learn to browse happy!), and a slight tweak with the location of the permalinks. I took a look at the site in Safari and Firefox on the Mac, and in MSIE and Mozilla on my folks' Windows machine. All looks well. If you see something wrong, please feel free to drop me a line.

I am not a very religious man, and although I was raised Presbyterian, I am currently in what could best be described as a 'questing' state. Nevertheless, I feel that on this day when they're celebrating Christ's birth, the neoconservatives in the Administration, including George W. Bush, probably need to reread something Christ told everyone. (It probably wouldn't hurt for Cheney to take a look at this and this, too.)

I suppose I'm letting my acrimony pull me a bit away from the Christmas spirit -- I'm casting a lot of stones here, and I'm certainly not without sin. It's just hard to think of all the soldiers deployed over in Iraq, and all the families here stateside who miss them terribly, and not be mad at the person who is causing this cumulatively massive amount of misery for what I feel, at least, is no good cause. (Because, I'm sorry, who was it that masterminded 2,996 murders, and why is it again that he's still free to make speeches?)

If you have a loved one in Iraq, please know that although they may not know your name or your loved one's name, a lot of people have you in their hearts this holiday and are wishing you and them peace and health, and for them, a very safe return. And if you no longer have someone over there, please know that people are thinking of you and wishing you peace and healing, too.

Merry Christmas, all.