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December, 2024:

Odd Christmas Lots

Dec 21st, 2024
by Jeff Duntemann.
6 comments

    TRexManger

    • Be careful with your art and writing, making sure it can’t be misconstrued. (See above.) In the original draft of my story “Whale Meat” (which I wrote when I was 18) I used the word “frot” as the name of a magical power. I thought I invented the word. A friend later took me aside and told me what “frot” meant. I gulped and changed it to “zot.”
    • My old friend Lee Hart took a forgotten 1844 Charles Dickens Christmas story, trimmed it down some, and modernized some Victorian archaisms. It’s free and very much worth reading. The Chimes is a short novel (about 20,000 words) so budget some time. I did a copy/paste into a Word .docx, so I could control the type size for the sake of these old eyes.
    • While we’re talking Christmas stories, just a reminder that my Christmas story “The Camel’s Question” is still available for 99c on Amazon. More on the story in this entry from a few days back.
    • While troubleshooting my Lionel ZW train transformer, I ran across a nice article on the ZW, which Lionel sold from 1948 to 1966. I may try to repair my ZW, though it won’t happen in time for Christmas this year. Or I may just hunt around on eBay until I find another one.
    • (Not Christmas, but timely): The Altair 8800 personal computer, the one that began the desktop computer revolution, went on the market 50 years ago last Thursday, on December 19, 1974. I found it at the same site with the ZW article. Other interesting stuff there too.
    • Our favorite spiked egg nog is Van Der Haute Egg Nog Traditional. Review here. We get it from Safeway, because Total Wine doesn’t carry it, nor Fry’s, though I won’t claim that no Kroger grocery does. Jewel-Osco carries it, if that’s your local store.
    • If you’re mulling the issue of spiced holiday wines, consider Firebrand Spiced Red Wine, which Total Wine carries. It’s a sweet red with cinnamon, vanilla and fruit flavors that most people would consider a dessert wine. There is no vintage year on the label, which for wines of this sort really isn’t an issue.
    • Sarah Hoyt recently published a book of four SF-flavored Christmas stories, called Christmas in the Stars. $2.99 on Kindle. I bought it but haven’t read it yet, although I’ve always enjoyed Sarah’s writing. And it’s making me wonder if there’s an AI SF story I could spin about Christmas. I haven’t written a short story since 2008, so it’s about time.
    • Some of my older readers will know why lead tinsel was a forbidden pleasure back in the 50s and 60s. Well, you can buy it on eBay. Just search for “lead tinsel.” No shortage of choices. (It seems like the Germans may still use it!)

    Trains 1, Transformer 0

    Dec 20th, 2024
    by Jeff Duntemann.
    1 comment

    Carol and I put the Lionel tracks around the artificial Christmas tree a few nights ago. That’s how we do it; the real tree’s position in the great room has no nearby power outlets. Power is a big deal, and never more than this year.

    Basically, I connected our vintage Lionel ZW 2-control transformer to the tracks, and…nothing. Did my usual troubleshooting sequence: verify that the outlet is live, verify that the wires are properly connected and not shorted, and with that settled, put a VOM across the power terminals.

    Nothing. One of the two ZW pilot lights was on (the other not) so the ZW’s line cord was delivering AC to the ZW. Moving the controls around did not reveal any intermittents. It’s dead, Jim.

    The ZW worked fine in 2022 (we didn’t put the trains out last year) and has spent the last two years on a high shelf. Why it failed after sitting unmolested on a shelf remains a head-scratcher. So I went out to my workshop and lugged my 20-pound Alinco DM340MV adjustable DC power supply over to the tracks. I uncoupled the ZW and connected the Alinco to the tracks. The Alinco can deliver clean DC from 0-15 volts, at up to…30 amps. Sure, ok, overkill; the locos we have draw maybe an amp at full speed dragging all the cars behind them.

    I turned the very smooth voltage adjustment knob up to about 10V. Clickety-clack went my 2010-era Rail-King Jersey Central camelback steam loco around the tree. Using the voltage control knob, I was able to speed it up and slow it down. Turned it up to 15 volts for a little more speed, and…continuous ringing of the camelback’s electronic bell and whistle. That’s how the ZW works (or worked): when you push the whistle/horn control ring, the voltage goes up a couple of volts, which tells the locos to start their sound effects. By keeping it down to about ten volts, the sound effects go away.

    Carol’s 1957 Lionel steam loco makes continuous odd noises even at 10V. But my father’s 98-year-old Lionel 250 electric loco runs like a champ and emits no sound effects at any voltage. It was made in 1926; there were no sound effects in toy trains 98 years ago.

    So we now have trains, mostly. It’s too late to buy another Lionel transformer this year, but I loved the ZW and will be hunting around for another in time for Christmas 2025. The Alinco does the job well enough in the meantime. Shame I don’t have any of that 1940-50s lead tinsel…I suspect my (older) readers will know exactly why, heh.

    Again, merry Christmas! Get those trains running, guys!

    My Christmas Story: The Camel’s Question — 99c

    Dec 17th, 2024
    by Jeff Duntemann.
    2 comments

    CamelCover-500 wide

    “Listen, young ones, for I, Hanekh, am a very old camel, and may not be alive to tell this tale much longer. Listen, and remember. If I leave nothing else behind but a spotty hide and yellow bones, I wish to leave this.”

    Only 8 more days until Christmas! Please allow me to introduce (again) my Christmas fable about the camels that brought the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem. It’s a short story with a deep history: I wrote it when I was 13 as an eighth grade English assignment, in the runup to Christmas 1965. A few years later I decided to give it to my mother as a Christmas present for Christmas 1972. Problem was, I had lost the handwritten grade school manuscript, so I just sat down and rewrote it from memory. I gave Mother the typed manuscript in a duo-tang binder. She read it, wiped the tears from her eyes, and then kept it in her dresser for literally the rest of her life. My sister and I found it after Mother died in 2000. I took the story home, where it sat in a box for 22 years. In the fall of 2022 I pulled it out, OCRed it to a text file, and then did a certain amount of editing and polishing before uploading it to the Kindle store.

    The story is a fable because animals are the primary characters. Two of the Magi’s camels ache for very different things. Then there is Hanekh, who is unlike most camels in that he tries to make sense of the world around him, a world shaped and ruled by human beings. He asks the Christ Child a question, hence the title. All three camels receive what they desire, but Hanekh—

    —Well, read the story. It’s only 99c. And keep a Kleenex handy. Or wear long sleeves. It’s not a sad story, but a story of triumph, of both God and God’s creation, camels included. I’ve written a number of stories of triumph and affirmation. This may well be my favorite.

    My Mother’s 100th Birthday

    Dec 16th, 2024
    by Jeff Duntemann.
    No comments yet

    VictoriaFrankTogether

    Today is my mother’s 100th birthday, though she left us for God’s ineffable realms back in the summer of 2000. Victoria Albina Przybytek was a Wisconsin farm girl born of Polish immigrant parents in 1924. After the War she left the family farm in Necedah, Wisconsin and moved to Chicago to earn her nursing degree at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. She met my father in 1946, married him in 1949, brought me into the world in 1952, and my sister Gretchen in 1956. She (like my father) was a spectacular parent, who (like my father) taught me a great deal, in part by example, and in part by specific instruction. She taught me to pray, she taught me to waltz and polka, and she welcomed my friends, even when we were rowdy Boy Scouts holding noisy Fox Patrol meetings in our family room.

    Both of her parents came to live with us in their last months, and she taught us, by example, that caring about and for others and helping them was one of life’s most important purposes, one she pursued not only as a daughter, spouse and mother but also by profession, working as a nurse until her retirement. She did her best to care for my father for the eight horrible years he fought cancer, though after his death in 1978 she was never quite the same.

    Her personality was warm but also mystical, trusting that God and his angels would help her through the inevitable problems that life confronts all of us with. She had many fascinating stories to tell us of her life, her dreams, and her visions. She gave Gretchen and me freedom to roam the neighborhood and learn what such roaming could teach us–which, looking back, was critical in my journey to adulthood.

    When I first brought Carol home in 1969, my mother and my whole family embraced her as though she were already one of us. As my sister said once a few years after I married Carol, “If you two ever divorce, we’re keeping her.” Not to worry, heh. I knew what marriage was supposed to be like because I watched my parents’ marriage and did my best to follow their example. After 48 years of marriage (and 55 as inseparable best friends) Carol and I can confidently say that my mother’s lessons were successful. I’m sure that my parents are now together in God’s realms, healing one another of the pains they had suffered here on our beautiful but imperfect Earth.

    In short: I would not be the man I am, were she not the mother she was.

    A High-Glass Investigation

    Dec 10th, 2024
    by Jeff Duntemann.
    4 comments

    Some weeks back I tried a red blend called Magic Box, and when it was gone and I rinsed the bottle for recycling, the bottle seemed awfully heavy compared to the multitudes of 750ml bottles I’ve handled down the years. The Magic Box wine was so-so and I probably won’t buy it again. But man, it took a lotta glass to get from their ships to my lips.

    As if I didn’t have anything better to do, I started setting aside empty 750ml glass bottles, not only of wine but of San Pellegrino sparkling water and Torani sugar-free coffee syrup. After accumulating six bottles, I weighed them on our digital postal scale. It’s quite a spread:

    • San Pellegrino sparkling water                  15.6 oz
    • Torani coffee syrup                             1 lb 0.65 oz
    • Radius red blend                                1 lb 0.15 oz
    • Saracco Moscato                                1 lb 1.15 oz
    • Menage a Trois Silk red blend              1 lb 7.95 oz
    • Magic Box red blend                           1 lb 13.25 oz

    None of these bottles contained high-carbonation wine like champagne. The only one with any fizz at all was the Pellegrino sparkling water—and that was the lightweight of the bunch. Yes, yes, I know, there’s lots more fizz in champagne. Since I don’t like champagne I won’t be able to weigh a champagne bottle for comparison. If you have an empty champagne bottle and a postal scale, hey, weigh it and let us know in the comments.

    Nor did I log prices per bottle. Keep in mind that I rarely pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine. So it was all cheap-ish wine, at least by sophisticated wine-fanatic standards. I have a glass of wine with dinner, and cook with it here and there. I don’t mull (heh) my wine, looking for hints of loamy forest floor or galvanized iron.

    Nope. Just a stray thought that triggered a question that led to a simple experiment. I’ve done it before. I will do it again. Questions (even those without answers) are a goodly part of what makes life worthwhile.

    Decorated!

    Dec 4th, 2024
    by Jeff Duntemann.
    2 comments

    It took us a few days, but we got the great room decorated, including trimming both our artificial and natural (and we hope live) tree to the nines. This may be the best real Christmas tree we’ve ever had as a couple, and our hope is that with careful watering it will keep us until Epiphany.

    If we have to take it down sooner, well, the experiment was worth doing. Here’s a shot of our real tree, in the corner by the bar:

    IMG_1020

    We don’t use the bar for drinking, so it presents a nice place for decorations, this year including our creche and Carol’s Plasticville Farm, complete with farm animals and a corral of giant bichons:

    IMG_1021

    We’re going to set up the Lionel trains this year, including my father’s 1926 set that is now 98 years old. The venerable #250 electric loco still rips around the track as it doubtless did when my dad was a toddler. We’ll also be running Carol’s Lionel set from the late ‘50s; however, the trains will have to wait until after the cleaning service goes through and mops the tile floor.

    I’ll take some pictures of the artificial tree and will post them as time permits. We’ve started Christmas a little early this year, just to see what it’s like to get all Christmas-y on November 29 instead of December 15th or so. Like I said, I’ll keep you posted.