Christmas Eve

The Christmas craziness at work is behind me, and I've just finished putting up our beloved clunky-looking decorations (finally found the boxes they've been tucked away in all year...). I'm following Santa via the NORAD Santa site -- he's currently over the Sandwich Islands, in the south Atlantic. I just have to finish putting the "weird-looking things" on the Christmas tree, ie. the Keepsake ornaments and other little widgets and gadgets, and put up the Nativity scene on the mantel.

A Must Read: "The Vampire's Christmas" by the incomparable Michelle Belanger: http://sethanikeem.livejournal.com/267680.html It's by turns touching and spooky and blackly funny.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Peace on earth, good will toward men and women and children... and vampires, and AIs, and mythic entities, and shinigami...

Midnight Mass at the Vatican: Not again...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1238201/Pope-Benedict-XVI-knocked-floor-mentally-unstable-woman-jumped-barrier-Midnight-Mass.html

Note to the Vatican: Please step up security during Midnight Mass; next time, this might not end as well as it did. Two years in a row is not very good odds. I know it disrupts the flow of the procession just a bit to have a bunch of bodyguards immediately around His Holiness, but better safe than sorry. Also find out who this woman's caretaker is (if she has one...) and lean on them a little in a good way: They need to get some major treatment for her since she's done this twice to the same religious leader. If she doesn't have someone looking after her, see that she gets someone to take care of her; this isn't fair to her or to His Holiness or to that French cardinal who broke his leg in the scuffle.

Nor is fair to me, since right now I want to bite a piece out of her energy field to get her in line (which won't happen since I don't have a clear image of her face).