On Saturday evening we headed to nearby Rhinecliff to celebrate the arrival of something called the Sinterklaas (Dutch for Santa Claus). Rhinecliff used to have a celebration every year, but stopped at some point. This was the first Sinterklaas celebration in nearly 20 years.

It began with a bunch of dancers banging drums and percussion instruments. The audiovisual theme was sort of East Village-meets-Mardi Gras-meets-Mad Max.

Next we headed over to the dock, where the Sinterklaas was to arrive by boat. Evie was pretty much done with the whole experience at that point. Luckily my mom was there to help thwart Evie’s efforts to fling her mittens off at every opportunity.

The Sinterklaas boat approached. (See the Sinterklaas riding up top?)

The suspense was killing us.

Some folks posted themselves on the railroad trestle for a better view.

The boat finally arrived at the dock carrying… a puppet. It actually looked a little like a holiday version of King Friday. A few folks held this Sinterklaas aloft, and we proceeded to walk a circuit of the town.

At some point we were inexplicably joined by a full-sized, human Sinterklaas riding a white horse. Despite the white beard, I’m 99% sure this Sinterklass was a woman (which may or may not be part of the original Dutch tradition). I didn’t notice a sack of presents slung across the Sinterklaas’ shoulder, but she led our procession to the local bar, where all was forgiven.

I’ve been so focused on the smaller details these past few weeks: diapers, naps, drool (only some of it mine). As a result, I’ve barely taken note of the fact that we’ve reached a few milestones here:

Today is the one-year anniversary of Getty Images’ acquisition of Pump Audio. Seems impossible that was an entire year ago. I’m incredibly proud of what we built: a business that plugs thousands of independent artists into a global marketplace of production professionals in television, advertising and film—people who want to use their music and pay them for it.

Surprisingly, our deal with Getty Images went through, despite the fact that I had a wardrobe malfunction at a critical juncture. During our final meeting with Getty’s CEO and assorted top brass, I inadvertently exposed my bellybutton to the room for a good quarter of an hour before realizing it. In my post-red-eye flight/whirlwind preparation haze, I’d missed a button on my dress shirt, so that when I leaned back in my chair while I was talking, my shirt puckered wide open just above the belt. So I suppose it’s the one-year anniversary of my presenting my navel in the Getty conference room, too.

I’m also now voluntarily unemployed. That’s my former desk above, in the Pump church. I still need to clear it out, actually. We’ve been in England for what seems like forever now, so my last day as a Pump/Getty Images employee—technically two weeks ago—was incredibly anti-climactic. It was kind of like going on a long trip and getting quietly divorced from a seven-plus-year marriage over email.

But this was a happy, friendly divorce, mind you. I still love everyone there at Pump—I just needed to take some time with Evie and Emma and figure out what I want to do next.

Which brings me to the next big milestone: Emma’s and my second wedding anniversary.

We spent our first anniversary down in Cape May, where we got married on June 2nd, 2006. Emma was pregnant for the third time that year, both of the first two pregnancies having ended in miscarriage. Here was our third chance, though with her cramping badly (as was the case just before the first two miscarriages) we assumed the worst.

Luckily, every once in a while self-diagnosis on Google actually deflates panic rather than stoking it. I quickly googled “cramping and pregnancy” on my Blackberry, and found that cramping can often be a good sign, meaning that the body is stretching the uterus in preparation for a growing fetus. We agreed to a moratorium on further googling, and clung to this potentially positive factoid during our 5-hour drive home. We listened to music and talk radio, held hands a bit, and in general didn’t say much.

Our 2008 trip down to Cape May was different in two major ways. The first was that we brought along 4-month old Evie. Everything was okay, just as Google promised. She is a very sweet and fun little baby, although not yet much of a beachgoer. In light of the latter fact, the second major difference in this trip was that I never got to go to the beach. Not once. We spent an entire week on a beach holiday, renting a house a six-minute walk from the ocean, and I barely touched the sand.

The one exception to this was when Emma and I brought Evie out to the spot on the Cape May Point where we said our vows two years ago.

There’s been some considerable erosion at the beach, exposing some large rocks that weren’t there on our wedding day. I don’t believe in omens even slightly, and don’t mean this as a metaphor or anything, so I’m just making a completely unscientific meteorological/geological observation here. It’s super windy (technical term) at Cape May Point, so one might assume that with each passing year that beach is going to be progressively carried elsewhere on the breeze.

All I know is, I hope to see a day, years and years hence, when Emma and I drag a teenage Evie down to the point, stand on the bare rocks where the beach used to be, and gush over our long-ago nuptials while she rolls her eyes at us.

My mom came in from L.A. to spend a few pre-Christmas days with me and Emma in NYC.

We stopped by Rockefeller Center to see the massive tree…

… and the Yankee Santa…

… and a few window displays, during which I saw a father taking a picture of mother and child in front of every single store window. In protest, the kid pulled his hat over his eyes and sulked as much as possible. I felt for him. Luckily, he only had about 30 window displays to go, then he’d be home free.

Happy holidays to all!

Knowing that we’d be snowed in all weekend (and that I’d need to do something other than play Scrabulous on the laptop), I decided to make some DIY holiday cards using block printing techniques.

I started with linoleum, which I’d worked with in an art class decades ago. Just as I remembered, the linoleum was hard to work with; I ended up spending more time stanching blood than making any real progress. I bandaged my hands and headed back to the art supply store, where I was directed toward something called Speedy Cut. I’d read online that Speedy Cut was prone to crumbling, but I did not find this to be the case at all.

I had a design concept in mind, which I created by compositing three photos of Emma, Baci and me, tracing them with the Bezier tool in Illustrator, then adding some simple pine trees on the sides.

Using the side of a soft pencil, I covered the opposite side of the design sheet in graphite. By flipping the paper onto the Speedy Cut (graphite down, design up) and tracing the outline on the front, the design was transferred. I then cut out the negative space so that the positive areas stood in relief. I did this with both the X-acto knife and slotted linoleum cutting tool.

It was then a matter of inking up the ink plate, rolling ink onto the design template, placing a card face down on the inked template, and giving it a good going-over. I found that the back of a wooden spoon worked better than the side of my hand.
I also found (only at the very end, of course) that adding additional colors sloppily yields excellent results.

It had been a long time since I’d done anything arts-and-craftsy. My sketchbooks and charcoals are in the depths of our basement (near the box of obsolete AC adapters and wires that I keep for some occasion that has never arisen). In any case, I’d forgotten how all-consuming a process like this can be, in the best of ways. It felt great to spend a few hours away from the laptop, doing something analog for a change.

My foray back into the analog world wasn’t all pleasurable, however. The cards now needed to be written and addressed, wherein I learned that I now get writer’s cramp when hand-writing anything longer than eight words.

For the first time in my adult life, I’ve put up a Christmas tree. It’s Emma’s doing, mostly, this shedding of my years-long aversion to all things holiday. That and a few good Christmases in a row with my Aussie relatives and English in-laws.

Emma assured me that she’d done her research and found that visiting a local tree farm and cutting down a soon-to-be-replenished tree is the greenest of all Christmas tree possibilities—other than not getting a tree of course, which was totally out of the question for her.

And so on a very cold Sunday, off we went with Joey and Lorelei to Battenfeld’s, which is apparently a big tradition around here. It’s a few hundred acres of Christmas trees (of varying sizes and species) less than 15 minutes from our house.

Upon arriving, you pay a $10 saw deposit, and they send you off to pick a tree. Any tree is $50. Emma and I found ours in minutes.

I set to sawing while Emma provided encouragement.

Joey and Lorelei, not known for their decisiveness when confronted with an abundance of choice, surprised us by selecting a tree not ten minutes later. Baby Elliette, unfazed, slept through the whole affair.

I carried the tree down to the baling shed with the utmost care…

…only to have the baler thrust the tree through the baling machine as if he was actually trying to rid it of its needles. From the baling, to loading it into the car and finally hauling it inside, we left a trail of what seemed to be several trees’ worth of needles. The tree, remarkably, isn’t yet bare.

Now for the decorating. Emma picked up a bunch of ornaments and lights, dug out a CD of Elvis doing Christmas songs, and we started a-hangin’. (An aside: Emma’s college roommate had to request on several occasions that she not leave the Christmas carol CD on repeat.) I could only take one play-through of the holiday music—even with Elvis singing—so I sneaked in a little Badly Drawn Boy. Soon enough, we were in business.

Now, I draw the line at angels on the top of the tree—not that we had a spare angel in the house anyway. So we settled on Baci’s hedgehog chew toy for our tree-topper.

This got the dog’s undivided attention for several minutes, while we relaxed on the couch—the hedgehog watching over us as we sat in the glow of our twin laptops, taking in the pine smell, and feeling very pleased with our first tree.

(I promise, he’ll get it back on Christmas morning.)

We didn’t ring in Independence Day with any real fanfare, but we did see a few struggling rockets (bottlerockets, possibly) launched over a very rainy Woodstock, NY.

Last weekend’s sparklers were undoubtedly more impressive.

We spent New Year’s Eve in Sydney, at a party in a hotel bar overlooking the Harbour Bridge. I’m not usually that excited by fireworks, but being that this was the 75th anniversary of the bridge, they put on what was easily the most insane pyrotechnic display I’ve ever seen. Apart from that, the night was marked by amazing food, free-flowing champagne, and a neck-and-neck race between me and my father-in-law, Malcolm, to take the title of most “celebratory.” Thankfully (or possibly unfortunately), there are photos to fill in the memory gaps.

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We spent a fantastic two weeks with my family in Adelaide. We stayed with my Uncle Denis, Anne (who will kill me if I call her “Aunt,” as she’s not even ten years older than I am), and my cousins Kieran and Ryan. I’ve been lucky enough to see them three out of the last four Christmases: ‘03 in Oz, ‘05 in L.A., and ‘06 back in Oz.

One of the family traditions is to go up to see the X-mas parade at Lobethal, a historic German township in the Adelaide Hills. It’s a place that’s hardly lacking in characters, as the pub scenes that follow will reveal. The night ended up in a balloon portrait extravaganza. » Keep reading »

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Just for today, an interesting story about the Lincoln Memorial from Sarah Vowell’s excellent book Assassination Vacation:

[Lincoln Memorial sculptor David Chester] French obsessed for years about how to sculpt Lincoln’s peculiar face, fretting and reading and thinking, before commiting to the brooding, seated philosopher in the memorial. He received the commission in 1913, so by the time the memorial was finally dedicated—nine years later—the sculptor was a little pent up worrying how his work would come off. Hoping to celebrate, French looked upon the final installation with horror.
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