Bingle Jells, Bingle Jells

So the tree is fixed and is sparkling once again thanks to Ole's electrical genius. I put my last cards and letters in the mail yesterday. My baking is done, or as much as I'm going to do, thanks to Ole and Lars. Ole delivered some goodie trays for me this morning, I've got a couple more to put together and get delivered. I've bought my Christmas groceries. I did that yesterday and the store was already a zoo. But I still haven't wrapped my packages.

I think things are starting to come together with the exception that I still have to clean up the disaster that this house has turned into. I have one more project to work on for Lars, but I can't go into that here because I think he reads sometimes (whisper, whisper, sneak, sneak). But even if I don't get that one done until Monday that will be plenty of time.

I have a fun gathering to look forward to this afternoon - remember I told you about some old school girlfriends that got together last month and we decided to do it every month. Well, today is the day. We're meeting about 4:00 at one of the gal's houses. I'm going to go through my boxes and dig out a bunch of old pictures and bring along. That should prove to be a riot or two, you think?

So here's a shot of Ole, Lovely Daughter and Lars getting the tree put together before we discovered that it was broken.



Below are the guard doggers making sure no one steals the Christmas ornaments before they get put on the tree.


This is Lovely Daughter's newest fur baby, Medora. She's a riot. First thing she did was try to climb the tree of course.

"Can't you guys give me a bit more help here?"


I think Senior Citizen Simon had too much egg nog!!

Here's the tree in it's final state.

This is a little video I took of Ole and his chicken ornament. At least you can get an idea of how the tree sparkles. Anyway, I bought this Hallmark ornament for Ole a long time ago, just on a lark. It's three chicken sitting on nests in a coop. When you punch the button they cluck Jingle Bells. Turn up your volume and you'll be able to hear it. Leave it to Ole to be enthralled by some chickens clucking Jingle Bells.

My Christmas Tree Broke!!

You know what? My damn Christmas tree broke. Can you believe it? A broken Christmas tree.

Lovely Daughter and Lars were here on Friday evening. Ole and Lars were making more cookies and fudge and chocolate mice. Yes – I said chocolate mice. I’ll get to them later.

Anyway, they got the tree all decorated, plugged it in and Ta-Da – it was gorgeous – for about five minutes. Then all the fiber optics went out. Turned it off, turned it on, gorgeous for about five minutes and the fiber optics went out again. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

What is this anyway, that tree has only been used two seasons, this would be it’s third. It sure better last longer than that. And of course none of us thought to test it out before we got it set up in the corner and all decorated with umpty-three ornaments either. So Ole waited until the next morning so he could see better, got down on his tummy and sckootched (is that a neener?) himself into the corner and took the bottom of the tree apart without rustling one single ornament.

He discovered that the itty-bitty fan that cools the high intensity light in the base had bit the dust, so at least that’s an easy fix. The tree should be up and twinkling again this afternoon after Ole gets home from town and performs his electrical magic on it.

And this isn’t even the tree I threw out on the deck in a moment of ScandihOOvian anger a few years ago – if you remember that story!!

And then there’s my kitchen – again – it needs another thorough cleaning. Ole and Lars baked on Friday night, again on Saturday afternoon and then Ole and I baked some more on Sunday afternoon. I think I’m done now. I can’t even stand to look at another piece of fudge or a Christmas cookie, let alone try to choke one down. You know how it gets – ugh. But it’s definitely better for the waistline that way, right?
I’m sure you guys have all seen the chocolate mice I’m talking about.

They’re made from maraschino cherries with stems that are dipped in chocolate, have a Hershey’s kiss attached for a head, slivered almond ears and little beady eyes and a nose made from colored sugar. Ole presented a half dozen of them to the minister’s wife on Sunday after church. They moved into a beautiful old house that they are renovating and this fall had their share of mouse problems that she was telling us all about the prior Sunday. You should have heard her hoot when she opened the box of chocolate mice. So much fun.

We’ve already received our invitation for a New Year’s Eve party. Can’t you tell I’m so thrilled? It’s Dick and Jane’s annual event. Ick – I’d rather stay home. So we decided, after consultation with Bob & Carol, that we’d all go out to dinner together, along with another couple, Scott & Diane. After all, New Year’s Eve is Bob’s birthday, so we need to have a special celebration for him, don’t you think? Then we’ll all stop for a short period of time at Dick & Jane’s, and then come out to our house, play some cards, sit in the hot tub, etc. Sounds like a much more pleasant evening than hanging around Dick & Jane’s watching all the perverts. You can read about Tim sucking on Jane’s bare boob in front of everybody last year here – that’s if you want to be grossed out. For those of you who haven’t read me very long and want to know more about Jane, feel free to poke around in those pages so you can get a feel for what Jane is like and why I dislike her so much.

Enough of that – on to more positive things.

Today my goal is to get all my Christmas cards and letters written. I think I’m going to do a cyber post of my Christmas letter for all my friends who are on line and send a hard copy out to those who aren’t computer literate. I got a number of email letters last year and I certainly had no problem with that. I’ve never been this late getting my cards out before. I’ve always had them ready to go the first week in December and would send them out over the course of time depending on how far away they had to go. I did get my big package mailed to Big Brother on Saturday. Cost me $20 to send it UPS. It’s full of cookies, fudge, homemade salsa, homemade jellies, some Christmas breads, and Ole even included a bottle of his homemade wine. So with all the packing the box got pretty heavy.

Well, Folks, if I’m going to accomplish my goal I better get with it.

Love to you all,

Lena

Mojacks and Mojennies!!

Paula said...
"Wow...that beats Poolie's story of eating crotched gummy bears. Interesting story. I heard that people in Iceland don't have last names and that they are the best looking people on the planet."


Well now, Paula’s comment on my entry of yesterday deserves a response, that’s for sure.

The Icelandics do have last names, but they use something called the patronymic naming system. At one point all the ScandihOOvian countries did, but I believe that Iceland is the only one that has kept the system. This simply means that you take your father’s last name and add sson if you are a son and dottir if you are a daughter. So if your first name was Peter, and your father’s name was John, you would become Peter Johnsson. If you were a female and your first name was Petra and your father’s name was John you would become Petra Johnsdottir. If you’re Peter Johnsson and you have a son named Sven your son would be named Sven Petersson, and his son’s name would be Svensson or if he had a daughter she would have a last name of Svensdottir – see how it goes? Can you imagine trying to do some genealogical research in this mess?

And another thing – the phone books are all listed in alphabetical order of course – by FIRST name!!

As for the Icelandics being the best looking people on the planet I have to agree – at least as far as the women go. They are absolutely gorgeous. All tall, blond and very slender with gorgeous figures. You occasionally find a red head, but not too often. The men, on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired in the physical appearance category. Most of them are very scruffy looking, unshaven, greasy hair, etc. Most of their negative physical appearance is due to their personal hygiene, and I’m sure if that improved their attractiveness would also.

It was the custom in Iceland to wear old wool sport coats as outerwear because it never gets very cold there. These old sport coats were worn day in and day out, and regardless of what kind of a job you had. You could be a welder or a fisherman or a construction worker, but the uniform of the day was always an old wool sport coat – that NEVER went to the cleaners! So you can imagine what they started to smell like.

The Icelandic people were very kind, nice people as a whole, but there was, of course, a small faction that didn’t want the NATO base in their country. Most of them were hard-line communists and extremely vocal. None of them, communists or not, were very keen on having the American sailors hanging around with their young women because they were a nation of purists. Not only did they want to keep their race pure, but they knew that if their daughters married the American military men they would soon be taken from the country when the sailors went to their next duty station. The young girls felt differently, of course, and looked to the Americans as a ticket “out.” This NATO base was established during WWII, (there were still some buildings being used of WWII vintage) and somewhere along the line the sailors developed the nicknames of Mojack and Mojenny for the Icelandic men and women. I have no idea what the significance of these nicknames was, but they were still in use when Ole and I were in Iceland.

One year we decided to give a Halloween party – no costumes no admittance type of party. I must say there were some extremely unusual costumes that arrived. But one of the most unique had to be the guy who came as a Mojack (there’s that word again). He wore heavy work boots, dirty pants (never jeans), a slouch hat and the best part of the costume was his old wool sports coat that he had gone to the thrift store to buy. In order to make it smell bad he had drained the oil from a couple of cans of tuna fish and poured it in his pockets. We had two cats at that time that absolutely crawled all over him throughout the entire evening!! THEY loved him even if no one else wanted to get close to him!!

Here’s a picture of the Mojack and the Mojenny!! Aren’t they cute?