La Familia Brophy

Thanks to everyone who wrote to tell me our website was offline. Of course, I knew that pretty instantly, and it’s pained me intensely. It turns out I had a little misunderstanding with my web host. See, I’d switched credit cards, moved, and stopped using my home phone number all at once. So they decided after I hadn’t paid for a couple months to cancel my website hosting. Apparently they’d sent me a couple email invoices with subject lines like “Invoice #22345″ which of course were indistinguishable from spam and never got read.

I can see their point and all. But come on where’s the customer service? I’ve got a contact link on the site here. I mean, it’s a blog, leave a comment. Jeesh.

Anyway I’m all paid up, shopping around a bit for new web hosts, but stability has returned to the universe for the time being.

My other blog (the one where I write about technology) got nominated for an award for “Best designed/most beautiful edublog”. And anyone can go vote. Vote now! You don’t need to vote in all categories.

It is of course an honor just to be nominated. If someone else wins, I’ll do my best to be gracious while the camera is on me, like Don Cheadle smiling and clapping as Jamie Foxx jogs up to the stage to grab his Oscar, even though he knows he was frikkin’ great in Hotel Rwanda and he’s been working on this for years, while Jamie Foxx has been playing such roles as “Bunz” in the epic motion picture “Booty Call.”

Update: Well, I had my Don Cheadle moment. The winner’s blog is quite famous, one of the top 500 in the country, so i would have been shocked to beat that one. The second place blog was a gradeschool classrooms blog, and you know how they can get out the vote! So I am content to have been nominated. Thanks for your votes!

Nathan and I decorated a gingerbread house today to add a little Christmas cheer to our home. Luckily I didn’t have a grand vision for this project so I was able to let Nathan do most of the work. You can see from this photo that he was very dedicated to the task. I successfully convinced him that the icing was not for eating that it was glue and he didn’t even take one taste. He did get to enjoy a candy cane though.

Decorating the Gingerbread

I found this photo of myself in someone else’s Flickr photos. I’m presenting at aconference. It kind of looks like I’m hurling profanities at the audience, but at least I don’t look nervous.

Santa came to Boston this afternoon and Nathan got to meet him for the first time. We were hoping to greet him as he arrived by fire truck but that sneaky old Santa came 10 minutes early so while we were staying out of the snow in the coffee shop next door we missed him. Nathan was second in line to sit on Santa’s lap but the first kid decided he wasn’t sure he wanted to so Nathan just ran right up and climbed up on his lap as if he has done this a dozen times before. He told Santa how he wants a Thomas engine and a car carrier train car. I’m pretty sure that Santa didn’t understand a word Nathan was saying but he promised to bring him everything he wants. It was a very exciting visit with Santa.

I am always so amazed by how adventurous Nathan is at these types of events. I certainly wasn’t. I was terrified of Santa until my 20’s or so. It isn’t like Nathan walks up to strangers and sits on their laps but he seemed to think he had heard enough about Santa that he knew him and knew he had better give him his message before Christmas comes around.