comment spam: now with more flattery!

This blog has been around a few years now, and my spam filter has caught quite a few spam comments. 107,662 spam comments, in fact. Which is way, way more spam comments than actual bonafide comments from actual bonafide people.

A few years back I made a post in response to some spam comments that amused me, but mostly I don’t give spam much thought.

I recently checked to see what was in my spam box, though, and was amused to see another recent trend in spamming: flattery. Many of the comments were very complimentary about the blog, the post, etc.. The sort of comment that can be nice to get. Take this one:

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                                            –Natalia Dandoy

Yes, I sometimes do feel like I post good information. But, well, this was on my about page. For that matter, so were all of these¹:

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                                            –Ada Matuszewski

At least thrice weekly!

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This one I could almost let pass though. Yes! Me! I’m so cool! I’m original! But what exactly is “this subject?” Oh, right. My about page. And what kind of a first name is buy, anyway?

This is great information. Folks, listen to this guy. He’s very bright and knows what he’s talking about. You can’t go wrong with following people who can walk the walk – like him. Great information, dude. Just the way I like it!
                                            –Sudie Franpton

I’m glad Sudie likes my blog. It’s so nice to feel appreciated. On the other hand, it would be nicer if Sudie had bothered to note that I am female. Especially given the fact that Sudie was visiting my about page, where I have a picture of myself. (Of course, in that photo, I have a fish on my head. Maybe Sudie thinks the fish is the blog author…though how the fish could “walk the walk” is unclear to me.)

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                                            –Wagers

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I can’t help but wonder what sort of analysis this person’s colleague was doing on “this.” “This,” again, being my about page. Clearly, though, I have underestimated the value of the information on that page. When will someone buy me breakfast?

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—

¹ I decided to cite the names given for the spam comments. I wouldn’t want to be accused of stealing credit for this phenomenal writing. Of course, I also wouldn’t want to provide links for them. Also, I will not share with you the details of exceedingly dull comments left by individuals who elected to be known as qgnxwlnpkg and Bzcsmtmq, even though I applaud them for their originality in choosing names.

down the rabbit hole

Happy New Year! It’s Chinese New Year today, marking the start of the year of the rabbit. In keeping with my tradition of welcoming the lunar new year with a themed list,¹ I present to you a bunch of rabbits:

  • “rabbit, rabbit” A tradition of saying “rabbit, rabbit” first thing when you wake up on the first of the month to bring you good luck. I used to do this as a kid. I hadn’t remembered it in years. (Maybe my luck would have been better…)
  • Bugs Bunny: a famous cartoon from the Looney Tunes/Warner Brothers. (What’s up, doc?)
  • Binky and Bongo: somewhat less famous rabbit characters from Matt Groening’s comic Life in Hell. (Bongo is the one with one ear.)

  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) A movie combining live action and cartoon characters, one of whom is a rabbit.
  • Harvey (1950) A movie starring Jimmy Stewart and a 6-foot-tall invisible rabbit.
  • Little Rabbit Foo-foo/Little Bunny Foo-foo. A folk song. …hopping through the forest. Scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head…
  • The Bunny Hop: a conga-line type dance involving hopping
  • Rabbits are popular anthropomorphic characters in children’s literature, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit and others by Beatrix Potter, or Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.
  • Watership Down: a novel by Richard Adams about a very complex rabbit society. Complete with their own language. I’m quite fond of the Lapine words tharn (which is the feeling one gets of being a deer caught in the headlights) and hrair (which is a number larger than 4–rabbits can only count up to 4.)

  • Other well-known stories feature a rabbit among other characters and species of creatures, such as Rabbit from A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books or the White Rabbit in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. There was also Thumper from Disney’s 1942 animated film Bambi. Br’er Rabbit: is a character from the traditional African American Uncle Remus folktales

  • Other stories feature bunny-shaped toys, such as The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, or the more recent Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems.
  • The Easter Bunny: a rabbit said to bring colorful eggs and candy for children on Easter.
  • Here comes Peter Cottontail: a song about the Easter Bunny. (…hopping down the bunny trail…hippity hoppity...)
  • Cheddar Bunnies: rabbit-shaped snack crackers.
  • Welsh Rabbit: a kind of food that is not actually made from rabbit. It is a thick sauce, traditionally made with cheddar cheese and ale, and served over toast. (Here’s a sample recipe.)
  • VW Rabbit: a kind of car, not traditionally made with cheddar cheese or ale.
  • rabbit food: what some call salads and other raw vegetables
  • rabbit’s foot: a good luck charm made from the foot of a rabbit (less lucky for the rabbit)
  • rabbit ears: antennae for a TV, not generally made from the ears of a rabbit (lucky rabbits)

  • Rabbits have appeared as mascots for products, especially in TV commercials, such as the Energizer Bunny (it keeps going), the Trix rabbit (Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.) and the Nesquik bunny (I have nothing to say about this rabbit.) For that matter, the logo of Playboy magazine is a stylized rabbit in a tuxedo. (I don’t have anything to say about that rabbit, either.)
  • Finally, we must not forget that rabbits, while typically portrayed as docile, may have big pointy teeth.

—
¹ …with pigs in 2007, rats in 2008, and cows in 2009. Last year, I didn’t put up a list for the New Year, in part because I had put up my tiger list before, and in part probalby because I was busy with something else.²

² In fact I shouldn’t be doing this list now, as I have loads of other things I am supposed to be doing, but I can’t resist. So I will be quick like a bunny. And I will pull this rabbit list out of my…hat. I’ve tried to keep it short, but the bunnies seem to keep multiplying. (You know how rabbits are. Though I can’t help but notice that just about all of the rabbit characters on the list are male. You’d think that would make the breeding tricky…)

Image sources: Book cover for Watership Down, movie poster for Harvey, Peter Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, TV with antenna, Binky, Bongo, and John Tenniel’s illustration of the White Rabbit.

I liked the gingerbread plan better.

So, I see that it has been 9 days since my last big whine of a post. Consider this post a continuation of the last one. And let me start by giving a warning: there will be mentions of vomit.

I had a commute day last Wednesday, for something work-related, but not something that leads to any sort of progress towards my degree. Thursday I miraculously managed a full day of work, finally making progress on the list of things I’d been trying to do the week before on a group project. Friday was going to be another commute/meeting day, so when we were all snowed in again, it didn’t feel like a huge loss in productivity to have my lab meeting by conference call instead. (Though it was a bit awkward, as John had a conference call at the same time, so neither of us was available to corral the kids. We put on a movie, which contained Phoebe pretty well, but Theo wandered in to contribute to my conference call several times. Mostly asking me to go watch the movie.) Then there came the weekend, during which I typically end up completely wiped out by the time the kids go to bed. But I wasn’t too stressed. The following week there were going to be 5 days of childcare, two days of which (Monday and Tuesday) I had no meetings or doctor’s appointments scheduled, and surely I would be able to get back to my own research project.

When Phoebe woke me up before 6 on Monday morning with a fever and an earache, I considered dropping out of my PhD program right then.

Happily, Phoebe perked right up with some Motrin, and John decided he could take her to his office for a few hours. However, with their late-morning departure coupled with other home and family things I had to deal with, I didn’t manage to start on my work till noon. That theoretically gave me about 4 hours to do work before it would be time to pick up Theo, but my focus pretty much sucked.

Tuesday I had the day with still feverish Phoebe, which included taking her to her preschool for picture day, and taking her to the doctor’s office. In between, we went out for lunch and went to CVS. Afterwards, we had a bit more than an hour before it was time to pick up Theo. I squeezed in a few work-related tasks while Phoebe re-enacted picture day with my camera, John’s tripod, and a whole lot of stuffed animals.


Yesterday, Phoebe still had her fever, but John was able to stay home. I took Theo to daycare, and rushed off to a doctor’s appointment, which had been rescheduled from the afternoon in anticipation of the upcoming snowstorm. I drove into Cambridge for a work-related thing right after, and then back home just ahead of the snow. When I picked up Theo from daycare, I was optimistic that he’d be able to go to daycare again in the morning, as the snow was expected to be stopped by early morning. (Phoebe would still need to be home, as daycare policy is that kids need to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning.)

As we waffled about what to have for dinner, Theo sat on my lap and we looked at some pictures on my computer. He complained that his stomach hurt. Then he threw up. All over himself, me, the couch, the floor. (Happily, my open laptop was mostly spared.) The rest of the evening was spent cleaning up, and tending to miserable children. Phoebe didn’t want Theo in the same room with her, as she totally dreads vomit (not that any of us like it…). She ended up going to sleep in our bed. After a change of clothes, I sat holding Theo, empty yogurt container and towel-like things at the ready. I realized that we weren’t likely to fall asleep, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to do work or read. So we watched a movie on the couch (the couch that wasn’t torn apart for cleaning),which distracted Theo nicely. My dinner ended up being some bread, eaten on the couch while I held Theo. Eventually, Theo and I went to settle down for the night on Phoebe’s toddler bed. (We didn’t want him alone in his crib since we were still expecting more vomit.)

Today, though home sick, both kids have seemed largely fine. But there was so much snow that we probably couldn’t have gotten them to daycare and preschool anyhow. It took most of the day to shovel out, as we had to take turns staying inside to referee the kids. The day was remarkably uneventful, if completely unproductive. (Not counting snow removal and additional vomit-related damage control.) And I was very regretful that all of these events didn’t even leave me enough time to bake more gingerbread.

As of now, both kids are asleep in their own beds. I am fully looking forward to sleeping with my legs fully extended in an adult-sized bed.

Theo asked for “the drum” (our nickname for the big empty yogurt containers) several times today, but didn’t end up needing to use it. Actually, what he said was “I need to put some corn in the drum.” (Apparently he’d had corn for lunch yesterday.) He’d sit with his face over the drum, cheerfully half-singing, “Here it comes! Here comes the corn!” Then he’d say “achoo!” (Clearly he is not as traumatized by vomiting as Phoebe.)

Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring to keep me from getting my work done.

After an hour and a half of shovelling with the snow still accumulating as I shoveled, coupled with not seeing any signs of a snowplow on our road till almost 10:30, I realized that it was not feasible for me to get the kids to daycare and preschool this morning.

Yesterday the kids had a late start due a dentist appointment, and for related reasons which I may get into here later, I ended up keeping Phoebe home with me while I tried to do work. (I managed some, but not a full day’s worth.)

Last week, as I mentioned, I did not get home, as scheduled, on Tuesday night. (Due to the snow in Boston.) And while I did get home reasonably early on Friday, it was following a pretty hellacious red-eye-with-a-connection during which I probably got about an hour of sleep (cumulative). All night. (The “overnight” flight from San Francisco to Chicago was about 3 and a half hours long, starting at midnight. I had trouble falling asleep, but finally managed to about half way through the flight. Only to be awakened shortly thereafter by a man in the row behind me, who was apparently watching the in-flight movie, and forgot that he was wearing headphones when he very loudly asked the flight attendant for a beverage. (Tomato juice.) (Two cans of tomato juice.) (Which he then proceeded to slurp.) (LOUDLY.) I was so annoyed that I didn’t fall back asleep till the descent, and woke up on landing. Then I had a 2-hour layover, which isn’t long enough for a nap, and then a 2-hour flight to Boston. I dozed off a couple of times during that flight, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been in lecture classes during which I got more sleep. Seeing as I had an hour of driving to do to get home, I caffeinated myself up at the airport before going to my car.

By the time I got home a bit after 1:00 p.m. on Friday, I was tired and wired, and while I theoretically had about 3 hours to work or sleep before John brought the kids home, in practice I successfully managed neither.

While I have managed to get some work done here and there over the last 2 weeks, mostly at night, I have not had a full workday.

I was completely caught off guard by today’s snowstorm. Having only checked my weather widget, I saw a forecast high of 38, along with the icon for a mix of rain and snow. I hadn’t realized that these events would be after a night and day of cold temps and heavy snow. Right up to the point when I came in for a break from shovelling once I’d seen the snowplow, and saw how late it was, I really and truly thought that I would be able to have a productive day. In the end, I realized that the universe had other plans for me.

The universe wanted me to bake gingerbread.

snowed out

As you might have heard, Massachusetts was hit by a major blizzard Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency. Pretty much everyone was snowed in, with schools and most businesses closed. People all over the state spent all day Wednesday shoveling out.

Not me.

This is the view that greeted me Wednesday morning:

My flight back on Tuesday was scheduled to arrive at around 10:30 p.m. in Boston. It was cancelled. Along with, as far as I can tell, all Boston flights on Wednesday. On Tuesday it looked like the earliest I could get back home was Friday night around 10 o’clock.

So much for trying to minimize my time away from home!

I did eventually manage (my third rescheduling with the airline) to get a reservation for a flight that is scheduled to arrive in Boston just before noon tomorrow. Assuming the weather cooperates (which is a pretty big assumption, seeing as I’m going through Chicago), I’ll be getting home a few hours before the kids get home from preschool and daycare. I’m just hoping I can at least get home well before their bedtime. And time a nap would be nice, seeing as my flight to Chicago is a redeye. (Didn’t I say I didn’t want a redeye? Sigh.)

I’ve been enjoying this bonus time with my mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephews–3 extra days. Actually, I had trouble really enjoying myself on Tuesday until I got my flight plans worked out. I was distracted by trying to figure out my travel schedule and my work schedule, worrying about the impact of this on John’s work schedule, and missing John and the kids in a much more intense way than in the previous days. I had really been looking forward to getting back to them. But once I had some reservations on flights that were not likely to be cancelled (unlike the airline’s initial move of bumping me to Wednesday flights, which I knew would also be cancelled), and once I’d talked with John and the kids, I settled in to enjoy the bonus days here. (I’ve also managed to do some work–my research group is submitting a big paper in a few days, and I’d committed to doing a lot of work for that this week. After I got home. Ahem.)

In all, this has been about the best possible major travel delay. I’ve been safe and comfortable, and not stuck in an airport with crowds of cranky people, sleeping in chairs or on floors, and not having access to a shower. (Yes, I have experienced that sort of delay.) The expense to me is moderately small, limited mainly to the cost of airport parking for 3 more days. I don’t have to worry about paying for a hotel. And even better, I’ve been with people that I love. (It’s been a really great visit, by the way.)

Now I’d best get back to work!

packed

I’m out in California now. I got in yesterday around noon. I wrote the stuff below over the course of yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to post any of it. (Warning: this post is rambly and largely unedited.)

—-

I’m on my way to see my family in California. My flight’s about to board. It’s a full flight, and they announced that there usually isn’t room for carryon bags of passengers boarding in groups 3 & 4. I find this really irritating. (My boarding group is 3.) More people are avoiding bringing checked bags, since most airlines charge for checked bags. So more people carry on bigger bags. (I also find it annoying that I could have paid an upgrade fee to get “priority boarding,” which I guess effectively guarantees room for a carryon.) Anyhow, I just checked my bag at the gate. Here I was feeling so pleased with myself for having packed light enough to not need to check a bag. It’s a pretty small bag, too. At least I didn’t need to pay to get it checked.

—

I was up really late packing, which is a pre-trip tradition for me. I always overthink things when I pack. (I pretty much always overthink things in general.) Being determined to pack light, I wanted to maximize the coordinatability of my clothing. (I realize that is not a word, but I am taking advantage of the productive morphology of English, and packing on those derivational affixes.) I spent a fair amount of time tracking down and laundering items, some of which I ended up not selecting anyhow. (It was good to get caught up on the laundry, in any case. John doesn’t need to add hunting for tiny socks to his daily wrangling activities.) In the end, I probably both over- and under-packed. I will probably end up doing the same thing I do at home, which is mostly wearing the same stuff over and over again.

—

I’m on board now, and glad I checked the bag, seeing as the overheads were completely packed. For that matter, I’m not sorry to have passed on the boarding upgrade. It looked like at least 60% of the flight was boarded before group 3 anyhow. (I guess really the upgrade just bought space in the overheads…and I just saw someone’s bag bumped out to be checked, anyhow.)

—

I’m traveling alone again. John, Phoebe and Theo are staying home. I hope we can all get out to see my family together soon, as I can’t wait to get the 4 cousins together. The last time we were all out was when Theo was only 7 months old, and my little nephew Mateo was only 7 weeks old. Now Mateo is almost 2. But it makes more sense to wait till things get more stable.

It’s never easy for John when I’m away. (Not that it would be easy for me if I were the one home, but we’ve been lucky–I’ve been lucky–in that John hasn’t needed to go away in ages.) Even though the kids are in childcare full-time, the actual windows of working hours are pretty small. Even when we work from home, the drop-offs and pick-ups take close to an hour, and when you add in a commute for work the day shrinks even more. With two of us, we split the kid-wrangling routines such that I get the kids up and out in the morning, and John gets the kids bathed and to bed at night. We vary who picks up the kids depending on our work and commute schedules. Phoebe has karate classes 3 evenings a week, and we try to coordinate things such that one of us can get dinner going while the other is either at karate or picking up the kids. Otherwise, dinner is invariably late, which sets back bedtime, which takes away from kid-free evening time, and then leads to tired and harder-to-wrangle kids in the morning.

John usually also works (from home) after the kids go to bed, often staying up till the wee hours of the morning. This is trickier when I’m away, as he’ll need to get up with the kids.

In all, John’s schedule will be packed.

—

It was hard to pick the dates for my trip. On the one hand, I’m going 3000 miles and really want to maximize my time with my family. On the other hand, I want to minimize the impact on John’s schedule. These two hands are not compatible. I decided to go for a week, which with the two travel days will feel too short on the far end–only 5 full days. (I considered taking a red-eye, but I can’t recover from those as quickly as I used to…)

I have no doubt that my own trip will feel packed.

Welcome, 2011! (Please suck less than 2010 did.)

Here we are, welcoming in another new year. Which is, quite frankly, a big relief. Because, chances are, this new year will be better than last year. If not, please allow me to enter a coma. Right now.

2010 was The Year of Big Suck.

I know I whine, and I know things could have been worse. (Believe me, I’ve imagined ways in which things could have been worse.) But let’s face it, this has been a Really Bad Year™ for my family. It wasn’t All Bad, certainly, but the ratio of Good to Bad was dramatically lower than in most years. Especially given the size of the Bad. When a loved one in the family has cancer, it is hard to imagine the size of the Good to offset it. When that loved one is a small child, even daily deliveries of home-baked cookies, fuzzy puppies, and attractive massage therapists would barely provide a distraction. And not only did I not get any such deliveries, the year instead delivered international catastrophes as well as other more localized family- related, friend-related and personal woes.

I’m not a big one for New Year’s resolutions, but I have often enjoyed looking back in nostalgia at the events of the previous year. “Nostalgia” is not quite the right word the way I feel about this past year. In addition to the aforementioned Bad Stuff, I remember being sick. A lot. I was sick something like 9 times in the first few months of the year, and then got a severe case of poison ivy that lasted for weeks. And while I haven’t really wanted to mention it here, I’ve been feeling pretty awful, as in physically unwell, for a while. Like probably 2 years. I had attributed a lot of that to lack of sleep, but then even once I started getting sleep, I still haven’t felt well. There’s certainly been a lot of worry, and so I thought that (and the ensuing stress-related dietary tendencies) was to blame. But things have been ongoing in spite of various adjustments. (I finally got around to making an appointment to start to address the problem.)

I finally decided to make a push to make progress with my degree, but due to complications of life, health and family, the progress (while not imperceptible) was slower than I’d hoped. The year ended up on a disappointing note after I gave up on a deadline I’d been pushing for.

2010 wasn’t all bad, certainly, and maybe I’ll try to write about its better moments. But not today. Today I’m still holding a grudge.

I am optimistic that 2011 will be a better year. My nephew has finished his treatments, and hopefully he will recover soon from the treatments and the complications so that he can get back to the important business of being a little kid. I am hopeful that I can get my own health in order, and can speed up my own progress with my degree. It looks like this year will involve potentially a lot of travel, and that’s a good thing in my book. In addition to some trips for family-related things (I’m heading to California in a few days!), I am hoping to go to at least one conference in some exciting place. Maybe even Hong Kong.

So, welcome, 2011! I look forward to seeing what you can do.


With 2010 coming to an end, things are looking up for 2011…


…unless this guy is right. In which case things are just coming to an end in 2011.

back in our element

We’re back home from our visit to my in-laws’ for Christmas. We went down last Thursday night, we ended up arriving around midnight again. Much like last time we went down there, Theo was happy and wired upon arrival. This time I managed to get him to sleep shortly after 3, and then we did at least get to sleep past 9. But it did make me wonder if we’re going to have to rethink our night traveling in the future.

It was a very pleasant visit over all, if tiring. It was great to be able to share with John’s parents the excitement of Christmas morning with small kids. They are no longer able to travel themselves, so they really look forward to our visits and seeing the kids. John’s dad is no longer able to walk, and doesn’t generally leave the house (or the bedroom, for that matter) except for trips to the dialysis center. (These started a few months ago. Since he isn’t very mobile, he gets transported by ambulance.)

Christmas day, after we’d worked our way through the gifts, I was getting ready to start making our part of the dinner (John’s mom had arranged for some non-vegetarian things for the two of them). I was all set to bake a butternut squash and our Tofurky, and preheated the oven. When I opened the door to stick in my squash, I was greeted by a bright flash and dramatic sparks. At first I thought that something had fallen on the element, but it turns out it was the element itself that was sparking. It was burning white hot, and burning itself right up. This changed my cooking plans somewhat, and after sitting around staring at my thumbs and discussing whether we’d be having a Christmas dinner of scrambled eggs, I decided to push forward. Chef Google provided instructions for microwaving a Tofurky, so that turned out okay. Thank goodness my mother-in-law had already baked the pumpkin pie the day before, because I’m pretty sure you can’t nuke that. (And what is Christmas without pie? I don’t think I even want to know the answer to that question.)


The oven element, the day after Christmas. It snapped while John was looking at it trying to determine whether he could order a replacement one. (It is pretty doubtful, as it seems the oven is about 50 years old.)

We had planned to come home on Monday, as we’d heard the forecast of a storm Sunday night. There ended up being quite a bit of snow down there by Monday morning, maybe around 18 inches, and we decided stay another day (for a variety of reasons).

We hoped to get on the road early on Tuesday. However, it is never a small task to collect all of our stuff when we visit, and this time was compounded by all the detritus of Christmas. While we’d aimed to be on the road by noon, and therefore stand a chance of arriving home before dark, it was almost 2 by the time we pulled out of the driveway. We ran into all sorts of crazy traffic in Connecticut, and didn’t get back home till almost 7, even though we’d made only brief stops. Seeing as we can usually make the trip in well under 4 hours, we were reminded of why we usually opt to get on the road later in the evening.

While the snow appeared to be less deep around home, more like 6 to 8 inches, the driveway was not passable due to snowplow mounding from the road. The kids and I sat in the car up on the road with the hazards flashing, eating our dinner of takeout pasta while John attacked the entrance to the driveway. Once he’d cleared the mound, we drove in, and half slid down the driveway. This was one of those times we were super glad to have all-wheel drive. We then took turns shoveling and staying inside the house with the kids. (Admittedly John did more of the shoveling.)

The kids ended up getting to bed quite late, in spite of our grand plans to get home at a reasonable hour. It seems that, no matter what, we end up feeling like we are adjusting to a different time zone whenever we get back from visiting the in-laws, even though they are on the same coast.


Yay, all-wheel drive!


Our driveway.

—
I have a backlog of things to post once again, but don’t know when I’ll have much time. I don’t usually end up with more than a few minutes to myself when we’re down at the in-laws’. I had a few sort of holiday-themed things in progress that I didn’t find time to finish. Now Christmas seems so last week. There is no daycare this week for the kids, and even though Phoebe had preschool today, I’m once again not left with much time to be online. I finally managed to upload some project 365 photos to flickr–I hadn’t put any up in over 2 weeks. I’ve now passed the 5 month mark!

Tikoli tea towels make cool gifts.

I know I’ve told you that my sister is an amazing writer,¹ and I think it’s pretty clear that she’s an amazing person overall, but have I mentioned lately that she’s also an amazing designer? I’d like to take the opportunity to direct your attention to some of her über-cool new tea towel designs at Tikoli.

I really love this one she calls kern, an elegant pattern which reminds me of stones. I particularly like how it coordinates with the fun swirly vortex of harmonie. She’s got two more new designs, as well, which you can see on the Tikoli website along with the established ones. (There are 9 mix-and-match designs now, in all.)

Kern (left) and harmonie (right), two new designs from Tikoli.

I know I’ve said it before, but these tea towels make very thoughtful gifts. They are earth-friendly, as they can be used for many purposes in place of disposable paper goods, and they come with minimal packaging. They are both compact and functional, which are two criteria that I like to use when choosing gifts. (I’ve found myself more and more turned off by the bulky, over-packaged and largely useless items that are so frequently marketed as gifts.) To top all that off, they are distinctive and very pleasing to the eye.

What’s more, there is a promotion going on right now to get 20% off purchases from the Tikoli online store if you order by Monday, December 20, 2010.² (Just use the promotion code MERRY20 .) You know what else is cool? Right now, giftwrapping is free. It is also very festive.

(You can also look for Tikoli towels at a retailer near you, but the discount won’t apply there.)

Images from tikoli.

¹ She can be pretty damn funny, too.
² If you want gifts to arrive in time for Christmas, you need to order by midnight tonight, though.