Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

OK, phew. The tree is up, the family traditional Christmas-Eve dinner of Chinese food has been eaten. (Judging by the crowd outside Cheng Sho when we left, that’s a popular tradition here in Cambridge.)

OK, stockings full.

OK, making hard sauce. No sherry so we use cream and a little brandy. A vote for brown sugar turns into a vote for dark brown sugar because I don’t have light brown sugar. A vote for salted rather than unsalted butter means the result tastes a bit like popcorn. I’m not sure a normal family would accept the result as hard sauce, but a normal family also might not accept our background music choice of “Codfish Ball,” Bert and Ernie singing the L song.

Now the CD has ended. The kids drove home with their stockings–they’ll come back tomorrow at 9 to open “real” presents. I sit here blogging and resting my tired feet.

Isaiah’s promise sounds pretty good to me now: “They shall run, and not be weary. They shall walk, and not be faint.”

But I’d settle for “They shall blog, and not fall asleep at the keyboard….”

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Give somebody a blog–it’s the ultimate last-minute gift. You’re giving a gift of respect and encouragement, plus the offer of more of your time to help set things up. One size fits all. No shipping and handling. Your mileage may vary.

Biz Stone has been writing a series of creative help-pieces for new bloggers, and his latest is an excellent tutorial on setting up a “gift” blog.

Biz works for Google/Blogger (say that three times fast!), so his advice assumes you’ll be using their software. But you can use his advice, with minor modifications, to set up a new blog using your own favorite blogware.

I’m not sure I’d go the whole distance Biz suggests of creating a popup card with the Blogger logo–a red ribbon on the keyboard is enough marthastewart for me.

Despite these quibbles, “Biz Stone, Genius” was the obvious right pick for Feedster’s Christmas Eve “Blog of the Day.”