Oceanskater’s blog

Noodles and Roy are smelling all the candles we bought to give as Christmas presents - to decide which one to give to who. Noodles keeps trying to lick the ones he likes. It’s quite cute

We gave Noodles a bath the other night (because he got into 2.5 lbs of coffee, but that’s another story), and he’s quite a bit thinner than he was when we got him. He only has about 4 more lbs to lose (he’s lost about 12), and then he’s off the diet food and on to some hypoallergenic blend.

Pictures of Noodles:

In the animal shelter (May, 2006):

At our house-warming party (July, 2006):

In his bath the other night (December, 2006):

He’s quite slim!

During our last-minute shopping yesterday, we had several discouraging experiences that threatened my Christmas spirit. The one that really got me thinking was a bumper sticker I saw:

“Republicans Are People, Too. Mean, Selfish, Greedy People”

This was very interesting, especially in light of a recent study on America’s generosity that I had been reading about. Dr. Arthur Brooks wrote a book entitled “Who Really Cares?” and was on 20/20 talking about it. Here are some of the statistics:

Americans are 3.5 times more generous than the French, 7 times more generous than Germans and 14 times more generous than Italians.

The American working poor are the most generous by a rather large margin. Conservatives give 30% more than liberals. He adds, “And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money.” Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election. And the most generous of all are those he calls “religious” - they give 18% more at blood drives and 400% more to the homeless.

Another interesting quote from Brooks: “A person who goes to church every week and strongly rejects the idea that it is the government’s responsibility to redistribute income will give, on average, 100 times more money to charity each year than a person who never attends a house of worship, and strongly believes that the government should reduce income differences between people.” 100 times!

Since “conservatives” do tend to be Republicans, I’m not sure I can agree with the above bumper sticker, especially since I know some really great Republicans

I wanted to post a picture of a house nearby that gets all decked out for Christmas. First of all, this house is huge and without all the decorations, it looks like a castle.  Have a look:

House01

This house is huge, first of all! Look at how small this person is compared to the house:

Person

Here are 2 more pictures:

House03

House02

2 comments

It’s pretty crazy because the house is on a busy street and everyone slows down to take pictures of the house.

Merry Christmas to everyone!