National Cut Your Energy Costs Day

Today is National Cut Your Energy Costs Day.  We just had a huge Gas & Electric bill for December, so it’s definitely a good time to try to reduce our energy costs.  Out of the ways to cut home energy costs, we’re currently doing two of them.  We just got a new refrigerator and my desktop PC has the “energy star” sticker.   My mom always buys the more energy efficient light bulbs.

We could definitely do a few more of those pretty easily though.

Balloon Ascension Day

Today is Balloon Ascension Day. The first American hot air balloon launch happened on January 9, 1793.  As you can see from my mom’s blog, she loves balloons.  She has never been in a hot air balloon, but it is one of her life’s goals to one day ride in one.

Elvis Presley’s Birthday

Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday. On January 8, 1935, Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. The King of Rock n Roll is definitely the most imitated performer of all time. I was watching a special on the Travel Channel during Christmas about the most extreme Christmas celebrations in the United States. One of them had thousands of people dressed up as Santa Claus in Las Vegas. There was an Elvis impersonator there who said “this is the only time where there are more Santa impersonators than Elvis impersonators in Las Vegas.” Heck, Elvis is so popular still that there is even an Elvis impersonator who makes it all the way out to my neck of the woods, thousands of miles away from Vegas.

So, today I’m going to celebrate Elvis Presley’s birthday by watching a movie starring my favorite Elvis impersonator, Stitch.

Jinjitsu

Jinjitsu, which is Japanese for “Human Day”, is the first of five seasonal festivals, known as gosekku.

According to the wikipedia article on the festival:

“The name comes from an ancient Chinese custom Renri, whereby each of the opening days of the first lunar month was assigned to a particular creature, which it was forbidden to kill on that day: thus the first seven days of the month were Chicken Day, Dog Day, Boar Day, Sheep Day, Cow Day, Horse Day, and Human Day”

Today, Japanese people eat a rice porridge consisting of the seven wild herbs of spring known as nanakusa-gayu. Traditionally, the seven herbs are water dropwor, shepherd’s purse, cudweed, chickweed, nipplewort, turnup, and daikon. Today, the ingredient list varies widely, as common local herbs are often substituted.

There is a recipe for nanakusa-gayu on the blog Blue Lotus.

Women’s Christmas

Today is the day that Christmas was celebrated before the Catholic church switched from the Roman calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

In Ireland, today is known as Women’s Christmas. Traditionally, it was the day that men did the housework and women were able to relax. Today, women have parties or have dinners with their mothers, daughters or sisters.

Today it was quite cold, so the whole family was around in the late night together. My mom and I ate chicken noodle casserole, and Melissa, my Mom, me and Matt (can’t leave the only guy in the house out! ) all had cupcakes.

George Washington Carver Recognition Day

Today is George Washington Carver Recognition Day. George Washington Carver was an educator, an artist, a writer, and an inventor. He was well respected and well known in America during his lifetime. He discovered over three hundred uses of peanuts, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column called “Professor Carver’s Advice.”.

Time Magazine called him the “black Leonardo”, referring to the person who led to the coining of the term renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci. He was the first African American and the first non-president to have a United States National Monument established in his honor.

National Spaghetti Day

Today is National Spaghetti Day. I’m not the biggest pasta fan, but I love spaghetti and lasagna. So today’s holiday is a nice one for me.

Unlike a lot of weird food-related holidays that are on the internet, this one actually is getting some press coverage. I wish I was near Chicago, since this year Angelina Ristorante is serving up spaghetti dishes for the holiday: spaghetti with mussels and zucchini, spaghetti with jumbo shrimp and black olives, or classic baked spaghetti and meatballs with mozzarella cheese and garlic bread. The last one is definitely my favorite. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Though, the spaghetti with jumbo shrimp and black olives sounds like it could be quite good, as long as it’s served with just garlic and butter and not spaghetti sauce.

Festival of Peace

Today is the day that the Romans celebrated the festival of their goddess of peace, Pax. There is always a war going on in the world.  Maybe if the governments of the world would take the initiative in making national holidays of peace, there would be less fighting.

So, today I am following the old adage of  “do as the Romans do”, and celebrating in the name of peace.  The festival of peace went out of practice centuries ago, but it would be great if it could be brought back, because I feel it really is a beautiful thing.

As John Lennon and Yoko Ono once sang, “War is over if you want it”, and I really do believe that peace on Earth will happen some day.

Kakizome

Kakizome, translated into English as “first writing”, is the Japanese tradition of creating the first calligraphy of the year.

According to the short article on the tradition at wikipedia:

“Traditionally, kakizome was performed using ink rubbed with the first water drawn from the well on New Year’s Day. Seated facing a favourable direction, people would write Chinese poetry containing auspicious words and phrases such as long life, spring, or perennial youth. These poems were then often burned.”

Today, kakizome is not as popular as it used to be in Japan, and is mainly only observed by Japanese school children as their homework assignments.

I observed kakizome today, even though I’m a gaijin who has never even been to Japan

I drew the Japanese kanji for Jennifer, according to a T-shirt from Cafe Press.

My kakizome was not traditional in any sense of the word. It was not drawn on special calligraphy paper, nor was it drawn with a calligraphy brush and ink. It was written on regular printer paper with nail polish. But it was still a lot of fun!

Here’s my kanji attempt, and the actual kanji from the T-shirt. I don’t think I did too bad for my first attempt at creating kanji.

If you want to see how kakizome is supposed to be observed, here’s a great YouTube video by ayakuma1026.

New Year’s Day

New Year’s Eve started out kind of badly.  First, my mom’s boyfriend got in an accident, then Melissa and Matt got in an accident while coming back home.  No one was seriously hurt.  Both my mom’s boyfriend and my sister Melissa had neck and shoulder pain, but nothing too serious.  No one else had any injuries.  My mom’s boyfriend’s car was totalled, but thankfully he had just purchased a new car which was in the shop for minor repairs.  It was his old car that was totalled.  My sister’s boyfriend’s jeep has tire damage, which is fixable, and other minor also fixable problems.

So, the mood of New Years’ at our house was not too light.  My mom celebrated with her boyfriend, and I celebrated at home with my sister and her boyfriend.  They were going to go to a party, but Melissa was in pain, so she didn’t feel like going.  So, Melissa had a little bit of pina colada and Chardonay, her boyfriend Matt had quite a bit of Crown Royal, and I had several glasses of pina colada and a Chardonay for drinking as the ball dropped.  Melissa and I ate some Wheat Thins, and I had a whole bag of Pringles Potato Chips! (they were really good!  But now I have to really focus on losing weight!) We watched Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years’ Eve to bring in the New Year.  It wouldn’t seem like New Years’ without it.  It was great to see that Dick Clark is still doing the countdown.  It’s sad to see him barely able to talk after his stroke, but he looks and sounds much better than he did last year

For New Years’ Day, we watched the California portion of Rockin’ New Years’ eve with Fergie until 2AM.  I finished my Chardonay, and then drank one more glass of Pina Colada before heading to bed.  All in all, even with the accidents, it wasn’t a bad New Years’ celebration.