Santa stays busy...

Santa likes to stay busy during the entire month of December. As you can see here, he came to Sacramento during the first weekend to give high-fives to runners in the California International Marathon. Then he went up to Lake Tahoe to supervise the training of numerous Santa's Helpers at his annual winter convention.

Although he's quite far away from the North Pole, we hear that he keeps in touch with Mrs. Claus via his Blackberry and Acer Aspire One netbook.

It won't be long...

Before we turn around and find that its suddenly October of 2009. The next running of the Portland Marathon will come around on Sunday, October 4, 2009. We'll have a lot more information on this fine event coming up in the future on this site, including our views of the best places to stay in downtown Portland (Oregon not Maine) and the best places to have coffee. One of the best places to stay is also one of the best places to have coffee, but that story will come later.

Yes, there is a Santa Claws...

And a Santa kitten, too!

Congratulations to the Grant High Pacers...

Of Sacramento who beat the Long Beach Poly High Jackrabbits, 25 - 20 in the inaugural California Interscholastic Foundation (CIF) open division state football championship! The Pacers had to come back in the last two minutes to score and win this north versus south confrontation, played in Carson, CA.

Poly coach Raul Lara said, "Toward the end of the game, I thought we got tired... They've got athletes just like us. The thing that surprised me most about them was their size. They were big kids."

We often side with southern California when it comes to college football, but in this case we're happy to see the Sacramento locals - Grant has long been a high school basketball powerhouse - win it all. Go, Pacers!

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

For the 50th year in a row, the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) will be tracking the movements of Santa Claus as he delivers presents to children throughout the world. Over 1,000 U.S. Air Force Santa trackers will again operate out of the Santa Operations Center (SOC), Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to using radar and satellites, NORAD will utilize a worldwide network of high-tech cameras to take photos and videos of Santa. Using Google software, these will be posted on the NORAD website, which had over 10.5 million visitors on Christmas Eve in 2007. The website lets visitors track Santa's travels on a Google map as well as on Google Earth.

One very important lesson learned by NORAD is stated by USAF Major Stacia Redish, "From all of our years of tracking Santa, we... know that he only comes to a home where the children are asleep." Thus, all kids waiting for Santa need to go to bed on Christmas Eve when their parents tell them to!

In a related development, professor Larry Silverberg of the North Carolina State engineering department has noted that, "Santa exploits the space-time continuum" and uses thermodynamics and nanotechnology to circumnavigate the globe and deliver hundreds of millions of presents on Christmas Eve. Yes, the Big Claus is a primo scientist and some suspect that he once counseled with Albert Einstein.

Silverberg said that the Big Claus is stretching and compressing space and time into a short delivery span. Silverberg added that Santa's special reindeer have been genetically engineered to fly, and the naughty and nice list is produced using giant polar antennae and radar-style signals. So, you'd better be good!

reality and illusion

If reality is a subjective manifestation of beliefs, then
maybe illusion is our greatest treasure. Jenny Dalton

life

Life is so strange, you're always tested and things always change and you waver and the destination that you think you're going towards changes. Jenny Dalton