Co-workers' sweet specialties are holiday main course

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

-- G.K. Chesterton

I don't think I've had a sit-down meal in a week.

Sure, it's a busy time of year, but that's only part of it.

I'm not eating at home because I'm eating at work.

A lot.

Co-workers keep bringing in trays, and dishes, and plates (lots of plates) and Tupperware containers full of stuff. All pretty. All sweet. All tasty.

At first it seemed to be that the food came in as a midmonth, get-ready-for-Christmas celebration.

Now it's more like a competition. People are anonymously putting out their specialities and then waiting to overhear compliments.

There have been candies and pastries and cookies and cake.

There are dips and crackers and breads and cheese balls -- big yellow-orange cheese balls. With little knives to slice off tasty chunks.

There are bowls of mints. Plates of chocolates. Doughnuts. Brownies. Many, many brownies.

Chocolate-covered pretzels, I have discovered, are a new favorite.

Every time I pass such inner-office displays, my hand shoots out, my mouth opens.

Crunch. Chew. Repeat.

Not a bad way to end a good year.

BIRD-WATCHING: Finally. On what might have been the coldest morning of the month, I looked out the window by the kitchen, and there on my bird feeder was a cardinal -- a brilliant splash of scarlet against the drab browns around him.

Cardinals are like poinsettias -- a great Christmas reminder.

I had been worried. That bird feeder has been fully stocked for weeks and ignored. Even the squirrels have been missing. But now the cardinals are back and the season sings.

SEASONAL SONGS: Your Christmas music suggestions continue. Bearcat Smith writes: "My favorite is I've Been A Bad Boy ("I Ain't Getting Nothing for Christmas") by Ray Stevens."

BEARCAT? That nickname came up the other day when my son asked me what a "bearcat" was. It is the mascot of the undefeated University of Cincinnati football team that he was watching on TV.

As usual, I used my all-knowing-Dad voice and told him it was some sort of lynx-like animal once common in the lower Appalachians, but I was just guessing.

At the first opportunity, I slipped away and looked it up and found the definition murkier. To some, a bearcat is a reddish-brown, Old World, raccoon-like carnivore.

In Southeast Asia, it is also known as bin tu rong, an aboreal civet with a long, prehensile tail.

If you want to know what a civet is, you'll have to look it up, but if someone asks, say it's a bearcat.

TODAY'S JOKE: Scott Gay of Waynesboro, Ga., shares this:

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning, while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.

"That laundry is not very clean," she said. "That lady doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on but remained silent. Every time her neighbor hung her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About a month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice, clean wash on the line.

She said to her husband, "Look, the lady finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?"

"No one," the husband said. "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."

P.S. I ran that joke past my son, who was busy considering calling himself "Bearcat" as a new nickname.

He looked at me and asked me why people would hang their wash outside.

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.