Happy Holidays 2008 - Digital Advent Calendar

My holiday card for 2008 grew out of a desire to share some of my favorite online holiday goodies, collected over several years. As it turned out, there were many more than I could reasonably include...I'll have to share those next year. Don't miss the heartwarming story sent in by one of my clients (at bottom). The favorite item seemed to be the Make A Flake. Go figure.

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And a special holiday story from a Pixel Lava client:
We have a local fish place that sells locally caught fresh fish and crustaceans for prep at home, as well as various dishes made for eating at the café. I had a rough Monday at the dentist and decided to treat myself to a halibut lunch. When I arrived at the fishery, I placed my order then walked over to peer at the live lobsters in the tank. Why do I punish myself by doing this? All I think is, poor little spiny sea bugs, tomorrow it’s the boiling pot for you. Well, I was peering in the tank when I spied quite a large one. I mean, very large.

And I know that the older these creatures get, the bigger they get. This one was 4 times the size of anyone else in the tank, and after talking to the fishery team, they deduced that this lobster was approx. 30 years old. Wow – that means it was born when I was 17; to live that long and end up in the pot and on someone’s plate just seemed wrong, wrong, wrong to me. The long and short of it? After 10 minutes of fundraising on the phone, I was able to raise the $79.49 (thanks for the donation, if you are one of the folks that coughed up some dough to do this) that it cost to buy the sea bug, and after a thorough conversation with two local lobster fishermen covering all the necessary details, the day found me huddled in my rain coat (yes, we actually had some weather here this week) climbing down rocks into a rain soaked bay, setting a 30 year old lobster free.