I hope the sunset is this gorgeous four nights from now!

Approximately one-third of the U.N.’s tsunami relief fund went to “overhead,” the Financial Times reports. That’s more than three times what charities and relief organizations typically spend on overhead. We’re talking upwards of $135 million wasted. Cripes. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Heh: “Charlie Weis to Receive Contract Extension if Irish Lead Fiesta Bowl at Halftime.”

I hope y’all had a lovely Christmas. I certainly did. Santa was good to all of us this year — especially my soon-to-be brother-in-law, Casey, if this photo is any indication:

Heh.

Becky’s and my gifts for each other were not exactly a surprise, since we bought them while shopping together for other people. Instead of dropping hints, we decided to cut out the middleman, as it were, and basically just say, “I want that.” Hell, we both ended up bringing our own major present (in her case, a chocolate fountain; in my case, a DVD recorder) in from the car. LOL!

But there was one exception: she had no idea, until she opened it, that I had bought her an Alabama t-shirt.

Ever since we watched the ‘Bama basketball team reach the Elite Eight in the Phoenix Regional last year, Becky has had a special place in her heart for the Crimson Tide. She was drawn in, I think, by the cute elephant mascot and the crowd’s chanting of “ROOOLLLLLLLL TIDE!” Her affection spilled over to the ‘Bama football team this season, and she was probably the only person outside SEC country hoping, back when the Tide were still undefeated, for a USC-Alabama Rose Bowl, instead of the various alternative possibilities, generally recognized as more attractive matchups, like USC-Texas, USC-Virginia Tech or USC-Penn State. But hey, I figure everyone is entitled to have one random team that they root for despite the total lack of any logical reason or affiliation with the school. I have Gonzaga; Becky has Alabama. And now she, like me, has the t-shirt to prove it. :)

Here we are in our best Christmas red and green — ‘Bama and ND — watching Becky’s brother Casey, brother-in-law Soren, and uncle Stan golf.

More Christmas Break photos here.

P.S. Oh, and… HAPPY HANUKKAH!

It’s been one year to the day since the Great Tsunami of 2004.

UPDATE: The Storm Track has more.

Lest anyone accuse Irish Trojan readers of not having lives, I’m happy to report that my audience is largely staying away today, presumably spending Christmas Day with family instead of surfing the Internet and visiting my blog. As of 6:55 PM EST, I’ve gotten just 712 unique hits so far today. If the total doesn’t top 1,000 by midnight, it’ll be the first time since August 25 — four days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and I got 93,047 hits in three days — that I haven’t hit four figures in a day.

UPDATE: At 11:50:48 PM EST, barely nine minutes before midnight, the site recorded its 1,000th hit of the day, from a Verizon user in White Haven, Pennsylvania. So my streak of consecutive four-digit days reaches 122. :) Still, today will be the least-trafficked day on BrendanLoy.com since Aug. 25, when I had 972 hits. The only recent days that even comes close are yesterday, Christmas Eve, when I received just 1,089 hits, and Nov. 24, Thanksgiving Day, when I got 1,231.

UPDATE 2: The final total was 1,012.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

In other news, we miss Robbie… a.k.a. the “wet-nosed reindeer”…

:) And the kittens, too.

Anyway… have a great Christmas, everyone! Or Hannukah, if that’s your bag. (It starts at sunset.) Or, if you celebrate neither… Happy Sunday! :)

P.S. I’m glad to see that our resident comment-warriors appear to be observing a holiday truce. Heh.

Eight contestants in the Irish Trojan’s Bowl Pick ‘em contest are a perfect 6-0 after Nevada beat Central Florida in a Hawaii Bowl heartbreaker, 49-48 in OT. George O’Leary’s UCF squad, which had come back from a 42-32 deficit in the final 1:32 of regulation, lost because kicker Matt Prater missed an extra point that would have sent the game into a second OT.

Patrick C., Long John, Mark Gardner, Darrin Bartley, Nick Gustafson, Ed, Carl Lindecrantz and Dan Dinunzio are all 6-for-6 in their bowl predictions thus far. Thirty-one contestants are tied for second place with 5-1 records. Complete standings here.

There are no bowls on Christmas Day. The next bowl is the Motor City Bowl between Memphis and Akron, tomorrow at 4:00 PM EST. Three of the current leaders — Dinunzio, Long John, and Patrick C. — picked Akron. The other five (Gardner, Gustafson, Lindecrantz, Bartley and Ed) picked Memphis.

After tomorrow, there are at least two bowls per day every day until New Year’s Day, when there are again no bowls.

…and to all a good night!

Above: Orion rising over the Superstitions, observed during the annual Zak family tradition of waiting for the sighting of the “first star” before starting Christmas Eve dinner. The sighting is done by the males of the family, and is typically a prolonged event, since in the old days, alcohol was forbidden during advent but allowed on Christmas Eve, so the guys liked to prolong their outdoor, pre-dinner booze session by delaying as long as possible the definitive statement that they’ve seen a star. We adhered to the tradition tonight, declaring several dozen stars to be “stationary planes” until we were damn well ready to admit that they were stars. :)

It’s gorgeous in Arizona — a high of 81 degrees in Mesa today, and in the 70s here in Gold Canyon, with the forecast calling for upper 60s to mid 70s on our wedding day next Friday. Cross your fingers!

Initial reports say air marshals shot Santa Claus this evening after he reached for a suspicious package when ordered to stop his sleigh. The marshals’ suspicions were reportedly aroused by the fact that his lead reindeer appeared to have a radioactive nose. No word on Santa’s condition. DEVELOPING…

(I know, I know. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

I told you the “elimination” of the “Bridge to Nowhere” from the federal government was a Pyrrhic victory — a “Blank Check to Nowhere,” if you will.

Well, I was right. Alaska is cashing the blank check, and using it to build the bridge. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

For those keeping score at home, it’s now Senator Stevens 2, the American people 0.

As they do every year, NORAD is tracking Santa. He’s in Cairo, Egypt right now, having managed to navigate safely across Iraq without being attacked by insurgents. :)

Also, it being Christmas Eve, Drudge has switched to all red-and-green link text. Because nothing says Christmas like “Feds Monitor Muslims Without Warrants; Search For Nukes…” and “ALISTAIR COOK’S BONES STOLEN BY TRANSPLANT GANG…“

Finally, some forward-thinking disaster preparedness:

WASHINGTON — Hoping to protect U.S. shores from being hammered by a tsunami, the White House directed federal agencies Friday to increase earthquake and volcano monitoring systems, deep ocean buoys and other high-tech means of alerting oceanside communities.

The tsunami plan was requested by President Bush and Congress after an earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, caused a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It killed or left missing at least 216,000 people in 11 Indian Ocean countries, and “demonstrated international vulnerability,” said John Marburger, Bush’s top science adviser.

“Tsunamis are low probability but high impact events,” he said.

Indeed.

I hope and presume that the “increase[d]… number of tsunami buoys, tide gauge and seismic sensors” will include more seismometers at La Palma on the Canary Islands, which will someday produce a 100-foot-high tsunami that will destroy the East Coast.

Now, about that asteroid…

Kansas’s 42-13 win over Houston in the Fort Worth Bowl dropped seven more contestants in the Irish Trojan’s Bowl Pick’ em contest from the ranks of the unbeaten, leaving just 13 out of 128 contestants with perfect 5-0 records: Chris McLemore, Patrick C., Long John, Derek Walden, Mark Gardner, Melanie Dickson, Darrin Bartley, Nick Gustafson, Ed, Andrew, Carl Lindecrantz, Trooper and Dan Dinunzio.

Fifty contestants are tied for second place with 4-1 prediction records.

Later today, Nevada plays Central Florida in the Hawaii Bowl, one of the most hotly contested picks in the Irish Trojan contest. All told, 68 contestants picked Nevada; 60 picked UCF. The only bowl producing more disagreement is the Dec. 30 Peach Bowl, where Miami is favored over LSU 66 to 62.

Among those who picked Nevada in tonight’s bowl game are Patrick C., Long John, Gardner, Bartley, Gustafson, Ed, Lindecrantz and Dinunzio; among those who picked UCF are McLemore, Walden, Dickson, Andrew and Trooper. So it will either be an 8-way tie or a 5-way tie at the end of the day.