Christmas Is Almost Over Now

One family gathering left to attend. TOYH's family is all getting together tomorrow at EG and DM's place. Kent, Ross and their families are in from Shanghai and Denver respectively.

On Christmas Eve, Evil Grandmother and the Dreadful Man came over for Clam Chowdah, assorted finger foods and conversation. On Christmas day, we spent the early morning opening up presents. Nothing spectacular. Madster and 'Nika got the first two seasons of "I Love Lucy" on DVD. To me, it's more entertaining to watch The Madster watch Lucy than it is to watch Lucy herself. Madster sits on the edge of her seat, mouth open in a smile, nose crinkled up, waiting in eager expectation for Lucy's next pratfall or the denouement of one of her harebrained schemes. Lucy rarely disappoints and Madster ends up cackling at every episode. I received the 1st season of "30 Rock" and end up cackling at that much in the same way Madster laughs at Lucy.

Later on Christmas morning our old next door neighbors, Sue and Sherry, came over for brunch. We spent a few hours catching up and watching a warrant being served on one of the tenants next door in Mabel's old house. Merry Christmas! You're going to jail! I have no idea what he was arrested for, it was not very dramatic. Plainclothes cop comes up and gets no answer at the front door, leaves. Plainclothes comes back with two uniform cops, they collar their man and leave. No beat downs. No weeping and wailing. I felt kinda bad for the cops. I suppose the only thing more depressing than arresting someone on Christmas Day is to be arrested on Christmas Day.

Early in the afternoon we headed up to Cambridge for my family's Christmas celebration, complete with ham and lasagna and borscht. Mmmmm. I spent far too long talking about prostates with Opa. That type of conversation really makes me feel like an old man, although I was talking about other people's prostates, not my own. I can safely say that the conversation did not fill me with Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit did visit the Holm household though. Last week I read about a play that was being performed somewhere in the metro. It tells the story of the Allied and the German troops laying down their arms on Christmas Day in 1917(?). They visited each others trenches, sang with each other and shared food. For one day, the grunts doing the fighting and dying quit fighting and dying. In the same way, there was no talk of "White Christmas" or "It's a Wonderful Life" the whole time we were up in Cambridge. Our little Christmas miracle.

Yesterday, there was a big sledding, or sliding, or sleigh riding (as the Dreadful Man calls it - must be a Wyoming thing) party with as many of the cousins as we could gather. KyKy skipped out because she looked like death warmed over. We had a lot of fun. We went to Como Park where there are some pretty steep hills in the NW corner. The old farts went down the hill a few times, except for Ross of course, who went down a bunch of times. We tried the mass start with anywhere from 18 to 20 people. Going down single file with each person holding on to the feet of the person behind them didn't really work. But on the last conga line like attempt, the line kept together all the way to the jump that no one wanted to try out. It was very funny watching the whole line of about a dozen or so kids (plus Ross) hit the jump perfectly and wipe out.

Today was the first day back to work for me since last Friday (where did you think I found the time to write this?). We'll leave early for a company lunch, hopefully Famous Dave's. Back to work on Monday for a couple of end-of-year housekeeping things. After New Year's Day it'll be time to hunker down for the winter. We picked up another 4 inches of snow on Christmas day so the streets are pretty sloppy and still not fit for bike commuting for me. Lots of early snow makes things pretty for Christmas, but it also makes winter seem to drag on and on. The one post-holiday consolation for me is that the days are now getting longer.