Holiday Review
As warm and beach-autumny as October and November were, December has been wintry. Snow, a lot of it, on the Santiago peaks early in the month. Frost encased my car the day after Christmas. Reminded me of the day after Christmas -- or was it New Year's? -- a few years ago when I took my grandparents to the Huntington Library in San Marino and the fountain out front was a frozen ice sculpture.
It has been a nearly perfect holiday. We accomplished everything we set out before the season started. I enjoyed the glass of wine by myself Christmas Eve watching A Christmas Story at my grandparents'. My best gifts: the Wii Fit or the Flip digital recorder.
We went to Disneyland the Sunday before Christmas. Fourth year in a row we've done so. First time, I believe, that we've done it on the Sunday before Christmas, which I always try to do because, from my experience working there, Sundays are always the least crowded days during the week during the busy seasons and I figure that Sunday will even be less crowded as more people will be preoccupied with their holiday errands. It turned out to be a beautiful chilly day and without straining, we did everything we wanted to do, and left before 9pm.
New Year's Eve, my brother made some delicious porterhouses. The $4 bottle of La Cava rosé I got from Trader Joe's triumphed over the bottle of Goat Scrotum Australian sparkling wine someone else brought. We had fun playing Rock Band. I drank a lot of champagne. I stayed up to midnight. I followed the advice of a doctor on the local afternoon news and did not get a hangover. Not even a headache (thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to avoiding the Goat Scrotum champagne).
I am sorry to see the holidays go. As of Friday (another day I ended up working that I was not originally supposed to), they were still piping the Christmas carols in at work, though they already sounded more melancholy. Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby certainly had an extra poignancy after this Christmas. Dead people singing Christmas carols. That's not the way I think of them before Christmas anyway.
Tomorrow, it's back to formal business attire at the office, and the secular year-around adult contemporary soundtrack, and the nagging sense that it's really not appropriate to be aimlessly socializing downstairs or ok to look at amazon.com for half-hours at a time if, for no other reason, than everyone else is doing it. It's back to work and to that ordinary, unmagical sense of quotidien routine.
It has been a nearly perfect holiday. We accomplished everything we set out before the season started. I enjoyed the glass of wine by myself Christmas Eve watching A Christmas Story at my grandparents'. My best gifts: the Wii Fit or the Flip digital recorder.
We went to Disneyland the Sunday before Christmas. Fourth year in a row we've done so. First time, I believe, that we've done it on the Sunday before Christmas, which I always try to do because, from my experience working there, Sundays are always the least crowded days during the week during the busy seasons and I figure that Sunday will even be less crowded as more people will be preoccupied with their holiday errands. It turned out to be a beautiful chilly day and without straining, we did everything we wanted to do, and left before 9pm.
New Year's Eve, my brother made some delicious porterhouses. The $4 bottle of La Cava rosé I got from Trader Joe's triumphed over the bottle of Goat Scrotum Australian sparkling wine someone else brought. We had fun playing Rock Band. I drank a lot of champagne. I stayed up to midnight. I followed the advice of a doctor on the local afternoon news and did not get a hangover. Not even a headache (thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to avoiding the Goat Scrotum champagne).
I am sorry to see the holidays go. As of Friday (another day I ended up working that I was not originally supposed to), they were still piping the Christmas carols in at work, though they already sounded more melancholy. Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby certainly had an extra poignancy after this Christmas. Dead people singing Christmas carols. That's not the way I think of them before Christmas anyway.
Tomorrow, it's back to formal business attire at the office, and the secular year-around adult contemporary soundtrack, and the nagging sense that it's really not appropriate to be aimlessly socializing downstairs or ok to look at amazon.com for half-hours at a time if, for no other reason, than everyone else is doing it. It's back to work and to that ordinary, unmagical sense of quotidien routine.
posted by Tom at
9:04 PM
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