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Last year: I'll blame it on Matt. |
Which means that we have presents to give my parents, and I can stop working on that awful "Night Before Christmas" thing I was writing to explain why I didn't have any presents for them!
Hooray! And I'm sure it's all because of you!
Now, if the weather will just behave... Jeff is due in this evening, as well as my parents. The weather reports are telling me to expect mixed snow and rain to begin sometime tonight. I'm hoping it won't start until everyone is safely off the road!
There's also a winter storm watch in effect for tonight and tomorrow. If it turns into a warning, we might have to re-think our Christmas plans with my parents. But more than that, I hope the storm passes us by. This area simply isn't equipped to deal with snow and ice, and driving is dangerous enough on New Year's Eve without having slippery roads to contend with. If we just get a light dusting, the roads will probably be clear by Sunday, but if we have more than an inch of snow, Sunday evening could be hellish.
Here's hoping...
I'm really looking forward to our New Year's celebrations this year. I'm not really sure why: we're only planning a smallish get-together on New Year's Eve, and a sort of open house brunch on New Year's Day.
Maybe it's that "open house" part that makes it so exciting for me.
When I was a kid, our next door neighbors held an open house every New Year's Day. It was a potluck affair, and the entire neighborhood was invited. Families would put together the remains of their holiday cooking, or make a batch of baked beans, and walk over to their house. Miz Lorna (in a thrilling combination of traditional and informal address, neighborhood kids called the house's occupants "Mr. Bob" and "Miz Lorna.")... Where was I? Oh, yes. Miz Lorna would take your dish, make sure your name was on it, and plunk it down on one of about eight card tables. People would stroll around the house, nibbling on food and snacks, talking, and generally being, well... neighborly.
There were always a half-dozen or so kids gathered in a knot, wreaking havoc on the dessert table and begging Mr. Bob to let them (well, us, really) play on his pool table. He always gave in. I shudder to think of the amount of damage that poor table must have sustained with handfuls of monkey-children crawling over and around it.
I think Mr. Bob must have genuinely loved children. We played in his yard more often than our own, and he never once chased us off or failed to say a kind word to us. He was never a nervous nellie about the way we climbed in his tree (Mr. Bob had the perfect climbing tree in his front yard) - but on the two occasions I can think of in which someone fell, he appeared immediately to help. No one was ever seriously hurt.
One day I was playing with my brother in our own back yard, and we decided that it would be fun to jump up and down on the plywood covers that went over the sandbox my dad had built for us. Well, the plywood was rotten, and my leg broke right through, sending an enormous sliver of wood up into my leg. My dad wasn't home, and my mom was inside running the vacuum cleaner, so she didn't hear me screaming. Mr. Bob, however, was mowing his lawn, and he literally vaulted over the fence between our yards (and this will be more impressive to you when I say that Mr. Bob was a large man - at least 350 pounds) and scooped me up. He carried me into my house (I can remember screaming with each step as my leg bounced) and to my mother. My mom swears that she took me to wherever my dad was at the time before taking me to the hospital, but I don't remember any of that. My next memory is being in the emergency room, screaming at the pain of the anaesthetic shot. But Mr. Bob kept an eye on my brother while I was gone.
That neighborhood was - though I didn't realize it until later - a somewhat poor neighborhood. When we moved, it was into a much higher-class area.
But I've never lived in a friendlier neighborhood than that one. Some riches, you can't take with you.
Cash Dispenser Spreads Christmas Cheer
-- On Monday, a daily French newspaper reported that a cash dispenser in the Riviera town of Antibes had been returning twice the amount of cash requested, but logging only the requested amount.
Some patrons of the supermarket where the machine is located took it as a sign from Father Christmas. The newspaper reported that most of the extra cash was spent on Chirstmas gifts in the store.
- Cartoon History of the Universe, Part 2 by Larry Gonick
Current Projects:
- getting ready for New Year's
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