Just your average holiday weekend, I suppose

It seems a little belated, but since not a whole lot else is going on, I'll tell you about my Christmas.*

All in all, my weekend at my parents' house was fairly uneventful, but considering we spent Christmas night 2004 in the emergency room with my father, uneventful is OK by me. Even the drive there and back was fine. The natural pauses in conversation that my sister typically feels the need to overcome through idle prattle and insignificant strings of questions was this time filled with selections from the David Sedaris CDs I wisely thought to pack. I tried to disguise my snobbery when I realized she had no idea who David Sedaris is (she's stated openly more than once that she doesn't read, after all), but I do have to snicker a bit when I recall her referring to one of the most notorious modern humorists as "your story guy."

I like to think that I helped my mother out over the weekend by continuing my Clean Sweep of the snack cupboard, but unfortunately I think I just annoyed both her and my father. Really, though, I ask you... Does anyone need eight bags of jerky and other meat snacks... particularly when five of those bags are four to eighteen months beyond their expiration date? You think I'm exaggerating, but seriously...



Maybe you thought I was kidding about the overstocked mystery snack cabinet, but I assure you, I was not. Check it.





That's right. Three panels. Plus overflow. That's more than three times the space in which all my non-perishables are stored (small kitchens and limited cupboard space being the norm in old houses such as mine), and theirs is just for snacks. They have other food elsewhere I'm not even going to talk about.

I didn't bother seeking out offenses in the refrigerator this time. The only purging I did beyond the meat snacks was to toss last year's tin of mixed nuts from one of my dad's business contacts, which was--as I expected--sitting right alongside this year's tin of nuts from the very same contact.

But enough about food and lapses in cultural literacy. The whole Baby Jesus thing aside, Christmas is really all about the presents, right? So let's take a look at some of mine...

I was a little bit paranoid about my Amazon wish list after I read Wendy McClure's NY Times article on wish list stalking (sorry; beyond the time frame of being free, I guess), but I left the list intact anyway, and even added to and prioritized it a bit. Yes, I've indicated a desire to own Dawson's Creek seasons one through three... what of it? It was a decent show in its early days; you can't tell me different so don't even try.

I didn't actually receive any Dawon's Creek DVDs, nor did I receive the Lucy Kaplansky or Ben Folds CDs I'd marked as "high priority," but I did pretty well regardless, I think. Here are a few highlights...

• Coleman Sundome 9x7 dome tent - So that next summer at Fat Camp, if Jamie and I still have no dates but each other, I will not be expected to sleep in an obviously undersized structure meant for hobbits or small children. That's right, Jamie; I have a real tent now. Jealous, are you?
  
  
• Mary Tyler Moore, seasons 1 and 2 - Yes, I've already established** that I'm the only person of my generation to truly appreciate this show. I'm more than fine with enjoying my MTM marathon all by myself some upcoming weekend.
  
  
• Simply Calphalon 5-quart chili pot - Not so much for chili as for pasta and such, as my last large-sized pasta pot met an untimely end several months ago. The bonus with this gift is that it reminded me and my little sister of one of our favorite Simpsons episodes (the one with the chili cookoff and the space coyote, of course), and my sister subsequently leaned over to me and said, "Now you just need a spoon... that you can carve yourself, out of a bigger spoon." (Congratulations to the two of you out there who actually got that joke.)
  
  
• One pack of Orbit wintermint gum - From my little sister, who used to buy me gum as a supposedly legitimate gift when she claimed to have insufficient income for proper gifts. Now I get a pack of gum each year in addition to some more significant gift, just for tradition sake.
  
  
• A Tide-to-Go stain remover pen - I'm really not sure why this is so special, but my mother was very excited about it. My sisters and I each got one. I don't think we've often showed up at her home spattered in unsightly stains, but I suppose it's always good to be prepared.
  

I know I received other things as well that were equally if not more exciting, but that's all I care to enumerate at the moment. I hope Santa or the Hanukkah Armadillo or the Festivus pole-bearer was kind to you as well. Merry belated whatever to all.


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* My family is very white and very Catholic, so for me, the word "Christmas" will suffice. If yours is more of a Christmakwanzakkah sort of family, I hope that went great as well.

** Yes, I realize this is most likely my most "clicky here, link there" post ever. I really didn't mean for this entry to be a clip show, but my thought process is just sort of working out that way.