christmas

despite the fact that i am 35 years old, and quite disillusioned with the commercialization of an already-preposterous christian holiday, waking up on christmas morning is still a special feeling. di and i got up around 7, and slowly got ourselves collected enough to head to my folks' house. i wore my new tie and shirt. we stopped at the second starbucks we went to for chai. seth came with us, and, as usual, ran out into the back yard with casey, the goofball.

the tempest of christmas morning had, for the most part, subsided by the time we arrived (around 8:30). we gave our gifts out, received some great presents, and had fun watching the kids get wound up about their new things. i was most excited about the 'old town school of folk music' guitar lessons we got for my dad. we ate various coffee cakes and juice, soy nog, etc. i made a fire.

di and i went back home for about an hour, to drop off our gifts, regroup, and feed the cats and seth.

around 2pm, we drove way-the-hell south to lemont, IL, for the gathering of di's mom's side of the family. they had a train set up in their front window.

[i'm having a hard time concentrating on typing this, as the new access to our turntable has us playing all sorts of old LPs. right now, di has put on a men at work record.]

dinner was italian beef and perrogi. they served me bailey's, and i was happy.

around 6pm, we jumped back in the car and drove 40 minutes up to northbrook, to my cousin joan's house. we missed the presents, but arrived in time for dinner. joan's husband, vince, is a great cook, and they just finished installing an all-new kitchen, of which di and i were pretty envious.

the whole family tried to get a photo taken of the group, to recreate a pro studio family photo taken about 3 years ago for gramma. no one's camera was working (aside from mine, which i only had their incidentally), and there were too many people telling everyone what to do, so i just ended up getting mad. we cut out immediately after the pictures.

we drove home through a tunnel-like train overpass on techny road, and that seemed to cheer di and i up.

at home, we unpacked some of the gifts we had received, including a new estwing axe given to me by diana's folks. i am really pleased with this thing, and look forward to more splitting in the spring.

sitting in the den, we decided it was time to pull out the risk board, to take a stab at re-learning this old patience-trying game. we both got sleepy pretty quickly, and packed it in after only a couple of battles. we'll save this for when we have a third person here, and more energy.

to bed.