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I’ll be home for Christmas

Happy New Year, everybody. Hope it’s going well so far. Now gather round and I’ll tell you a story about how I spent the holidays.

Way too early in the morning on Saturday, December 24, I took a taxi to Seattle-Tacoma International Aiport. After a layover in Phoenix (spoiler alert for those who haven’t been there: the landscape is all brown), I found myself at good old Orlando International Airport, waiting for Kate to fly in and my family to pick us up.

After a long wait, Kate arrived and so did my parents and my sister. We set off back to my parents’ house, where we had some light noms for dinner and decorated the Christmas tree. Some people always decorate their Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, but in my family we normally do it super early, so it was nice for my family to wait. My dad and/or mom had actually cut down the tree themselves since they live out in the relative wilderness now, near Christmas tree farms and things like that.

The next morning was Christmas morning, and, still jetlagged, I slept way in. By the time everyone woke up, it was time for a late breakfast, so we decide to eat before opening presents. Then we exchanged gifts. It was such a familiar feeling to me that it was hard to remember that I wasn’t home for Christmas the previous year. I normally dread giving gifts because I never know what to get, but this year I felt like I’d picked some winners. (I was really happy with the stuff I got, too. I’m surrounded by good gift-givers.) Later, other friends/family came over for a turkey dinner, and after that, more gifts were exchanged. It was a great Christmas.

The day after that was a pretty lazy day. My parents had the day off, so we all went for a hike nearby. It might have been pretty cold by my previous standards, but I found that after living in Seattle for less than a year, I could withstand the Florida winter a lot better. We probably did other things that day, but I don’t remember what they were.

On Tuesday, Kate wanted to explore nearby Gainesville, but my parents had to work. Fortunately, my Aunt Sandi volunteered to take us around, and we even visited some places I had never been to before. After going to Bealls Outlet (one of Kate’s favorite stores), we tried to go to the Devil’s Millhopper only to find that they were closed on Tuesdays. Nearby was a musical instrument store I had never been to, so we checked it out. We plinked around on a steel drum, surely to the delight of everyone who was working and shopping there, and I strummed some acoustic guitars for Kate.

For lunch, we went to The Jones, a local-type restaurant that I had wanted to go to with Kate during one of her previous visits (that time, we went to an Italian buffet instead). The food was great, and I’d love to go there again.

Well, that’s all I have to time to impart right now. Next time: kittens.

You probably know that certain societies (ours not being among them) have a lax attitude toward drinking alcohol. So it seems that the effects of alcohol are a self-fulfilling prophecy. The author of this article for the BBC suggests that if we make alcohol seem boring to kids, they’ll stop binge drinking and engaging in other drunken shenanigans.