Only 363 days until next Christmas!
December 28, 2003
Yes yes, it’s been some time since I wrote last, and a lot has happened since then, but I have good reason for not writing, I assure you.
First of all, Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it. Christmas in this house (family, rather) doesn’t have much of a religious meaning, but we celebrate the other aspects of it gladly. Christmas this year had its ups and downs, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Last I wrote was what, Christmas Eve eve? Yes, something like that. Christmas Eve I drove a friend of mine out to the airport in what I expected would be a long and arduous procedure, but it turned out to be a lot less crowded than I expected. I parked and walked her in, and since she got through the ticket counter line so quickly, we had some lunch at the Portland Brewing Company where I had a slice of cheese pizza and a pint of McTarnahan’s Amber Ale. I had some of that left over from a 12-pack of beer I bought at the grocery store a couple of years ago when I was just beginning to like beer, so I bought a Portland Brewing Company holiday sampler to try and learn to like Oregon beer. I really didn’t have much of a taste for beer yet, so it was a start. I didn’t like a couple of the kinds I had, though, so they went into the garage refrigerator after Christmas that year, never to see the light of day again until this past summer when we were BBQing over here and I was digging through the fridge looking for wine. I had one bottle of the Amber Ale left, and I don’t know whether it was the “age” of the beer or something else, but it tasted delicious. So that’s what I had at the airport.
Since I was in that neck of the woods and it was getting on in the day (well, it was probably 1 PM when I left the airport, so getting on in the day for Christmas Eve), I decided to give my Dad a call to see if he wanted a ride home from work. I had a secret plan of picking him up and suggesting that we stop at the Fulton Pub that’s literally right on the way home, so it wasn’t purely out of the goodness of my heart.
On my way to get him, though, I almost had an accident. I was turning from one street onto another (Sandy onto Burnside, for those who know the streets in Portland) at a very strange intersection with two right-hand turn lanes, and I was in the right-most of them about to turn the corner. There was a car next to me getting ready to turn right at the same time as me, and even though I was on my phone telling my Dad I was 5 minutes away from his office, I had a sneaking suspicion that the car to my left was going to cut me off and turn into my lane. So I slowed down as I talked, and sure enough, he turned from the left lane into mine as he went around the corner. I had slowed down enough that I didn’t have to slam on my brakes, but I did up up on the curb driving towards a telephone pole. If I hadn’t slowed down, I may have even hit it. What is it with me and telephone poles, honestly?
Anyhow, nothing serious. I didn’t honk because one hand was on the wheel and the other on the phone, and I would have had to let go of one to do it. I could see that the guy knew he screwed up because his wife/girlfriend/whatever turned around and then turned to him to say something, and then he turned back and looked at me. No wave, though, not even that sheepish one we all give when we know we’ve done something bad, so I just got in a different lane than him and passed him–not too quickly, since I was going over the Burnside Bridge, and that’s where I got pulled over last summer. I was at my Dad’s office a few minutes later, and right as he got in the car, he suggested that we go to the Fulton Pub. What’s the saying about great minds, again…? So we stopped and had a pint apiece of Nebraska Bitter at the Fulton Pub, the home tap of that particular brew. The Fulton, if you’ll remember, is the one I kept saying I wanted to go to, and then I realized I’d already been many years ago, long before the notion of drinking beer even entered my head. No raising the McMenamins count, then. We’ll save that for later this week.
I got my car back after that drive home, too. All fixed, the carberator all rebuilt and ready to go. It drives a little differently now, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I’m going to ask about several of the new quirks just in case. I packed up all my stuff and headed back to my Mom’s, and then got ready for dinner. We did Christmas Eve dinner at my sister’s apartment this year instead of my Mom’s house, and it was very nice. She made a delicious beef roast that had a fantastic crust on it of peppercorns, garlic, and other spices. The crust was almost tastier than the roast! My Mom also made a version of her Chocolate Roll which our family has been missing at Christmastime for so many years. I say “version” because it was a bit different than she used to make it because she couldn’t find the original recipe and had to use one from the venerable “Joy of Cooking” cookbook that just about everyone who cooks has a version of. Not too shabby, either way.
Christmas morning was about standard. Up around…uh, well, I can’t remember what time I got up at, but I think it was about 10 AM, which seems later than times in the past. I’m not overwhealmed with excitement anymore like I was as a kid (or even older when I knew about Santa Claus but still looked forward to my presents), so sleeping in is a luxury I can enjoy. Uh…though I guess I enjoy it every day anyhow. My Mom likes poking about on Christmas morning, prepping food, primping, cleaning up, painting the house, cleaning the garage, that kind of thing, so we never start until later, anyhow. My sister came over, and we had our short little Christmas due to fiscal issues, but enjoyable nonetheless. My sister had already given me a present beforehand that I’d been enjoying since early in the week, so I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from either her or my Mom. I did end up scoring Finding Nemo and the 20th anniversary special super ultra deluxe version of Tron on DVD, though. I already own Tron (and ironically, it was my sister who purchased the other copy, too), but this one is digitally remastered, has better sound, etc. Naturally she wants my old copy for her DVD collection…. Finding Nemo is one I’ve wanted to pick up since it came out a couple months ago, but I didn’t have the money for it and was waiting to buy it previously viewed from Blockbuster or something. Score.
My Mom got me a Sonicare electric toothbrush that apparently everyone except me uses, and so far I’m enjoying it. My mouth doesn’t feel as…well, BRUSHED after I’m done with it, as in, I haven’t been scrubbing my teeth with something for a few minutes, but my teeth do feel clean, and since everyone I know who’s used or uses one swears it makes their teeth whiter and gives them healthier gums, I’ll at least give it a shot. She also chipped in for tickets for all three of us to go see Bette Midler in concert in a couple of months, so that should be a treat.
Then came a bit of game playing as I showed my sister the game she’d gotten me for Xmas, and I watched with no small amount of humor as her eyes glazed over and she almost instantly fell in love with a game I’d been talking about off and on for two years, then almost nonstop since it came out. She has expressed little interest in gaming in the last couple of years, and I’ve practically had to beat her over the head to get her to purchase the last upgrade (rather, last new part since she’s currently using a borrowed one) for her computer so I can properly set it up, but she’s been putting it off for about five months now. Well guess who’s bugging me constantly to get on ordering the part for her? Once she gets that aprt, I can format her computer, and she’ll have enough horsepower to play the game.
The game in question, by the way, is Star Wars Galaxies, the Lucasarts and Sony online Star Wars roleplaying game. You know what Everquest is? The Dungeons and Dragons like online game? OK, well take that kind of game, as in, thousands of players all playing at once in the same areas, and put it in the Star Wars universe. Add a mix of incredible graphics, a plethora of things to do, and you’ve got yourself a pretty neat little game that you can waste literally hours at a time on. Rock on! So my sister is all psyched about being able to play that once she gets up and running.
Christmas at my Dad’s was just as subdued as it was over here, since as I said, fiscal restraints were abound for everyone. Especially me, as the case was. I set a limit of $15 per person as I mentioned, and even that seemed like a lot at the time. Thank goodness I only had to buy for four people. Any more and I would have been gluing sparkles on construction paper for a handmade present. I did make off with a decent selection of ales from Cost Plus from my stepmother, as well as a very nice KitchenAid blender from my Dad. I think by far the most interesting present (though it wasn’t for me, alas) was one from “the animals”–the Roomba vacuum cleaner. The Roomba is a little robot that works very well to vacuum a room. It doesn’t seem like it would work too well, but from what I’ve read by people who use them (mostly geeks like me, too, so they’re pretty discriminating about their endorsements), they work EXTREMELY well. You pretty much just put them in a room, make sure there aren’t any things on the floor like rugs, etc, close the door, and walk away. I know some people put them in a room and go to work, or let them go in the living room when they go to the grocery store. It takes longer than doing it yourself, but it does a darn decent job. Apparently, my Dad has informed me, it clogs up with hair fairly quickly, but with three animals shedding, I can see why. I doubt that’s a design flaw.
Dinner at my Dad’s was a very nice prime rib roast. Beef two night in a row was a bit much for me, but hey, it’s the holidays. I can splurge a bit–and I have. In addition to the beef and the mashed potatoes likely loaded with butter, I also polished off a box of holiday cookies my Mom got but didn’t like too much, plus I finished the last of the Chocolate Roll last night. Ug. That’s a lot of calories. The day after Christmas, though, was when things picked up. After getting up at 3 AM, my Dad, stepmother, and myself all headed out to the airport for a 6:15 AM flight to Boise to see my grandmother and celebrate my Dad’s 60th birthday. I know! 60 years old? What an old fogey. But nonetheless, after a short hop to Boise, we had a nice day visiting with my grandmother, a casual dinner out to Chili’s, and then a short, uncomfortable sleep later we were back at the airport the next morning. I feel like I haven’t slept much in the last week. I especially feel like I’ve been moving around from place to place for the last two, never staying anywhere long enough to settle down and catch my breath. I’m doing enough laundry to choke a horse right now because I haven’t done it in awhile since I’ve been on the go, or I’d just do enough to get me through my next stop.
I just need to sit down for a bit, read the news. I haven’t read the news or comics in a few days besides what I’ve read over people’s shoulders My room’s a mess, and like I said, I feel like I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in awhile. I slept pretty well Christmas Eve, but Christmas night I only got a couple hours of sleep, the night of the 26th I didn’t sleep well at all because my bed was pretty uncomfortable and the room felt like it was 100 frickin’ degrees. Apparently that’s the hottest room in the house and my Dad always covers the heat vent with pillows, but I didn’t know about that and so instead I slept outside my covers in a t-shirt and shorts and still sweated all night. Oh well.
What else? Oh yes. In Boise my Dad and I went to the store to try and find some beer to drink that afternoon, and I was determined not to get something I could just get in Portland anytime. After mulling over a few beers by a company called “Firehouse #5″ or something thereabouts that I’d never heard of before, I discovered it was brewed in Portland, of all places. I did see one type of beer that if I were at home I would have purchased just for the beer name and logo on the packaging. I knew I couldn’t choke down six porters in an afternoon, though, so I begrudgingly decided on something else. The beer I wanted to keep, however, was out of somewhere in Utah, and with a very Renaissance-y picture of a man surrounded by six or seven women it was named “Polygamy Porter”. The slogan of the beer? “Why just have one?” That was GREAT. I’ll just have to find it somewhere here in Oregon, I guess, just to keep the packaging. The beer next to, “Provo Girl” out of (surprise surprise) Provo, Utah, was funny, too, but not nearly funny as Polygamy Porter. Good name, great slogan.
And speaking of beer, today at the grocery store I bought my first cans of beer. Yes, cans. I’ve only had beer out of a can once before, and ever since then it’s been bottles or tap only, tap prefered (on an unrelated side note, I’m working on my Dad to have the two of us build a kegerator in the crawlspace under the house so that we can have a tap downstairs over the wetbar down there–keep thinking about it, Dad). Anyhow, I saw a package in the beer isle I’d never seen before, and it looked interesting enough to pick up. So when I got home, I popped the tab and tried my first pint (there were four one pint cans) of Boddington’s Pub Ale from Manchester, England. Decent English ale, has the same sort of undertones as other good English ales I’ve had like Newcastle Brown, but a very creamy head. When I talked to my Dad, I mentioned how I’d gotten it, and naturally he’s had it in the past. Blast, gotta keep trying to find one he hasn’t had.
So that’s really all I can think of at the moment. I’ve been writing for the last 45 minutes or so, but I Know I’m leaving things out. Barbara, your check was much appreciated for Christmas, and you’ll be getting a thank you note other than here in “public”, but I usually don’t like mentioning receiving and/or confirming the exact amount of cash received on a holiday. But I’ll make an exception so you don’t feel like I’ve neglected your gift.
And on one final note, my plan worked: I’m back to being #1 on Google when you search for my name.
Again, hope you all had a nice time without my writing. I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of things this week, never fear. Night, all.
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