jimsjournal
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Christmas Day -- 12/25/02 | |
We've had a marvelous Christmas Day...
Christmas Eve Nancy and I watched It's a Wonderful Life on tv (we watch at least part of it every year) and after it was over we read in bed for a while before falling asleep. We'd decided that we would be up before the kids so we might as well wait until morning to put presents beneath the tree. My alarm went off a little past seven... I was prepared to sleep in longer, but Tiger decided that I really should get up so he began attacking my feet until I was awake enough to get up. He used to do that when I used feed him when I got up -- it began to get annoying as he kept trying to slide his meal earlier and earlier until he was trying to wake me up at three or four a.m. -- so I switched to feeding him before I go to bed and that ended that problem. I'm not sure what got into him this morning except that I'm usually up between 5:30 and 6:00 and he likes to have me open the window curtain in the kitchen (he sits on a stool in front of it to survey the outside world) and if the weather is nice sometimes he can even persuade me to open the window... plus he usually manages to beg a Pounce or two while I'm making coffee, etc.
There was an interesting assortment of gifts under the tree, nothing extravagant... Nancy and I gave ourselves a digital camera. I gave her a bracelet and a pair of earrings made of sea glass mounted on silver wire. I'd read a newspaper article a month or two ago about a Rhode Island artist who was turning sea glass into jewelry. (For those of you who don't live near the ocean, sea glass refers to the little pieces of colored glass that has been wave-tossed and worn smooth by sand that people collect from the seashore -- Nancy's grandmother used to like to collect it, so I though it would have extra meaning for her.) Jennifer gave me the new Bruce Springsteen CD and a Bob Dylan CD; Sean got me a lassagna pan and The Sopranos Cookbook. Nancy and Jennifer and I had already gotten Sean his major present, a new sound system. I'd also gotten him Orson Scott Card's most recent books in his "Ender" series (plus various odds and ends like a 50-pack of blank CD-Rs, and a some shirts and a sweater, etc. but, as he notes, clothing doesn't really count *grin*). Jennifer has two computers -- a IBM desktop system we'd bought her when she graduated from high school and a nice Dell laptop she'd bought herself this summer -- but neither one has a CD burner, so we got her an external CD burner so she can plug it in (via USB) to either machine.
An area on the white board in our kitchen had been set aside for Christmas wish lists -- Sean had put "a car" in his list, someone changed that to be "a card" so Sean erased that and wrote "une voiture" (yes, he's taking French in high school). I looked around for a toy Pugeot or Renault but couldn't find one... but I did put a HotWheels toy car in his stocking and Nancy had found a small car made of chocolate.
 Teenager deep in science fiction novel while Tiger takes a cat nap.  She has red hair this month. |
After opening our presents, Jennifer went to take a nap, Sean dove into reading one of his new novels, Nancy played with the camera, and I read my new cookbook... eventually I made my way down to the basement and ran on the treadmill and lifted weights while listening to my new Springsteen CD... then I made a salad to bring over to Nancy's mother's house for Christmas dinner. We went there around two-thirty (with the kids following maybe fifteen minutes later using my car)... Besides us and Nancy's Mom, Nancy's sister Janet and her husband and their two teenaged daughters and their mid-20's son and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's mother... plus Nancy's sister Cathy and her college freshman son and her boyfriend. Not as big as crowd as Thanksgiving, just needed two tables pushed together... we munched on veggies and chips and dip and then sat down for dinner and then stuffed our faces with cookies and pie and exchanged gifts and played games (Nancy and I had been given Worst Case Scenario Survival Game) and took lots of pictures -- there were three digital cameras plus a digital video camera (Santa's elves were obviously very busy putting together digital cameras this year) busy recording the events. |
That big storm has brought us just rain (and very fierce winds) but no real snow thus far (it's about eleven p.m.) -- Phone calls to friends and family have let us know that parts of New York State and western Connecticut have had eight to ten inches so far (and it's still coming down) and I think that Massachusetts is getting a lot of snow and probably inland parts of Rhode Island have some snow, but all we have is rain; although sometimes it appears that there is wet snow mixed in with the rain, there is no accumulation so far. I wonder if we'll get any overnight?
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