Category: Holidays

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Happy belated holidays to one and (mostly) all!

My apologies for missing the dates when these events occurred, but allow me to wish people:

    “Merry Christmas!”
    “Joyous Kwanzaa!” and
    “Chhhappy Chhhannukah!” (I wasn’t sure how to type a throat-clearing “chhh” noise, so that’s the best I could do.)

As for those of you who consider “Chrismukkah” a legitimate holiday, you should be strapped down to a table, beaten with a candy cane, whipped with a cat-o’-nine-dreidels and banned from watching “The O.C.” ever, ever again.

If I missed any other real holidays, my apologies, but I’m busy getting ready to celebrate the end of a decade and party into the 10’s. Don’t forget to start things off on the right foot, everyone: Lift your left foot off the ground just before the clock strikes midnight. Happy New Year!!!

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My perfect costume

On Saturday, I attended a Halloween party at my friend Matthew Feeney’s house. (I’m always torn between his party and a Mensa gathering in Chicago called “HalloweeM”, but given my current lack of disposable income, it made my decision a little easier this year.) Matthew sends an invitation to a couple hundred people and averages about 150 visitors who drop by during the course of the night. The invite always states that costumes are encouraged, but not necessary. Thank God for that, because anyone who’s seen me at one of his parties knows the only “costume” I might wear is dressing up as a Geek.

This year, one of the other attendees was putting a little pressure on me to find a costume—she even offered to bring an extra that I could use that night—but I politely turned her down several times over. If I was really interested in dressing up, I’m sure I could think of something interesting. It was about eight years ago when I put together an outfit with a black shirt, a black tie, a black suit (alas, no fedora) and dyed my brown hair completely blond: I was dressed as a member of the Swedish Mafia.

So after said attendee kept needling me about wearing a costume, I told her that I could show up to the party as a Hollywood celebrity. It would have been pretty easy, really: all I’d have to do is dress up in whatever clothes I wanted and bring along a sense of entitlement. The only problem might have been that some people like to take pictures of the most creative costumes and I wouldn’t want to get into a fistfight with the paparazzi, so it’s probably best that I stuck with “costume not necessary” again this year.

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Sinful statistics

Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving. Clumping two deadly sins into a four-day weekend: gluttony (feasting on turkey, stuffing and football) followed by covetousness (trampling Wal-Mart employees to death to get our sinful hands on a $99 DVD player). Oh, and if you include Cyber Monday in the festivities, you can add another deadly sin into the mix: sloth (people too lazy to brave the shopping malls for those $99 DVD players). Ah, what a blessed holiday!

But that’s not what I wanted to focus on. I was watching the 10:00 news on Friday night and the newscaster said that sales on Black Friday were up 4% compared to last year. “Wow, maybe the recession isn’t so bad if people are still willing to blow wads of cash on unnecessary junk!” Then the newspaper arrived the next morning to alert its readers that sales on Black Friday were down this year. Obviously, it was looking at the state results versus the local TV news reporting national stats, but it made me wonder:

Which source reflects the media’s liberal bias?

Or maybe they were trying to make us all look like sinnier sinners by accusing us of covetousness and sloth at the same time: “You all wanted too much stuff, but you locals were too lazy to buy it!” Personally, I’m gonna stick with gluttony and start working on the leftovers that are packed into the fridge…

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Happy 2 to the 5th power-th birthday!

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32 (unless my math is off, in which case someone should take my junior high math team trophy for 4th place in state and smash it 2 to the 5th power-th times). That number was really the most special part about it. Well, that plus my first time going dumpster diving.

My mom has been doing a lot of cleaning around the house. And when I say “cleaning”, I mean “throwing out lots of random crap that we don’t want or need.” Consequently, there have been a multitude of garbage bags that she’s asked me to toss into a local dumpster. That in itself generally isn’t a big deal. It’s only when she realizes there’s a bag in the corner that should have been tossed, which means there’s a bag in the dumpster that isn’t supposed to be there. Yeah, that’s a big deal.

So there we were, driving off into the distance at 10:00 at night—after all, we had to go out to a restaurant for my birthday dinner. I don’t really need a party with gifts and balloons, but those little ice cream sundaes with candles on them? They’re like heaven with whipped cream on top. Upon arriving at the dumpster, we turned on the headlights, grabbed a flashlight to shine inside and went digging. (Technically, I’m tall enough that I wasn’t actually diving in there, but grant me some creative license, wouldja?)

Thankfully, only a few more things had been added since I’d made my initial drop. Even more thankfully, none of those things tried to bite me or emit noxious fumes to knock me to the ground, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Nope, I just lifted a few things, saw the bag that shouldn’t have been there, switched it with the bag to throw out and headed home.

Admittedly, it wasn’t terribly exciting—not much of a story for the grandkids—but at least I can tell people that I have gone dumpster diving. On my birthday. After eating an ice cream sundae. And I never felt the urge to heave it back up into the dumpster 2 to the 5th power-th times, either. My junior high math teacher would be proud.

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Happy Memorial Day weekend

I fully intend to make mine happy—I’ll be spending it up at the family cabin with a portion of said family as well. It’s about a three-hour drive from civilization, so the only modern-day comforts around will be the ones we bring with us. Consequently, it’s a good place for reading, sleeping, listening to the birds and watching the sunlight shimmering on the surface of the lake. Very relaxing. Relaxing enough that I’m having trouble thinking about what to write at the moment. Or maybe that’s just because it’s the wee hours of the morning, I still haven’t packed, but I felt the need to add an entry to the blog before taking off for five days.

And on that note, I hope you all enjoy the weekend. Be sure to remember… whatever the memorial stuff is that this day is supposed to celebrate. (Gotta love holidays that are based on something we don’t know about or appreciate, huh?) Later, y’all.