CHRISTMAS BARF

Well, it's over!
Yesterday I got sick and threw up; a fitting end to the holiday madness at work. This meant I could not go out with my co-workers and celebrate afterwards. Instead, I came home and laid in bed reading the massive new 800-plus page biography of The Beatles I borrowed from work, threw up some more, and finally went to sleep.
Got up today feeling much better. Wrapped a few presents and went over to Aunt Sally's house. This was fun. We ate Sweedish meatballs, steamed Brussel sprouts, burned biscuits, canned cranberry sauce, squash casserole, potatoes au gratin (sp?), green beans, and various brownies, pies, and cookies.

I called my folks from Sally's house and wished them a merry Christmas. Dad was taking his new dvd-player on its maiden voyage with The Polar Express.

Sally's incredibly straight friends came over, for a time, with their extremely well-behaved children. The kids opened presents (from Sally), and we all noticed that Julie (the mom/wife) really wears the pants in the family while her husband (Greg?) smiles and nods.

After the straights left, we all got drunk, worshipped Satan, had an orgy, and talked leftist politics. Woo-hoo! It was fun.

Then Charlie showed up.

We all settled down to watch a made-for-British-TV Christmas movie. It featured Robson Green who (along with Trevor Eve) is everybody's favorite BBC TV detective (now that Morse and Holmes have gone). He's so tough and crazy and cool and funny, all at once. In this show, he had to lay off the bad-boy cop act and play an English everyman living in what amounts to an English suburb. The gist of the plot was that he becomes very competitive with his next-door neighbor as to who can put up the most spectacular Christmas lights each year. This gets ever more ridiculous, as years go by, until it escalates into something akin to the Cold War and its deadly arms race. It was a most unusual Christmas program; painful and funny, and ultimately sweet.

Then we exchanged gifts (except for Charlie, Chris, and I, who will celebrate among friends at a later time, and trade presents then). I gave Joel an eastern themed calendar with pockets for keeping stuff in, and Sally a hardback leather datebook for remembering important events (with no years or days of the week in it, so it can be used forever) and a lil' teddy bear. Joel gave me a Lord of the Rings Monopoly game, and Sally gave me a t-shirt boasting the words, "If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?" And a note that states that I will be receiving the first season of Black Books (on dvd) in mid-January (when it is finally released). This is a great British comedy we recently discovered ("we" meaning the Thursday night gang, not the royal "we") about a bookstore and its crabby owner who says all the things to customers that people like Joel and I (who sell books) would love to say. There's a cute new-age shop owner (whose botique is next door to the bookstore) and she flirts with Black who is too curmudgeonly and laconic to notice (or care). He also has an antagonistic Victor-Frankenstein-and-Igor relationship with his lone, terminally stressed-out employee who, until recently, was a street person. They get into much trouble together. Lots of larfs!

Anyway. It was another lovely day at Sally's house.

Came home and ran 4 miles on the Chisolm Trail. Want to lose 10 pounds. Then I came home and read Maraverse. Commented. Wrote this blog. Now I'm going to sleep with the Beatles.

The book, not the band.

Besides, two of them are dead.

That would be gross.