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ResQgeek

May 2024

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Because of our ski trip last week, we (obviously) could not gather with any of our extended families to celebrate Christmas.  So, now that we are home from the trip, we've started making up for that.  On Sunday evening, we went to my brother-in-law's home to visit his family.  They had been taking care of our dogs during our trip, so we were greeted at the door by two *very* excited dogs!  My in-laws had hosted a party the night before, so no one felt like cooking, so we ordered Chinese delivery for dinner, which may not be particularly traditional, but was delicious.  Afterwards, we exchanged gifts, and talked about our trips, both the one we had just finished and the other one we have scheduled for later in the winter.  My in-law's gift to my family was an offer to pay for our choice of snowmobile tours while we are in Steamboat Springs.  We just have to look at the selections and let them know which we'd like to do.  I'm leaning towards either the sunset tour or the moonlight tour, both of which include dinner, but I'll have to sit down with my wife and daughter and talk over the choices.

My brother and his family visited our parents for Christmas, and were driving home on Sunday, so yesterday we went to his home in Maryland for dinner.  My brother cooked an incredibly delicious dinner of fish and mussels, which was so good that there were no leftovers at the end of the meal.  We exchanged gifts here as well, small gifts for the kids only, and we played games with his family until it was time to head home.

My daughter and I are headed up to my parents' house on Thursday, to spend a few days visiting them.  Then, next week, we have to get back to our normal schedules of work and school.
Today was an incredibly beautiful day on the mountain...blue skies, bright sun, temperatures as high as you would want them for skiing.  We managed to catch the lift to the highest terrain here just minutes after it opened for the first time this week, which allowed us to make a run in untouched, deep powder before it was completely chewed up by hundreds of other skiers.  It will undoubtedly be the single best ski run of the trip, possibly of the winter, and certainly makes the list of all-time best ski runs!

We ate out tonight, our one dinner out for the trip.  We asked a local to recommend a good place for barbeque and his recommendation was spot-on.  It was a delicious dinner in an almost empty restaurant with a friendly staff.  I ate *way* too much food, but I expect that I'll work it off tomorrow on the mountain.  We've been told that the resort is all but deserted on Christmas, which means that we should be able to make the most of our day, without having to wait in line for any of the lifts.

It is going to be a little weird not doing any of the traditional Christmas things tomorrow, but it didn't make sense to cart presents all the way out here to unwrap, and then lug them home again.  We'll open presents and such when we get home on the weekend. 
I took the day off from work yesterday, at the request of my beloved, to help her with the last minute gift shopping.  Not exactly my idea of a wildly fun day, but we were pushing hard up against the time limit and this was about the only way it was going to get done.  We were gone from the house for most of our daughters' school day (about 9am to almost 3pm), looking for the last few gifts for tomorrow.  For the most part we were successful...we even managed to find a GPS unit for my wife (it is SO much easier to buy gifts for her when she's right next to you for consultation!).

The one thing that struck me, though, was the almost complete lack of crowds.  Here we were, two days from Christmas, and, for the most part, the stores were deserted.  The first mall we went to felt like a ghost town.  Except for the half-dozen new mothers jogging around the concourse with their babies in their strollers, the place was deserted.  About the only other people at Sears were the employees, looking bored nearly to death.  One whole section of that mall's parking lot had been rented to a car dealership to store their surplus inventory (I think it speaks volumes about the economy that a mall has space in its parking lot to rent to a car dealership during Christmas shopping season...as does the dealership's need for such storage space).

The second mall we went to was almost as bad.  I'm so used to having to fight through masses of people rushing to finish their last minute gift shopping that it was a bit surreal to be in a large mall with only two shopping days left before Christmas and find ourselves almost alone.  However, the lack of crowds made it much easier and less stressful finishing our own shopping.
Christmas eve was the quiet before the storm. The following two days would be a blur of activity. I am a Boxing Day baby (though I wouldn't know anything about Boxing Day until adulthood!), and my mother was a Christmas baby. So, great we went to great lengths to make sure that no one felt cheated out of any celebrations!

The exhausting tale of Christmases past, ResQgeek-style )
I wish I could post a Christmas photo from my childhood, but my parents still retain custody of the childhood photo archives. I'll see if I can't dig through them while visiting next week, and maybe I can post picture(s) over New Year's weekend.

Memories of Christmas eve as a child )
Okay, here is a picture of our Christmas tree:



This year we decided to set the tree up downstairs in our big family room. We'll have more room on Christmas morning, and the wood stove will make the room nice and toasty. In previous years, we set it up in the living room upstairs, in front of the bay window. We'll see how it works downstairs.

BTW - the tree skirt was hand quilted by my father!
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Last night I was sharing [livejournal.com profile] martip's polar bear post with my wife. Her reaction was an immediate and enthusiastic "I want one, too!" Which I guess sets our household firmly against the prevailing demographics, as I'm inclined to think such decorations are a bit tacky. In any case, I quickly quelled any impending plans to acquire a similar display for our yard by reminding my wife about our unfortunate history with lawn decorations.

Shortly after buying this house, we came into possession of a lighted nativity set (I can't remember if it was a gift, or if we purchased it). We attempted to display the set for several years. The first year, someone stole the infant figure during the night. My wife was pregnant with one of the Qgeeklets, and when she notice the missing figure, she called the neighbor and announced "Someone stole my baby!"

It took some effort, but eventually we were able to replace the infant figure (without having to buy an entire new set). We survived a couple of years without further incident, but then our nocturnal visitors returned. Not only did they take the infant, but our Virgin Mother figure vanished as well. They also attempted to take additional figures as well, but apparently left in a bit of a rush, as we found them scattered across the lawn and one of the Wise Men was in the ditch along the road about half a block away.

That was the final straw. As much as I really would prefer to have a Nativity display, we decided it wasn't worth the aggravation of worrying about the vandals. So now I limit my outdoor decorations to some icicle lights along the front of the porch, some multicolored lights in the azalea bushes in front of the porch, and a wreath with a red bow on each porch column. At least our history with vandals gives me ammunition to fight any trends towards tackiness in our decorating efforts.
Well, somehow I survived the holidays! The week before Christmas this year was probably the most stressful holiday lead-up I've ever experienced. Not only did we do almost all of our Christmas shopping in the last week, but my wife and I had a couple of really nasty arguments. With a great deal of effort, everything came together, and my daughters had a great Christmas. I was completely exhausted Christmas night, but somehow still managed to get much of our luggage packed for the pilgrimage to visit my parents in upstate NY. Thankfully, traffic was light on the 26th, and we made good time, arriving at my parents' house in time for supper.

Had a few great days in NY, relaxing with my parents, visiting old friends, watching my girls enjoy the snow! Unfortunately, my wife had to work Friday evening, so our stay was much too short. My wife always worries about traffic or weather delays when we travel on days when she has to work, so we got an early start. Traffic was pretty light until we reached southern Pennsylvania. There, I decided to take the shorter route through the Baltimore area, which might have been a mistake. Almost from the moment I committed to that route, the traffic got ugly. While the volume didn't increase greatly, the drivers were MUCH more aggressive, cutting people off, tailgating, etc. Needless to say, I was extremely happy when we reached Northern Virginia and got off the highway.

My New Year's Eve was spent unpacking from the trip to NY and putting away Christmas gifts. I also spent some time online, updating my BookCrossing bookshelf. I had releases to enter and four new books to register (my mother shopped from my wish list!), and needed to send some Private Messages about some stalled bookrings I had rescued from a friend. After finishing that, I retired for the evening before the New Year actually arrived in my time zone.

Yesterday, my daughters and I took down the Christmas tree and packed all the decorations into the attic for another year. Made a trip to the grocery store to buy the makings of dinner for last night and tonight (my wife worked every night this weekend, so I had full domestic duty for the duration, as she slept all day yesterday and today; last night, I cooked steak with a crab sauce and tonight we had a creamy bratwurst stew that had cooked in the crock-pot all day). I also tried to spend some time playing with my daughters, as it recently occurred to me that I don't spend enough time having fun with them.

Tomorrow, unfortunately, things return to our routine. My older daughter has to go back to school, and I have to head back to the office. I'm hoping that I don't have a pile of bad news waiting on my desk. In fact, I'm really hoping that things will begin to turn around at work, so I can stop spending so much extra time at the office. If so, I should be able to help out around the house more, spend more time with my family, and maybe even get some writing done.
With a big effort (and some minor arguing), my wife and I managed to complete our Christmas cards over the weekend so they could be mailed today. Our printers are now getting a well-deserved break after printing over 100 copies each of our card, the letter that will be inserted and a wallet size picture of our daughters. The Christmas card thing is always stressful, but this year it was complicated by the loss of our mailing list. We upgraded to a new computer earlier this year, but hadn't taken the time to transfer all the data from the hard drive in the old computer. About three weeks ago, the old computer refused to boot up, giving us a "hard drive not found failure" message. We verified that the BIOS was properly set, and then went in search of someone with a set of Windows95 (yes, the old computer was OLD) recovery disks. Finally, one of my wife's friends (who understands the inner workings of computers way better than I do) took a look at the machine. Apparently, our hard drive is DOA, and there is no cheap or easy way to recover the data therefrom. So, yesterday afternoon was spend digging through old records and making phone calls trying to determine what everyone's current mailing address was. Great fun! Somewhere around 9:30 last night, I finally sealed the final envelope. My wife will be taking them to the post office to mail today.

Except for one. All but one of our Christmas cards are being mailed within the US, and my wife can buy the stamps from a vending machine, thus avoiding the LINE at the service window. Unfortunately, my youngest brother and his wife live overseas, so that their card needs to be sent AirMail. The vending machines at the nearby post offices don't sell individual stamps in AirMail denominations, so I had to stand in line (after all it is MY brother!) this morning to mail one Christmas card. I went early, but the line was still out to the door. I waited 30 minutes to buy my 80¢ stamp. I'm just glad I didn't wait until lunch hour, because the lines will be longer then. Next year, I really have to try to remember to buy the stamp early, so I have it when the Christmas cards are done (of course with my luck, the US Postal Service will increase the rates after I buy the stamp, but before I can use it!).

So one more item to cross of my list. Now if I could just figure out what to buy everyone, I might be able to go shopping...
Its taken me almost three hours to compose, but I've finally got something I like. Here is the text of the letter that will be enclosed in my family's Christmas cards this year:

The holidays are rapidly approaching, and once again we find ourselves running out of time to prepare for the festivities. In the midst of the all theses preparations, its easy to overlook the meaning of the holiday. Christmas should be a celebration of peace and love, a message that remains as timely as ever.

We were reminded of this message last weekend, as we visited the “Hershey's Sweet Lights” holiday exhibit in Hershey, PA. As we drove past the numerous animated light displays, one, in particular, jumped out at us. Its message seemed to be exceptionally timely, and we snapped several pictures of the display. One of those pictures ended up on the front of our Holiday Cards.

“Celebrate our Differences” read the display. While this doesn't seem to be a traditional message for this season, it struck a chord with us. With all the strife in the world today, from the war on terrorism to the political mudslinging of the electoral process, it sometimes seems that we've forgotten the holiday message of love. Our differences have been used to drive wedges between various groups. This troubling trend immediately came to mind when we saw this display.

One of mankind's greatest gifts is our diversity. It is through our differences that we can reach beyond our individual experiences to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our world. If we had no diversity, if we were all exactly the same, we would lose much of this ability, and we would be left with a much shallower understanding of our place in the world.

In order to benefit from this diversity, we must accept and celebrate it. We don't have to always agree with those who differ from us, we don't have to like them. But we must respect them, and we should listen to them, for we just might learn from them. If we all could share this respect for one another, despite our differences, then there just might be a chance that we could experience a little of the “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” proclaimed by the angels on the first Christmas, so long ago.

May each of you have a joyous holiday season. We hope that everyone finds an opportunity to relax and to reflect on the spirit of the season. May you each find you own ways to celebrate our differences.


This is the picture mentioned in the letter:



Hershey Sweet Lights


I remember when I used to enjoy Christmas. The excitement of decorating the house, putting up the Christmas tree, wrapping presents. The impatient waiting for Christmas morning, when I could finally find out what was in all those gifts with my name on them. The novelty of enjoying a new toy, of playing a new game, trying on new clothes. When did Christmas change?

Now Christmas is mostly a season of stress. I've been trying to get myself in the mood for the holidays, without much luck. I really haven't done any gift shopping, though I did manage to get my wife the digital camera she wants. I forced myself to design this year's Christmas cards, which have now been printed. Last night, I tried to write the annual letter to include in the card, which was a complete bust. I stared at the screen for the better part of an hour, without composing much more than a sentence or two. I simply don't know what I want to say to everyone this year. Wait, that's not true...I kind of know what I want to say, but I couldn't figure out how I want to say it. I'll give it another try tonight, hopefully with better luck. I need to get it done soon, so we can print copies of the letter, stuff the cards and letters into envelopes and get them into the mail.

I dread the shopping I have to do. My wife insists that I do the gift shopping for my family (which is fair), but I don't exactly know what to get many of my relatives. Beyond that is the stress of actually shopping this time of year. The weekend before last, I went to the local big box chain store to pick up a single household item. I stood in line over twenty minutes to pay for my $2.00 item. Then I had to navigate the car through the chaos in the parking lot before I could head home. Anyone willing to bet that the shopping environment has gotten less stressful since then? Didn't think so.

I watch my daughters as the big day approaches, and I envy their excitement. If only I could enjoy the season the way they do. It seems like such a long time since I was able too. Over the weekend I tried to express my dissatisfaction to my wife, but I'm not sure she truly understood what I wanted. I would love to simplify Christmas. Forget the presents (except maybe a couple of small gifts for the children)--What I really want for Christmas is some quiet time for reflection, to think about the past year and plan for the upcoming one. Time to enjoy my family, without worrying about the chores that need to be done. Time to relax, unwind, and forget about my worries, at least for a while.

Probably not going to happen, at least not this year. My holiday is looking to be the usual hectic schedule. Extended family obligations call, and so we run from one place to the next, worried about whether the gifts we bought will be appreciated. I'll probably eat too much food and get too little sleep. And when its all over, I'll have to come back to the seemingly endless stress of my job. Heh, Merry Christmas indeed.