Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!

I am at work right now, it's been a quiet, peaceful day spent at a truly enchanting spot. A co-worker of mine came in for a few hours and brought his lovely, polite young daughters to keep him company. They left a couple of hours ago, so I have the place to myself. Yeah, we may be understaffed and overextended to a certain extent, but I really can't complain about my circumstances.

Last night, I had Christmas Eve dinner with some great good friends, a family that I'd known since I was a young-un. Stopping by on Christmas Eve for a couple of hours was always a tradition- my characteristically nice friends had a Christmas tree buying routine that would have matched a De Beers diamond merchant's techniques for ruthlessness... they would go to a lot where some poor schmo was selling trees around 5 PM on Christmas Eve, and offer the guy five bucks. Invariably, the guy would say, "That's a thirty dollar tree!" and my friends would respond, "There's nobody else here on the lot, is it a five dollar tree or a zero dollar tree?" They'd bring the tree home, and, in a fashion that would have made Tom Sawyer envious, they would throw a Christmas Eve tree-decorating party. Even when they were still in high school, they had this devious scheme down pat. Their callous treatment of Christmas tree vendors aside, they have always been unfailingly hospitable, generous people (their house, like ours, had an "open door" policy- nobody was turned away). Anyway, I went over to their ancestral abode for Christmas Eve dinner (including Yorkshire pudding made by a Yorkshire native) and a heaping helping of nostalgia. My friends' spouses and kids were over, so I got to hang out with three generations of my awesome extended family at a time I couldn't get out of town to be with my nuclear family.

I'm grateful to have such awesome friends.

4 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Glad to hear you got some cheer.

I have the week off, so only two weeks of annual vacation disappear to the salt mine demons.

Our annual Christmas Tree ordeal involved going off to cut down a real tree on Mount Airy, Md. The perfect one as determined by mom would be as far from where the car was parked as possible (and weigh a gazillion tons). Once it was finally dragged and driven back home, we'd inevitably have to lop much more off it just to get in the door to the house.

!!!
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Just get a bigger door!

Glennis said...

Sounds like a wonderful time, and isn't it great to maintain such lasting relationships?

The Christmas eve discount tree purchase is something I did once on a memorable Christmas eve while living in Manhattan a long time ago.

We haven't been buying trees in recent years, but this year we decided to go ahead. Our plans were delayed by the rain last weekend, but Thursday afternoon we brought in our tree. Now it's waiting for our son to come in this afternoon and help us decorate it - it will be a short-lived Christmas tree, but beautiful.

Sorry you have to work on Christmas, but at least you had a pleasant time of it.

Substance McGravitas said...

I got a rock. Oh wait, wrong holiday.