Holiday Recap

You know, it’s kind of odd that on the night of a major holiday that I don’t spend a page writing about the meaningfulness (or commercialization) of the event. Instead I write about old Nirvana songs. Sadly, that is probably a more genuine feeling from me than if I wrote about a group of people who for some reason thought that wearing belt buckles on their hats was a very wise fashion choice. It’s a bad sign when you are thrown out of England for “not being cool enough.”

It was a pretty calm holiday. It came down to traveling to visit my family or dinner at Chili’s and while it is the place where fun and family meet, there is something about having my Thanksgiving dinner served with an inordinate amount of flair that seems rather unappetizing. It was really good to get home and see everyone for a few days. Since I moved out here that has been a rarer and rarer occurrence and I’ve learned to appreciate the times I do get to just relax with my family. Plus, in what must be the first time ever, both of my flights were on time and I had only minor waits to pick up my luggage. I’m now officially dreading my next flight because it is going to have to be a disaster just to even things out.

(Well, maybe the ND game was the disaster that evened things out. Yeesh, that was not fun to watch. We always seem to be about a step slower than those teams, which is a bit of an issue for our defensive backs. I was actually at the game the last time we beat USC and at the time it really didn’t feel like that big of a deal. Maybe I should have realized that we needed to savor the moment at the time.)

And, in what should come as a surprise to no one, I pretty much spent the entire weekend avoiding shopping malls. I can not understand people who will camp outside for Black Friday sales. Nintendo Wii debuts, that I can see waiting for due to its unrivaled awesomeness. But to get a discount on a DVD player at Target? Is that worth losing sleep over? That said, I just do not have the mindset for shopping in those environments. I walk into a mall with a gameplan, complete with primary and secondary objectives. If a store does not contain one of the items that I require I will not even glance at it as I going hurrying past. Shopping isn’t meant to be fun, it is time that should be minimized at all costs.

Well, unless you are shopping for electronics. In that case, you really need to test out every system before you determine the best one. And music stores don’t count because until you go through every rack you can’t be certain what gems are hidden. But that’s not shopping, that’s enjoying life.

Time to readjust to life in an office. It was so nice not having to set an alarm for a few days.

The five random CDs of the week:
1) Jack Johnson “Brushfire Fairytales”
2) Nina Simone “At the Village Gate”
3) Michael McDermott “Bourbon Blue”
4) Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub “Blue Notes”
5) Robbie Fulks “Georgia Hard”