jimsjournal
A Christmas meme -- 12/10/06


Well, we're slowly making progress...

Did not accomplish any Christmas decorating yesterday -- spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to find a hotel room in New York City for one night during the last week of the month. We want to visit with Adam and Leah and Sammy (that's son, daughter-in-law, and grandson for those of you who just wandered in from Holidailies) and also Bev's friend Steve Schalchlin (and partner Jim Brochu) have opened their show The Big Voice in New York. After reading about this show on Bev's journal for a year or two now (and also reading Steve's blog -- hey, this guy has been on the Web even longer than I have) I just had to see it (and that was before the NY Times gave it a rave review).

So we made plans for our visit and we ordered theatre tickets... now we needed a hotel room. There are some hotels that have special deals with my employer and we can also get those rates for personal hotel stays -- so I called and found that there were no rooms available in my first choice... nor my second choice... nor my third choice... and so on...

With two computers at my fingertips (one at the Priceline Web site and one at the AAA Web site plus other browser windows open to a Google map of Manhattan plus the Web sites for the various hotels so we could see something of what they looked like) I searched and searched. I know New York is expensive, but I really did not want to pay four hundred dollars for a one night stay in a hotel. We wanted something more convenient to either the theatre or Rockefeller Center or Penn Station that was (if possible) under two hundred dollars... and finally ended up with a two star hotel (yeah, but it was under two hundred a night) about seven or eight blocks from Penn Station... and I only realized later that it was only a couple of blocks from the hotel where we stayed when Sam was born so I probably could have saved two or three hours by just calling that place. Ah well...

In the meanwhile, as you can see from the photograph, we did manage to bring the tree inside today and got it set up in the living room. It's just that it doesn't have any lights or ornaments on it. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...



A Christmas meme that I got from Bev who got it from Cobb who got it from The Anchoress who got it from The Waffling Anglican who got it from The Clam Rampant

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate. I don't drink hot chocolate very often, but sometimes in winter when you come into a warm house after spending time out in the cold sledding or snowman building or snow shoveling, there is something very special about wrapping your cold hands around a mug filled with hot chocolate (especially with mini marshmallows in it).

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa wraps them and puts them under the tree, silly. Then he fills the stockings.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?  Colored lights on the tree and white lights outside.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?  No. 

5. When do you put your decorations up? Yesterday and today. *grin* Usually within a day or two (or three or four) of getting our tree. We used to do more decorating, putting up things all around the house, but that was when Jill and Jeremy were little kids.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? One dish? Can't name just one thing. It is like a small rerun of Thanksgiving -- turkey with dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce. It's like a package deal.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? I loved the magic of the whole season from the moment my father got out the colored lights and through making Santa lists and Christmas caroling and decorating the tree and coming downstairs on Christmas morning...

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?  I honestly can't remember.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No.  Christmas morning..

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
First the lights go on (because otherwise ornaments would get knocked off when you try to put the lights on). then the ornaments. The only real rule is no tinsel.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love it! I absolutely love white Christmases. (Okay, ask me in mid-January as I'm shovelling out fourteen inches of heavy snow from the driveway and I will not be quite so enamored of the white stuff, but I love it for Christmas.)

[That's enough for one entry... I'll continue it tomorrow.]



Blasts from the past -- It's strange, but in a decade of writing, I've never before posted an entry on the tenth of December.:




My Holidailies entry number ten!
A brief introduction....
A brief introduction to anyone who wanders in here for the first time from the Holidailies site -- I'm a middle-aged (*cough* okay, 63, but I don't look a day over 62 ) guy who lives in Rhode Island with my wife Nancy (a middle-school math teacher), daughter Gillian ("Jill" -- 24 yr old college student), son Jeremy (21 yr old college student), and Tiger (senior citizen cat). Eldest child Adam lives in New York City with his wife Leah and our grandson Sam. I'm a former programmer/systems analyst who got into doing software training and currently works from home doing quality assurance and editing on course material for both classroom courses and Web-based training courses. I've been writing this online journal since 1996. (If you read some of the archived entries, until a couple of years ago I used fake names for the kids -- "Sean" = Jeremy and "Jennifer" = Gillian)



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