The Tease of Things I Don't Need

If These Be Holidays..!

My holiday (ie time off from work) only started Thursday night, which puts me one up on the kids since they had a full week of school, including Friday.

Still, here it is Sunday night - Christmas - and I'm only now getting to some time that's completely at my disposal. I expect it to go quickly, too. What I need to do is make sure I do some things I feel good about between now and the end of the year. If I just piss the time away the post-new year emotional drop's going to be close to fatal.

I have had some fun along the way, though.

While work kept me late on Wednesday night, just past 10 I heard a door being unlocked and then two voices, one of them a woman's laughter. Abbygal, which made the other voice Crypt Leak. He had a box in his hands -- which I was actually relieved to find out wasn't Christmas presents, as I was by no means ready to reciprocate at that point in the month -- filled with soil samples from another office that had gone momentarily forgotten in his car's trunk. (No worries, as it was something I could still easily finish on schedule.) A-Gal had a quart container of rocky road in her hand. She wins.

We sat around and talked for a while about a variety of things and people which even I know better than to repeat here, had some ice cream, and along the way brought up Anagram Genius - which I hadn't been to in a long time. They've polished it up, and while their aim is still to sell a product and so it'll only provide one anagram for a given word or name, it's generally a good one. Inputting my first and last names gave me what would either be a tagline from a personals ad one should steer clear of or perhaps a movie title to be avoided almost as strongly: Clean, hot minor. A frequent commentor here may be amused to find that his name returns "I am a grand nerd," which he's likely to not only agree with but embrace. One of my sons came back Controversial hitman, so mind your places; I get a family discount. My other son? His came back Harlot's adrenal connexion.

The disruptive duo left about 90 minutes later, I resumed work, finally shutting the place down about 1:44 am (I'm always checking the time) and headed home. I was back in work before 8:30to take a wobbly-legged amble through the final work day before the holiday break. That enabled me to clear out work so that - so far - my plans for time off next week. (Ideally, I'll go in for a probably very full and long Wednesday, but after that I can hopefully stay away until Tuesday, January 3rd.)

In early afternoon I took a break and Mike T. (my assistant) and I walked over to Charlie's Pizza in the strip mall next to work to get a couple slices of pizza. I was a little hungry and otherwise needed to get some air and a brief change of scenery.

Charlie, the man himself, was there and one of his daughters working the counter. (I hadn't seen her before, but she called him "dad" so I made a brilliant deduction.) At the end of one of the sales she innocently told a customer "happy holidays" - and ol' Charlie went off like a loaded gun. Apparently Charlie's not only a FOX News fan (judging by what the tv in there's on part of the time) but a Bill O'Reilly one, too. He snapped at her. "Chistmas! As in Christian! Christ!" and then rattled out a jumble of nonsense about a Christian nation, and how he didn't care if Wal-Mart was afraid to say "Christmas" because it might offend the minorities working for them. It was all we could do to hold ourselves together until our reheated slices were boxed and handed to us and we could get back outside.

So - flashing ahead momentarily - Saturday night after closing I printed up some signs in a 72 pt font declaring "HAPPY HOLIDAYS!" and "MERRY X-MAS!" and taped them on his door and window, including at least one placed high and center on the window. I wish I could be around when he comes in tomorrow morning for the post-Christmas opening and has a conniption. Judging by the rant he launched into Thursday he'll likely still be foaming at the lips a few days after he sees the signs. Come to think of it, I'll probably be in the area Monday morning both as I forgot to submit my timesheet and expenses for last week, and I'll be passing by there on another errand, so we'll see.

Backing up a day, on Friday I took care of some errands - albeit on a tighter schedule than I'd envisioned. I was exhausted from the week and slept through my alarm. I swung by work to give Mike T. (who was working in order to shift the Christmas Even holiday into next week) a present -- he's a comics fan, too, and had given me the Showcase Presents: Metamorpho volume as a Christmas present the day before. I knew he was looking for some comics I had extras of, so I made up a package of those and various other extras going back to about 1976 that I thought might be of interest to him. He seemed to like what he saw, and I hope he'll enjoy them as he gets to them. As someone who only started to get into comics circa 1990 everything in the pack was "old" from his perspective.

Eventually I made my way back to Levittown and took my mom out to a big lunch/early dinner -- something I should have done a long time ago and more often. She desrves it, and she needs to get out of the house more often. She didn't have any preference as to place or food -- other than not wanting to have something heavily spiced -- so I decided a steakhouse would be a good call. I went with one that was nearby, a Lone Star Steakhouse location. I ordered some appetizers and a couple steaks with baked sweet potatoes with cinnamon, sugar and butter, preceded by salads. The idea when hitting these places is to order enough food that by the time the entree hits one eats a little of it and has the rest packed up for later that day or even sometime the next. We made a long time of it there, then I drove around for a while while we talked. As I said, she needed some time out, and it felt good to do something for her. She was aghast at what the tab was, which was a mix of her not getting out much in recent years and it being a steak house. That'll teach her to be more particular about what she wants to eat. Next time I suspect she'll suggest Burger King and we'll haggle our way to Olive Garden or somesuch.

After I got her home I headed more or less homeward, but for various reasons I won't go into here I decided to head into work anyway. It would be quiet there, I'd have net access, so aside from someplace to stretch out and nap it was as good as home.

I get there and find that it wasn't as quiet as I'd expected. Two of the geologists from the inspection department were there (Laura and Eric).., and so were Crypt Leak and Abbygal, having stopped by for something. It all conspired to make me feel like I have more of a life than I suspected...

Before long they enticed me to come out with them (sans Laura, who had to get home) for dinner at El Cancun. I wasn't hungry initially, but habits and dachshund-like eating reflexes are deep and strong. We had a good time, and loose plans were made for a game night over at A & CL's place sometime soon.

Aside from the kids and I making a Christmas Eve trip back to see my mom again and bring her a gift, I've covered most everything else in last night's entry. Today saw some sleeping in, a slow start and early dinner at the in-laws. A gray Christmas day turned into a rainy one, and here it is, a Sunday night that doesn't feel like any particular night. I have some minor errands to run tomorrow morning, but that's largely on whatever schedule I decide, so - finally - I've reached something like an actual vacation stretch.

Now what do I want to do? Take a little nap and not worry about schedules if I'm up at 3am and wanting to work on something.

Yeah, yeah... this is Mr. Excitement, signing off. Merry Christmas, all!