The kid let us sleep in this morning.
Best gift ever.
It was an accident, of course. He stayed up late and then overslept.
The gifts have now been opened. The kid ended up happy with an amp for his electric guitar. He saved up and bought the ax himself, a Gibson Les Paul, but couldn't afford the amp. So we got him that and a large LCD TV/Monitor for his room (really, how do you expect a kid to vaporize aliens on a small screen?). My wife is happy with a new camera, jewelery, and an addition to her Christmas village. I got tools which I am quite pleased with (especially since they followed my explicit directions to the letter). There were gift cards and other cool things from the grandparents. My wife filled our stockings with exotic chocolates and strange little treats, as she does every year. We exchanged the traditional gifts of socks and underwear (longjohns, actually, a gift we Alaskan are always grateful to receive). Hell, I even got a poster in the mail yesterday, Princess Leia in her bikini, which made me laugh hysterically - it's a sort of inside joke, having to do with a running gag within the UCF that was set off several months ago by some spectacularly unfunny events on a blog site that shall not be named - and strangely enough when the posters arrived Star Wars was playing on the living room TV, how's that for a bit of Christmas coincidence?
Now the house smells of bacon and coffee, and my wife is making scrambled eggs.
After breakfast I'll put on the ham - and by "put on" I don't mean I wear it on my head like a hat, I mean I put it in the oven with sliced apples and cherries and brown sugar. Mmmmm ham.
Then, it'll be phone call time, if we can manage to get a line out of Alaska today and there's enough bandwidth to support video calling. We'll see.
Christmas day here at Stonekettle Station is well underway and pretty darn good.
How about you, how's your Christmas working out? Get anything good?
I got the CIA book 'Meat' and Thomas Keller's 'ad hoc' funny about how things I did want are useful to my wife.
ReplyDeleteShe got totally functional gifts, a digital camera with 'food' setting and jewelry from Tiffany's. I've only had one woman kvetch that the jewelry wasn't functional and I'm not married to her any more.
Congrats on the poster, I'm surprised there was only one. She also comes in a porcelin statue.
I have the CIA's "Vegetables" book. Don't have "Meat." (CIA in this case means Culinary Institute of America, for you dirty unwashed).
ReplyDeleteMy favorite cookbooks by far though are Darina Allen's Irish cook books, I have most of them included the Ballymaloe Cooking School manual, followed a close second by the Culinaria series, of which I have every single one - with the exception of the mythical England and Ireland which was only published in German and released in Europe before Konemann publishing went belly up. Best cookbooks ever, NTSC, they're getting harder to find, but the Konemann Culinaria are just awesome books.
And the poster was enough, no reward in throwing any more gasoline on that fire. I haven't gotten any hate mail in a couple of weeks, but I still get link throughs to Stonekettle Station on a daily basis from that particular site. A least one a day.
Well, since we're doing our Christmas next week when we could all converge at the parental abode, I don't quite know yet.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the new boss did bestow a generous gift card for one of the local primo restaurant groups... enough for two people to do some serious culinary damage. Yummy! Next guestie that comes to town will get a real treat! Seriously, besides having fabulous food, these are the eateries here where most nights you can do some real celeb-spotting whilest you eat.
Merry Chirstmas everybody!!
Things I'd mentioned that people heard - A drill index from 1/16" to 1/2" by 32nds, 5x7 standalone / USB picture scanner so I can digitize all my oldies. Then there was a home brewing kit, and a can of WD-40. Best of all though, I got to see my parents as relaxed as I've ever seen and a grin from my 9 month old niece, just for me :)
ReplyDeleteGlædelig Jul everyone!
theed - thingth on topth of bagelth that you get thtuck in your teeth.
peace and quite once i shut my phone off, on my own for the first time and am very much enjoying this day all to my self
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteHeard from the in-laws, who *love* the birdhouse and have it up in their cabin in the Georgia mountains. Action pics will be forwarded.
I woke up early to soak the ham in warm water for 90 minutes, which America's Test Kitchen assured me would let me bake it for fewer minutes per pound and thus be juicier. And the hot water was out.
Brown sugar, honey, vinegar, mustard, cinnamon, clove, pepper, allspice, bourbon, nutmeg glaze on this end after scoring the beast and poking it all over with cloves. Apples or orange would have been included but I was apparantly brainless yesterday.
I'll look for those cookbooks you mentioned, thanks for the mention.
No Leia poster, alas, but I did get a radio control helicopter from Think Geek, which is my first radio control toy ever, oddly enough as I'm an electronics geek.
Socks! Four pairs of socks! Also, I got to see my grandson on Xmas eve. The best gift possible.
ReplyDeletemoving furniture, setting up an office, drudgery and labor, oh it's Christmas, schleping metric butt tons of crap, pulling cable, drilling holes, oh let's go to the movies (Avatar rocks). Eat ham, schlep more crap, book the rest of my weekend with painting and more schleping, escape and flop. Yeah pretty much like any day, except the movie. Merry Christmas.
ReplyDeleteJim
ReplyDeleteI'm a link through from that particular site, although I don't go there much any more. Batshit crazy is batshit crazy.
skiho - my ex
It was primarily a DVD Christmas for me. The Star Trek reboot, Public Enemies, Dr. Who The Complete Fourth Series, Benny Hill The Complete Megaset The Thames Years 1969-1989, some more Three Stooges DVDs. Also got some music, some clothing, Grinch pjs from little relatives, and a few odds and ends.
ReplyDeleteI spent it driving. ;) There was some torrential rain on the way out, and some snow sprinkles when I was almost there, but in between it was nice and clear. Also, cold. o.O I was somewhere in northern Georgia when a gas station TV said "and it's warm, at 36 degrees!" and my first thought was "why am I going north again?" It was nearly 70 in Savannah the day before.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, well, I had dinner with NeuronDoc and her family on Christmas Eve. :)
We got (among other things), The Iron Chef Cookbook, which looks like it has some really good recipes. Will report back. I got a Barnes & Noble Nook (their E Reader)...well, actually, they're on back order til February, but I played with one at the store and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love it.
ReplyDeleteWe (well, GF) baked a whole ham and...hmmmmmmmmmm! It came out excellent and we should be finished with it by the time the Nook shows up.
:)
Christmas was good this year. Actually got all five of us under the same roof on the same day which is never easy. Presents were exchanged and everyone got something they liked (which is also rare and I do know when they're faking it). Excess food was eaten excess liquor was drained and the only thing people went short of was sleep. All in all a perfect family christmas day.
ReplyDeleteflation: an economy that doesn't know if it's in or if it's out.
I got books! And boots (I picked out myself) and chocolate and cashy money.
ReplyDeleteAnd you were allowed to out me as the humorless sexist git who sent you the Leia poster.
What you give those who work on holy days.
Y'know, that definition looks really out of place without the word verification sabitipp. :)
ReplyDeletelistio cleans your drains and makes your shopping easier
Best actual present: underwriting of my trip to the Netherlands earlier this fall.
ReplyDeleteBest holiday moment: coherent conversation with my father-in-law, who has Alzheimer's. He'd told us all at lunch that we had to get out of his house or he'd shoot us, because that was his house. (All his guns have been at my house for quite some time!) But a bit later he had a long conversation with his son Nick, and I told him that I was Nick's wife (close enough, after 14 years but without legal sanction, especially for a conversation such as that), and he said that I was welcome to visit whenever I want.
That may not mean much if you haven't had the "Alzheimers experience", but it was truly special.
yosmo: The new slow-motion toy for those without enough manual dexterity for a full-speed yo-yo.
My dad got the birdhouse, and was mightily pleased. He's tempted to keep it in the closet until spring, to enjoy the cedar scent.
ReplyDeleteMy best gift: Carrier DVD (from the PBS series.)
My weirdest gift: a 4-foot long sunfish pillow, complements of Bass Pro Shops. (My nickname's fish, and I usually get at least one fish-themed present.)