Christmas Day, 2012

Back when the kids were little, they were up bright and early and ready to start sorting the packages so they could see how many each one had gotten, piling them up in front of themselves like little forts.  It's good to see that they've outgrown all that silliness.

Almost.

They certainly don't get up bright and early anymore, having adopted a night-owl lifestyle.  But they still like to sort through the packages and create little piles in front of each other.

After breakfast.

Our tradition has evolved over time so that we have a big breakfast on Christmas morning - knowing that we're going to have a big Christmas dinner sometime in the later afternoon - which is something we never do on any other day of the year.  We just aren't that much into big breakfasts, generally because everyone is getting up early for school and then heading off to catch the bus at different times.  And Adam is on his own up at college.

So it was kinda nice to have everyone sitting around the table with pancakes and bacon and eggs and all those other traditional breakfasty foods, then get everything all cleaned up, then head over to the living room in front of the Christmas tree to see what Santa had brought us.

We always take turns opening gifts.  That's why it helps to have all the gifts sorted in stacks before we begin, so then we can go from one person to the next more easily.  The only problem comes when one or two people run out of gifts before everyone else.  Typically the parents run out first, but that's OK.  We're generally the ones who purchase things for ourselves when we need them anyway.  So the kids get an extra round or two of opening gifts.

This year went well.  Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts.  No one felt short-changed.  But then I expect that they're way past the stage where the getting is the important thing anymore.  They're maturing quickly these days.

Christmas Eve

I had to work on Christmas Eve.  That's the price to be paid for a new job when there has been no time to earn any vacation yet.  And with this particular job, there is no automatic two-week winter holiday.

I could sure use it, though.

There weren't a lot of people at the office on Christmas Eve. Most everyone else has been at the Company for at least a year and have earned the time off, and they took advantage of it to take the day off.  After all, with only one weekday between Sunday and Christmas, why come in at all?

So the office was nice and quiet.  That doesn't guarantee that any work actually gets done, of course, but at least it's easier to think straight.

After work, there was a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping to do, then a bit of Christmas Eve dinner cooking.  We also are supposed to go to the Christmas Eve service at church, but since the food isn't quite ready - and Deb isn't feeling well - Cheryl stays home to finish up the dinner preparations while the rest of us pack into the car and head for church.

The service is ... interesting.  Personally, I'm in favor of singing all the traditional Christmas songs.  In the traditional rhythms.  But that isn't the way it turns out.  Oh, well.  It kinda works.

Then we head home to have our family Christmas Eve dinner, which was quite yummy.  Followed by a traditional movie feature: The Bishop's Wife.  The Cary Grant version, not the modern one.  And then we close out the evening with our traditional opening-of-Grandma-Green's presents.  Which are always new pajamas for the kids.

Christmas List(s)

Titania's Dress

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state; And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;

- A Midsummer Night's Dream

For a school project, Mary created a dress for Titania, the Fairy Queen in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It was quite a little project.

Cheryl was happy that Mary was going to spend some time behind the sewing machine.  The problem was getting Mary to the sewing machine.  There were so many other things going on, including concerts and tests and quizzes and all the other things that need to get done before Christmas Break.  Guess it kind of slipped her mind.

So she and her mother got to work, selecting the pattern, deciding which variant of the pattern to use, shopping for materials at the fabric store, pinning on the pattern, cutting up the fabric, pinning the seams together, stitching all the pieces together, and then taking a break because it was time for dinner (or bedtime or something).

And they kept that up for several nights.

And other things kept interrupting.

And then, when there was no time left to do it, suddenly it got a lot more complicated.  Not the wings; she'd always planned to do the wings (and they were actually kind of simple).

No, it was one of those sewing things.  Gussets or stitches or something.  (Don't ask me - the only thing I've ever sewn is G.I.Joe clothes, and that was more years ago than I'd care to remember.  And no machine work.)

The little metal rings where the lacing goes through - what do you call those things? - they didn't stay on very well.  I think the holes were too big so there wasn't enough fabric to hold onto. But Mary had fun putting them on.  All twenty-four of 'em.  Or was it forty-eight?  I can't remember.  But she sat at the craft table and pounded on the 2x4 block with the stamper thingie and got 'em all on. Mostly.

It was after eleven o'clock on Sunday night when the dress was finally finished. I didn't get a chance to see it before I went to bed. And then I had to leave for work before seeing it the next morning. Cheryl took Mary to school so she didn't have to carry it on the bus.

From what I heard later on, the dress was a big success at school.  I suppose that means it earned her lots of brownie points.

 

 

 

Getting Ready for Christmas

Thursday night was the annual Christmas - er, Holiday concert.  For the middle-schoolers.  And Mary was all dressed up and ready to go.

The concert was a lot of fun, not so much for the songs they sang, which were done well and with great spirit, but for the people who were there.  The choir director is the same one with whom I worked to put together the Pirates of Penzance play.  And many of the kids in the choir were the same wonderful kids I worked with in the play.  It was a very pleasant reunion.  Although I had to resist the urge to jump up there on stage and sing along with them.

As it turned out, Cheryl and I did get to play a role in the performance; we helped out in the audience directing the kids where to sit, and how to stay quiet while the other groups were singing.  Middle-schoolers have a tendency to talk at every opportunity, regardless of what else is going on around them.  Or in spite of what is going on around them.

We were supposed to start working on our Christmas cards on Friday night, but everyone was very tired from the week and there just wasn't enough energy to go around, so instead they did other things. I pulled the tires off the red Subaru and checked the brakes because something is making a noise every time I press the pedal.  The brakes all looked fine, but the front right drive axle boot was cracked, which means that it needs replacing.  So I spent the majority of the evening researching the steps necessary to replace it.

But in the morning, I decided that there just wasn't enough time, given all the other things that needed to be accomplished, so instead of doing it myself, I called up the Firestone place up the street and had them do it for me.  And, while they were at it, they put on some new tires.  (After all, the previous ones had over 120k miles on 'em!)

Then it was time for Mary to work on a dress for a school project - she's putting together a costume as 'Titania' from A Midsummer Night's Dream - and for the rest of us to write those Christmas cards.  After we find all the addresses. Where did we put them??

Meanwhile the cats were enjoying the fire.

 

Twenty Mile Scout Hike is ... Over!

And I survived!  Barely.

We started out at 8 in the morning from Mason's house.  It had been snowing, and was snowing still. There was snow everywhere on the ground, but not on the sidewalk; it was still too warm to stick on the cement.  I didn't take any pictures on the way because the snow was wet and thick in the air and I didn't want it all over the camera.

We walked on the sidewalks along the main roads, heading west for about three miles, then south for another two or three miles, then east for five or six miles, then north again, then west again, then north, then east.   Half-way along, we stopped under a highway overpass to rest; a couple of miles later, we stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant.  The last leg was about eight miles.

My right hip and knee were really hurting by the time we got to the half-way point, but there was no turning back.  We had to keep going.  So I adjusted my walking style to favor my gimpy leg, and hobbled along.  By the time we ended our little venture, about three-thirty or so, my right leg felt like it was going to fall off.

But we made it.

James, who had come to Mason's house to pick me up when we were done, took the picture of me, Mason's dad, and Mason. Three happy-go-lucky guys with a successful twenty-mile hike under their belts.  Only two more ten-milers to go!

I hope we don't have to do the next one on snowshoes.
 

Garage Roofing

After quite a busy week, it was a relief to come home on a Friday night and having nothing of any consequence to do.

The new job is still in the "interesting" phase, not yet worn through to the "why can't I find a real job?" phase (which is sure to come sooner or later).  I'm doing some very exciting things (not).  Spreadsheets and such.  Budgets.  Spending.  Invoices.  Accounting.   Goes along with my Electrical Engineering and my Computer Science degrees.  Not. 

Still, as Mary Poppins would say, in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun; you find the fun and !pop! the job's a game.

In this case, the game is, don't screw it up.  People are depending on me to get their paperwork right so they get paid on time.

But the only fun I can find is the fun of coming home and heading out to my garage and making stuff, even if it's useless stuff.  (Or nearly useless.)

Today, I cut up some OSB boards to make some ceiling panels for my little shop so that I can insulate it and keep the place warm through the winter (if we ever get a winter).  I've still got to finish up that Subaru engine, and it's painful to work on engines in the winter if the garage is cold.  So I'm hoping to insulate the little shop enough that I can keep the metal parts warm and thus avoid frostbitten fingers.

Tomorrow is the Boy Scout 20-mile hike.  We're doing an urban hike tomorrow because it's easier than driving twenty miles to a recreation area and THEN walking 20 miles.  But it will be tough on my old feet, which don't like pounding pavement for long periods of time.

But I'll bring along my camera and see what sights there are.  Other than squished roadkill.

Meditating on God's Handiwork

When depression rears its ugly head, making me feel full of dread,
and wanting just to go to bed, it's time to click a link instead.

Yosemite Webcams

Aaahhhhh...much better now.
 

A Sobering Sadness

One of our dear friends from Seattle lost her husband this past weekend.  In the prime of his life, at forty-five, with a loving wife and several wonderful children, he died of a heart attack.

It is especially poignant for me because this particular family had settled in Glen Allen, Virginia, and were attending the church where I had grown up (although it has moved from Hermitage Road to Three Chopt).  They had become friends with many of the people I remembered from my youth.  Which is kinda weird, considering that we had met Wendy and Tim back in Seattle.

Small world, indeed.

Now the news came through Facebook that he has suddenly died, and the family is left with no insurance and no savings and no income (I believe they are a Navy family and had been relying on his income).  I can't imagine what that would be like.

They have started a fund for Wendy and the kids. I hope it is enough.
 

The Pirates of Penzance, Jr.

For a three-performance run, we didn't do too bad.

The first performance was full of nervous children, so we were expecting some issues.  The second was much better than the first, as we were aware of the problem areas and had prepared for them.  And the third, while not as difficult as the first, was performed under the shadow-fact that we were almost done, and the kids really just wanted to get it over with and move on to the cast part.

Hey, it's middle school!

As I mentioned previously, we discovered on Tuesday that the kids were not prepared to execute the complete play, as we had neglected to rehearse sufficiently for the finale; so we made up a new, shorter ending.  Consequently, when we had our Dress Rehearsal on Wednesday morning with the elementary school kids (about 200 of them), we used our fake ending.  However, since the kids hadn't had a chance to practice it and drill it into their heads, they kinda forgot.

So instead of going through the dialog where the Pirate King tells the Major-General that they'd found out he'd lied, and they were going to make him pay, and then the Sergeant knocking his sword away and saying, No, We charge you Yield in Queen Victoria's Name, the Pirate King bypassed all that and went straight to his next line: We Yield at Once, Because with all our faults, We Love Our Queen.

He did a great job, too.  Dynamic, loud, well done.   Except that, without the preceding dialogue, it made no sense.  He had his sword on the Major-General.  He was ready to take the fatal swipe.  And then he suddenly announces, out of the clear blue sky, that they all give up because they love the Queen.

The elementary school kids didn't notice; they didn't understand half the dialog, and the only thing that really caught their attention was the fight scene.  But we adults were laughing our heads off. It was too entirely absurd.  And comical.

But we really didn't want to see it on Opening Night.  Not really.

So, after a yummy pizza lunch, we spent the afternoon practicing all the rough spots and tweaking the scenery a bit.

On Thursday, Opening Night, everyone was nervous, but we didn't realize how nervous until the scene with Frederic and Ruth.  Frederic froze.  For thirty seconds.  Couldn't remember his line, and couldn't figure out a way to ad-lib it.  So he just stood there.  And we (adults) held our breath.  And died inside.  I tried to get the stage manager to whisper the line to him, but for some reason that didn't work.  Eventually, he moved on - one of the other pirates walked out and whispered it to him.

After that, things went more smoothly, but we still had a couple of glitches.  And many of the songs were off by a half-beat or so.  The kids faces were mostly deer-in-the-headlights faces, unable to relax.

That was OK, though.  Opening night is usually a bit rough. The next night was much better.  They must've went home and practiced like crazy, because they nailed most of it.  Frederic didn't hang on any lines, the songs were (mostly) on the beat, and they nailed our last-minute, made-up ending.

We were very hopeful about the Saturday matinee.

I'm not sure what happened.  Like I said, perhaps they were thinking of the cast party instead, because they messed up a couple of times.  The Pirate King decided to have a complete memory block for thirty seconds, just like Frederic had done before.  And no amount of prompting from the wings availed.  The songs were all having issues.  And they jumped lines twice.  Unfortunately, the second time was during the finale, when the Pirate King repeated the glitch from Thursday and skipped some very important dialog.

But we finished.  And the kids realized it wasn't that big a deal.  Their parents still loved them.  And showered them with praise.  And they still had to tear down the set and clean up the stage before we let them go to the cast party.

Maybe now I'll get some time to work on my car.   Before the snow falls.

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To see the Dress Rehearsal photos, go to SwobodaPics.  And look for Mary!