Christmas

Holiday Viewing

Did you know that Iron Man 3 is a holiday movie? I didn’t and I have watched it, albeit several years ago, and don’t remember any Christmasy stuff in it. Well, Plex remembers. When I open the app there on the home page was a section entitled “Home for the Holidays” and Iron Man 3 was right there.

I cued up the movie and watched it. Sure enough there are several scenes that have Christmas decor in the background. In my humble opinion there was not enough to push this to be classified as a holiday movie. I probably last watched it on DVD way back in 2013 when it first came out. Maybe I even got the DVD as a Christmas present that year…still not a Christmas movie.

There were 3 other titles, of the 150 or so movies I have digital copies of, in that “Home for the Holidays” category. And one of those is also a controversial pick, Die Hard. I say no, but the listing gave me an excuse to watch the movie again. Yippie-ki-yay.

Movie number three was definitely a Christmas movie, Elf and this movie is a yearly watch. And we watched it on Thanksgiving weekend when Donna’s brother and family were here.

The last of the four, but not least, was Bad Santa. And I didn’t watch this one this year.

What was conspicuously missing from that list, it even has the word Christmas in the title, was A Moody Christmas. There are two possible reasons for its non-inclusion in the “Home for the Holidays” list. IMDB lists its title as The Moodys without the C word. But probably it is because it is an Australian TV series and TV is already home viewing. This is also a yearly must watch for me during the holidays. There are just six half hour shows with each one covering a dysfunctional family’s annual Christmas lunch in 6 consecutive years.

Happy 200th Anniversary of Publication

The now famous Clement More poem ‘,’ was written in 1822, but first appeared in print a year later in the Troy (NY) Sentinel and has become better known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. While the original version is still published annually in quite a few newspapers, , and here on Life of Brian in 2003, it has been adapted and modified by various groups trying to make it into their own holiday poem. In the early 2000’s, someone with a lot of free time collected as many (849) as he could find and published a webpage listing them all. It was last edited in 2013, so who knows how many more there are now.

Back in 2014 I found a Miata one of unknown vintage on the Flyin’ Miata website, purveyors of all kinds of Miata goodies…

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Counties,
The Miatas were parked, warm and safe from the Mounties;
The driving gloves had been packed, with loving care,
Knowing that next Spring they would still be there;

His ‘n her Miata owners were nestled snug in their beds,
While visions of forced-induction danced in their heads;
And mamma in her FM shirt, and I in my cap,
Were planning next year’s drives on a dog-eared road map,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I dropped my Miata Musings to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

What I saw made me weep and shook me to the core,
It was a Velocity Red Mica Mazdaspeed Miata, a two-thousand and four!
With a tall thin man driving, like a bat out of hell,
I knew in a moment it must be Bill Cardell.

“Now, ELVIS! now, TRACKDOG!
now, FILOU and TORO!
On, ANGEL on BABY!
on, CUZI and PHOENIX!
To the point of that apex!
cut the driving edge fine!
Now make that last mad dash!
all the way to the finish line!”

And I heard on the roof the sound of much fun,
The squealing and chirping of Toyo RA-1’s.
As I grabbed the car keys, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Bill came in with a bound.

He was dressed all in Nomex, from his head to his toe,
With tight fitting driving shoes so he could shift just so;
The sunglasses he wore sparkled with a dancing light,
And I thought to myself “How the hell can he see at night?”

Around the room to the stockings he raced,
Leaving Hard Dog Deuce bars and a FM Cannon Brace,
I even saw under the tree, by a moon so low and so pale,
Nothing less than a Da’Lan hitch and a brand new Tire Tail!

Bill was ready to leave, “Other slalomers yet to go!”,
And make his way through the white winter’s snow.
But he left mine till last, ‘fore he went up the flue,
I found in my stocking a brand new FM-II!

He sprang to his droptop, blipping the throttle with a roar,
And I knew right away the 2.0L was stroked, not bored.
I heard him exclaim, ere he squealed out of sight,
“KEEP the needle at REDLINE and CUT the corners Tight!”

Giant Penguins Rule

I can not explain it, but out of all the Christmas decorations around my neighborhood (big, small, gaudy, tasteful) this, for some unknown reason is my favorite.

When I voiced this sentiment to my bride a couple weeks ago, she said, “See how much they cost.” I replied, ” I bet those folks have had that for awhile and you probably can’t find it anymore.”

She did a quick search and didn’t find, so I tried “10 foot tall inflatable penguin”, and found it at Home Depot for $79. We both agreed that that was too much.

I told her I’d check for after Christmas deals and see if it is half price. I looked on Sunday morning and sure enough it was marked down to $35, but it was sold out online and no store around had them either.

This not a disappoinment at all, as while I really like it, I don’t want one of my own for a few reasons.
1) Our front yard is just a small sloping patch and this thing would overwhelm it.
2) Can’t go in the driveway because there wouldn’t be any way to anchor it down.
3) If we put it on the front deck you wouldn’t see the bottom half of it because of the railing.
And most importantly
4) The house this one stands in front of is only 4 blocks up the street and it would violate the neighborhood IPDA (Inflatable Penguin Density Allowance.)

Merry Christmas

Please accept – with no obligation, implied or implicit – my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference.

In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2021.

Caution! Bridge Freezes Before Roadway

We went for a morning walk along a section of the OC&E Trail that we hadn’t been on yet. I wanted to walk someplace different and we both wanted something paved, so as not to have to remove the very cement-like mud from our shoes that developes this time of year.

Plus there were a couple geocaches to find along this 2 mile section. We found the first, but didn’t find the second. Although the temperature was still in the upper 20s at 10:30 AM, the sunny sky and near zero wind made for a pleasant stroll.

The afternoon was spent watching NFL football. Every time there was a commercial for Black Friday or Cyber Monday I would wonder what they were talking about. Maybe because I found it hard to believe it was still Thanksgiving weekend having had our turkey & fixings meal a whole week ago. And between lunch and dinner today, not counting the white bean turkey chili we still have some of, all the leftovers are gone.

I printed out return address and address labels, then stuck them on the envelopes, for our old school Christmas cards. While Donna, bless her heart, hand wrote a short to medium personal note inside each and everyone of the 46 cards. They go out in the mail tomorrow, so if you don’t get yours in the next 4 or 5 days, you must been added to the naughty list this year.

Christmas Decorating Comes Early

We have been buying Christmas gifts for the past week or so for the nieces and nephew up in Washington state. We should finish up tomorrow, but they will need to be wrapped before mailing. Trouble is we are unsure of how much, if any, wrapping paper we have. All our Christmas stuff was packed up after the end of the holidays of 2018, then packed into shipping crates in South Carolina in early October 2019, unloaded in Oregon in January 2020, only to be stored away under the stairs unseen.

Well, if we were going to go down and root around in the half dozen or so boxes of Christmas stuff looking for wrapping paper, we might as well drag it all out and start decorating…its close enough. The tree went up yesterday along with all the other seasonal bric-a-brac bits. We also took those multi-colored string lights we bought here last year to decorate the AirBnB and encircled the big picture window in the living room. Today we hung out the small yard flag, the big porch railing flag and wrapped that railing with some candy cane colored rope lights we bought last year at the after Christmas sale at Home Depot.

While we were decking the halls of Casa de K-Falls we were going through of all those boxes of Christmas stuff and weeding out things that we no longer liked or didn’t have a place for and set them aside. Today we donated a couple boxes worth of holiday decorations to Goodwill. Hopefully someone else just might want them.

Merry Christmas Snowflakes

They are going to have to drag my ass out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2021 and you better hope they check my luggage on the way out, as I have become quite fond of Remington’s bronze “The Bronco Buster” statue…