26 December 2010

On the Feast of Stephen

Despite the dire predictions on the weather, we woke to find only a breezy, chilly day; the wind crept under your coat and down your neck with iced fingers. The snow gave everything a nice frosty look, but even the side roads were dry and clear. We drove to Kroger in an off-and-on swirl of flurries that were leaving small, perfect flakes on windshield and car sides. Plus Radio Classics still had some Christmassy shows on, including a Bing Crosby variety program. We stopped at CVS on the way there, and Walgreen on the way back, looking for bargains, but just found a little china grocery to go under the library tree and two automatic candles—LEDs that you turn on at a certain hour, they burn for eight hours, and then turn off until that same hour the next day, and run until you shut them off. I suppose I need to go buy enough tinsel to replace what I used this year (about two and a half boxes) since you can't reuse it any longer.

We had a gathering to go to this evening, so we just had a light lunch and relaxed this afternoon. I thawed some of our turkey soup—there was a method to my madness, as we needed the space the soup was in for the little cups of ice cream we bought—and we had it with leftover rice. Watched More Crazy Christmas Lights, with folks decorating in Brooklyn, the Bronx, dairy country in California and also at Newport Beach; Lewis Black's special on surviving the holidays, peppered with comedians like Richard Beltzer, Rip Torn, etc., which covered from Thanksgiving to the New Year; plus the Christmas Keeping Up Appearances where Richard is supposed to get dressed as Father Christmas (but Emmett gets him snockered), and had the St. Thomas concert on when it was time to leave.

Well, it's a good thing I checked e-mail before we left, because there was one from this morning saying the gathering was canceled because of the ice on the road. We were a bit flabbergasted, because we didn't see a speck of ice anywhere this morning, and the wind and the dry air had evaporated even the little bits of ice that were on our front steps and in front of the garage. We were really disappointed, because we were so looking forward to getting together with everyone!

Anyway, there wasn't anything defrosted for dinner, so we ate out at Ken's, the Waffle House-like grill near our house. I had pork chops, as always, with just some tomato slices. Yum! Then we drove to Barnes & Noble to use our 25 percent off coupons.

When we arrived home I continued the DVR marathon. (Oh...yeah. Turned the DVR on this morning and the sound was working again. Yay and grrrr at the same time.) Watched Nonna, Tell Me a Story, which was Lidia from Lidia's Italian Kitchen telling stories about her childhood in Italy with little limited-action cartoons and baking sequences thrown in; European Christmas Markets, which went to Christkindl Markets in Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland, and Christmas to the Extreme, with things like Bronner's in Frankenmuth, MI (huge Christmas store; I wanna go!), the fruitcake toss, extensive light displays, a Christmas hotel, etc.

No comments: