The Many Tides of Yule

[la_belle_laide]

So this, then, was the holiday season of '11. I quite liked it. I got a tree for the first time in three years, and it was a good tree, not too tall or short. In fact it's still up – gotta take it down Sunday, really, along with the rest of the decorations. I hate that.

I got to spend time with people I see all the time and still want to see more, and also with people I haven't seen with in a while.

The 22nd, a Thursday, was our Kung Fu party. We haven't done one of these in a few years, either. It was swell to get back into that. We went to the grill around the corner from our school, after class. When we all came in wearing our uniforms, the waitstaff got goggly-eyed. One of the servers said, "Are you all Shaolin people?" We're not, but that's what people tend to think. She laughingly asked us not to break anything, and said she loved our "Gi uniforms." Or Ghi or whatever the Karate ones are called. "Wear the Gi with pride," she said. No one corrected her.

The food was delish, the laugher was sincere (because the jokes were funny,) and the dessert was shared. At the end, The Empress and I took our traditional Bad Angle Photo, which we do every time we all go out together.













On Friday the 23rd, I got to hang with my two best friends from high school. (Tangent: I did have two more friends in high school, and one of them I still hear from sporadically, and the other, I don't know what became of him. His name was Jimmy; He was teenytiny, played guitar, and we used to go out to lunch every day and do stupid things like photocopy our body parts, loiter around the candy stores, break bottles against the wall of Pergament, set fire to leaves, and generally act the fool – but we never got caught.)

ANYway, these two friends I still keep in regular contact with, after, what, 23 years now? Durga moved to Washington (we lived in Seattle as roomies briefly in the 90s, and she loved the state and eventually went back,) and Drex lives close enough that we still get together now and then, mostly for video games. So, Durga had come up for the holidays to spend time with her Mom, and she came by here for a few hours. I invited Drex along, and we had the old gang back together. Drex brought over a 30 gallon fish tank he has no more use for. We went to my Mom's, had pizza, and laughed until we cried. Holy crap, Drex can really tell a story and get everyone larfing all the larfs.

I had to work early the next day, and the mini-party ended around 1:30 AM. Before they left, we took pictures in front of my tree, re-creating the Nativity. ^_^







I worked on Christmas Eve. One person tipped me double, another didn't tip me at all. I guess it evened out.

On actual Christmas, Mom and I took turns visiting Boychild's Mama/Boychild/Mom's side of the family at their house across the street. (Boychild's Daddy was working a double.) CeceAnn was there with her three kiddies, and also my Aunt, the one who was in the car accident this past year and lost her leg. It was good to see her smiling and looking well. I went over there while my Mom watched Haku, and then I took Haku back to mine and my Mom went for her visit. She brought over Grampa's shirt to give to my aunt.

Boychild's Mama baked up a storm, which I am still eating, actually. The adults played with the kids' toys, and for the third time in one week, I laughed until I cried.














And this is where I laughed myself dehydrated: here's Mimi having a helluva time trying to say "Ghostbuster."

Then Xmas night, That Guy I'm Seeing came by in his new (well not new-new) truck. We had some egg nog and I gave him this gold paper crane I had made, with a tag that said, "drive safely" in Kanji. Except the paper crane looked really dorky and he thought it was a pterodactyl so we decided it would be a lucky, golden pteranodon instead.

I worked on the 26th and 27th. To all my clients and co-workers, Christmas was over, but I still had one more gathering. SB, Jo-chan, UD (their Dad, my Uncle,) and Boychild's Mama with Boychild all went to my Mom's for belated Xmas dinner.

There weren't a helluva lot of gifts going around, but what there was, was awesome. Pajamas, socks, handwarmers, things like that. Some people don't even get those, you know. I had given SB and Jo-chan their gifts already, last month. It was Skyward Sword, and who wants to wait for that? I had also pre-ordered them ages ago, and got one for Boychild, too. When I gave him his Skyward Sword game, he danced around the room singing, "OH YEAH! OH YEAH! I GOT IT! I GOT IT!" I just missed recording that; it was awesome and totally worth the wait.

Boychild had gotten, from his parents, a replica Master Sword and Hylian Shield, which everyone had to take turns playing with, especially my Uncle. He's pretty much as big a gamer as I am, maybe even bigger.

One other important thing that happened was this: For a long time, my Mom has been trying to get Dad's music/interviews/rehearsals/ramblings from reel-to-reel onto CD. The reels are ancient, and so are the players, and she had no way to convert them. SB is majoring in music and he's got this incredible wealth of technological knowledge, and resources too. So SB and my Mom spent hours in my Dad's music room, not only figuring out the RTR (and a few of us sporadically came and went to help out – I actually remembered how to set up the RTR! WTH!) but mostly it was SB and my Mom, talking about my Dad (his uncle) and this and that. He's a really good boy who was extremely close to his uncle and I think this was a nice thing for both of them. I love that he gets to help preserve—really save—my Dad's music and history. But, that was only the preliminary "this is what you need to accomplish this, and this is how it works" thing, so he'll be back to actually upload them one of these days.

Also, I got Jo-chan what I thought was a really fly gift, and she was totally pleased with it. A few weeks before, we were hanging around talking about which type of character we would be in the world of Legend of Zelda. We all agreed she'd be a Kokiri. She wondered if anyone had ever made or sold the "Kokiri Emerald" from Ocarina of Time. I was so dang thrilled to find one for her on Etsy. So that was really awesome, too. And my Mom get her an Adiposian from Dr. Who, because the three of us watch that show together.

Boychild, for the first time ever, picked out the gifts he wanted to give to everyone, from the store and from his pre-school sale. For me, pink pajamas and awesome socks, along with a Santa Clause ring. For my Mom, pajamas (I forgot which color!) and black socks, and a keyblade charm from Kingdom Hearts. For Jo-chan, pajamas with kitties on them and something else which I forgot. For SB, Ninja Turtle pajamas. How he knew that SB is the biggest Ninja Turtles fan ever and has been since the womb, practically, I will never guess.

Pics!




































And that was that. Now it's Friday, and I have work tomorrow, New Years Eve. But that's cool, I don't do NYE anyway; it's not my thing. I don't ring in the new year or anything. In fact, I'll either be watching Torchwood or Dexter, or I'll be in bed reading the new King book. I'm about a quarter of the way through.

Oh, probably about a quarter of the way through Skyward Sword, too. Two of my cousins finished it in days. Me, I like to stretch it out as long as possible. Like today. Instead of starting the new dungeon, I walked around with the Gust Bellows and blew on all the NPCs I could find. I posted it to Tumblr and somehow it became very popular. (Not as popular as my "Tenth Doctor/IT IS DEFENDED from the pepper spraying cop" Meme that I did, which ended up on the official BBC Tumblr with over 3500 reblogs. But still popular. ^_^ )

And now, onto 2012/Year Of The Dragon. I will keep working, recording, reading and playing, keep writing, keep querying, and I will KEEP ON TRYING TILL I RUN OUT OF CAKE.