I Wonder As I Wander...

Allow me to express first my most fond wishes for you and yours to have a wonderful holiday. If you're reading this, you are someone I care about (even the kith and kin of the normal posters who find themselves reading this, you are by proxy and 'relation' a 'Whom' I wish only the best for). Now let me in on my past week of holiday misadventures. As was rumoured on every news source known to modern man, we did indeed recieve the 'Storm of the Century' Wednesday night here, and I was trapped, literally could not leave, work for 31 hours. Oh the joy. And to complete the picture, I want you to understand I was completely and utterly alone, having volunteered to stay behind and keep vital systems operating. Vital like keeping water running through pipes to avoid freeze-and-breaks and neo-vital, like keeping IT systems running and monitoring core temperatures and other vaguely sci-fi like missions. I stepped forth past the line in the sand and volunteered with the understanding that after 16 hours (of which 5 had already passed) I would be releived by one of my crew who has a truck that is not only 4x4, but upwards of 16 feet off the ground. A SnowCat would be the only other preferable mode of transpo under such circumstances. It was all going to be a peice of cake. But, as all who have had the best intentions lit on fire under them as they rode said intentions to safety and into sunsets know... That pig will not fly. A long 16 hours into my seclusion, not only could I not get out of the building, but my savior in his mighty metal steed could not get out of his own driveway. So, nearly double that time later, and a special request costing I dare not guess how much, an entire crew of tractors and shovelers were hired to not only get me out of my impassable fortress, but dig out my car and create a path to the main roads just for me to pass. Now that I'm not 31 hours into a sleepless fever dream I question the decision that was made by authority's much, much higher up my totem pole to enact such a drastic and expensive calling for a cause such as me. But, at the time I was slowly driving away it all made sense in an opiate like way.
Now, rested, recouped, and ready for this very favorite holiday of mine, I take some time to offer my thoughts. I have discovered that on the Boomerang Network today, they offer up all the "Classic" Christmas cartoons. "Classic" as in the cartoons we watched when we were kids. And though quality is hit-or-miss, it's still a blast watching. I'm sure that "A Flinstone Christmas Carol" is likely the yardstick all other Dickens ripoff cartoons measure themselves against. A true "Classic". And I like to think when I was young, I was savvy enough to see "'Tis The Season To Be Smurfy" as the drivel it is. But most likely, NBC was able to spoonfeed that crap to me. If it was brightly colered and animated then I would devour it with mine eyes like a pig at a trough of the finest swill. I hold no illusions about myself... Once I learned it is neither the 1950's, nor am I Dean Martin, no matter how much I wish it were so, that is.
So tomorrow morning, my beautiful wife Tellulah and I will open gifts, and as has become the tradition for us, we will have "24 Hours of A Christmas Story on TBS" on (for literally all 24 hours, how this particular tradition came to pass I neither know, nor care to change it). And as always, I will have bought her at least one political humour book by the likes of Al Franken, PJ O'Rourke, or Bill Maher, and one serious politcal study by people I care not to know with degrees in things I could NOT care less about. And as is tradition, Tellulah will have gotten me at least one something Star Wars, and at least one something that you place into a video game system and allows you to shoot such "evilies" as Nazis or Imperial Stormtroopers (maybe this year I'll get a game that lets me shoot both!). And we will say it was the best Christmas ever as we gaze on our tree. And then we will make the rounds to the various parties and dinners we are invited to every year, where I will act as much like Dean Martin as I possibly can, and Tellulah will let me. And next year, we'll do it all again, saying it was the best Christmas ever.
Now I must go and finish wrapping Tellulah's presents. I found a brightly colored, almost animated like, wrapping paper with sayings like "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" and other festive one liners, that I need to figure out how to cut and fold so that all the gaily cheerful sayings are making vaguely suggestive remarks.

Merry Christmas. Love you all.