Wonderful Christmastime

Christmas eve. The night before Christmas. Sugar plums and ginger bread. In my case, it was Nyquil and hot tea, but to each his own. I don't remember if I mentioned it in my mast post or not, but I am sick. As a dog. For the last week my allergies have seemingly been hyper sensitive as my nose and throat seem to be out to ruin my holiday. The cold finally hit the 23^rd, the night I was out with my mom doing last minute shopping. That was not fun at all. Especially when she takes a side trip on the way home to stop by the grocery store for milk.... and then buys several bags worth of groceries..... but forgets THE MILK. She then tells my brother to go get it. He obviously declines. I realized later why she did that. When it was later brought up how she forgot it, she was able to place some blame on him for not going back to get it. Clever.

Christmas eve kinda sucked. The morning was devoted to cleaning the house in preparation of family coming up from the city to stay the night. It especially sucked since I was sick and weak and just wanted to sleep. I spent most of the time sitting on the couch under a blanket with my laptop. We went out for lunch, which was ok. Service was slow, burger was dry, blah. Then came some opening of presents before the obligatory christmas eve mass. An hour and a half of drifting off into thought. Sandwiched between rather unpleasant car rides through the freezing weather. I REALLY didn't want to go. But if I didn't, I would never have heard the end of it. That evening I got my borders GC, the star wars DVDs, a t-shirt, a couple sweatshirts and some cash. I also got spiderman 2 which I promptly regifted to my cousin because I wanted the collectors edition box set thing. I specifically told my mom not to buy me any movies or anything for that very reason. On top of that it wasn't even widescreen. *sigh* o well.

Christmas morning I was up at 7 am. Along with every 6 year old in the country. Only I was getting dressed and packed for our trip. I got Layla ready and dropped her off at my uncles for her stay while we are out of town. In the meantime the truck was loaded and everyone was good to go. They were aiming to be gone by 7. I predicted we wouldn't leave before 9.we were out of the house by 8:45. pretty damn close. I opted not to drive as I was somewhat tired and wanted to read / watch a movie on the laptop (it was then, about 20 miles from home that I realized I had forgotten my power inverter) so I read for a while, and just before Livermore I took over the helm. I ended up driving the rest of the way down. The weather wasn't too bad. Some light fog, but it cleared up. It was still damn cold. We stopped twice, once for food and once for gas. We arrived in Bakersfield at about 2:30. Not bad when you consider it usually took us about 4.5 hours from SF non-stop, only this time we were an hour north of SF and we made 2 stops. I guess thats what happens when you travel christmas day.