It was just the two of us at home, totally crashed and relaxed. This morning I talked to my friend who lives around the corner and as she said of her husband and herself "we haven't showered yet and we might never get around to it".

We had a lot of leftovers from our Christmas Eve dinner, plus cookies from various friends, plus all kinds of other holiday goodies, so we just kind of grazed our way through the day and watched some episodes of the Nero Wolfe series that were originally broadcast on A&E. If you're a Wolfe fan, they're great. Timothy Hutton is spot on as Archie, and Maury Chaykin is wonderful as Wolfe.

Oh, and I washed the floor in the front hall and kitchen. Whooopeee!

Hopefully somebody out there did something more holidayesque/interesting than the two of us did....

Friends over for dinner last night, to bed pretty early. MFR and The Princess were up before me, which is unusual.

Opened presents, had a great breakfast, hung out, enjoyed some time on the deck at 60F, took a nap, talked to family.

Dinner of my neighbor’s fantastic marinara, now hanging out with wife and daughter. All in all a lovely relaxed day. And I’m glad Christmas is over as usual.

Don made french toast and bacon for us. Then he went to bed. He did not feel well.
He got up at 11:30. We exchanged gifts.
Don went back to bed.
Xmas dinner reservations were at 3:30.
Don was not better. He is sick.
Bob and I went to dinner. Had the duck. The first disappointing entree at that restaurant. in 20+ years.
After the entree we moved to the rathskellar for dessert.
The new waitstaff guy came in and started the fire in the big fireplace.
The fire alarm went off. The draft had not been started. The youngster must be new to fireplaces. It was smelling smokey.
We ordered desserts.
The noise continued until after dessert.
It was noisy and annoying.
When we got home Don was still in bed.
Worried about him. Have seen him weather worse.

The snow started in Santa Fe on Christmas eve.

St. Francis Cathedral

Woke up to a White Christmas.

Some views:





Made a simple ham with lots of fixings.

I miss NM Christmases, tamales and the smell of pinon pine smoke. Enjoy your holidays, P*D!

Mary Anna made breakfast, then we went to a movie doubleheader of Little Women and Star Wars, with a break for sushi in between. And then we watched my holiday tradition of Love Actually. An excellent day.

Little Women was amazingly good. I am in awe of Greta Gerwig as a filmmaker.

Mostly outside things. Wandered around the cemetery in Recoleta, saw Eva Peron’s resting place among others. Saw some amazing rubber trees (photos on FB). Went to a couple neighborhoods known for colorful houses and murals.

Then saw the Star Wars movie. The boy loved it, Rachel and I laughed in ways the writers didn’t intend. I’ll be happy when he outgrows this and I can go back to ignoring this franchise like I did from 1981 until maybe 4 years ago.

The trees I mentioned.

Not a Kapok tree - he can lean against it

In the morning, did hands-on tutorial with the kids on how to put up a web service on AWS.
Then Christmas lunch and afternoon gathering with the extended family.
Then in the evening, theoretically reviewed with the kids what went on in the AWS tutorial and a quick demo on how else to stand up a dynamic web server without the likes of AWS.

The 24th was our "sit around" day.

Yesterday was busy from wake-up until midnight with 2 major family parties with some hour-long drives between for downtime. Ended up with a rousing discussion as our youngest was trying to convince us about the inherent evil of capitalism and how better communism would be...

The interesting piece is that our middle is engaged to a guy from Poland who lived under communism and could push back against the things our youngest has learned through his internet echo-chambers...

Makes me wonder how deep into the fabric of society social media has been shaped by propaganda coming from outside of our country??

"If you're not a communist at 20..." as the saying goes.

We got out the chain saw, the bow saw, and the limb loppers and got to work on the pine forest out back. Since I won't be able to ride or exercise Deva for 3 months, I want her to have additional turnout, but the forested area we've fenced in is full of horse hazards.

So we cut down dead branches and staubs and made piles of them in the snow. We also put up some woven wire fencing to keep roaming dogs out. And we let Deva and Simon in with us so we could hang out with them while we worked. They were very happy to explore different territory and raced around, playing in the snow. It was also good for getting them to not care about the chainsaw noise, as I'm often on trail rides where one is in use.

Our Christmas was our gift to ourselves of ten days in the tropics. This is the first year we've done no decorations, no parties, no morning gift exchange. I would have been happy to exclude the entire ruckus from my consciousness, but to do so I would have had to stay offline.

Next year, with a new knee on board, I hope to be in a country where they dont celebrate this holiday. Maybe after I've had enough of a break--or grandchildren arrive on the scene--we'll resume with the tradition.

In the meantime, bah humbug!

On some reflection I think my new distaste for this holiday is quite possibly a reflection of the current political situation. Delusional Christians have hijacked the country, and I am pretty sick about it.

quote:

AWS

Amazon Web Services?
Advanced Warning System??
Autonomous Web Services???

We had a lovely day, starting with cake at 10am

The weather has been great, so we went out and enjoyed a walk and explored new places to walk. Had some phone calls with family, I played the piano, Mr SK made a Japanese dish (o-den) for dinner and then we watched a movie together. All in all, a very relaxing day!

Today we've been cleaning to moving things around in preparation for my mother, who is coming on Friday, and then we'll spend Saturday baking and then Sunday is our open house. So yesterday was pretty much the quiet day and then the next few days are going to be a whirlwind of activity.

Last minute decision not to travel to Massachusetts to sister's house so Martha and I hung around at home and exchanged a few gifts. By dinner time kids with others and a gandie descended on us for gifts, shrimp cocktail, Prosecco and chocolate. Kids were up very late in the hot tub with more Prosecco, so there were just two of us at breakfast this morning. Takeout fried seafood for all for dinner tonight.

jf