Christmas Notes
Christmas 2001
journey home? - 12/23/2001
- Well, we headed home (?) for the holidays Saturday afternoon. Home. Is it really? I guess for me it is still, though I miss our friends back in Phoenix. I’m torn now… Everything here is familiar, well-known to me… and yet I miss our new home too. Strange.
- Jodi and I got a lift from Kenda to the airport - Sky Harbor in Phoenix. Interesting that in the middle of the desert the airport is named after a non-existent body of water. The long flight was from Phoenix to Charlotte… USAir has definitely slipped in the standards department. On a 4pm to 9 pm flight, we got no more than a snack. And no movie.
- I did have the luxury this time of pulling out the TiBook and hacking on some WebObjects code, while Jodi plugged in my headphones and listened to my mp3s.
- All in all the travel was uneventful. Security measures at Sky Harbor were a minor annoyance, and no one really complained much. There was that bit in Norfolk about the 100 bags that had not made the transition during the 30 minute layover in Charlotte. After standing in line for 45 minutes to register our lost bags, we got to the beach house, and our bags came the next evening
- Good thing, too, because one of ‘em had all the Christmas presents in it.
- Christmas was… wow. I mean, we’ve got 15 people in the house, including the two infant nieces. Opening packages was hectic. There was no order to it , none of us know about half the presents given to the others, since at any one point there were about three presents being opened.
- I did get some cool loot. Especially nice was the t-shirt from the Port Norfolk based Angel’s Coffee Shop. The t-shirt was dyed in coffee, and emblazoned with the “Born To Be Wired” logo. Awesome.
- But the best present I got…
- Had to be the shirt that Jodi and her grandmother Becky gave me. Some history, first. Back in ‘97 I got my ears pierced. (I was living the bohemien lifestyle in Germany, and it seemed like the thing to do.) I simply cannot wear gold, and I’m allergic to stainless, so I went with sterling. I’ve had the same sterling silver hoops in (except for cleanings) since then. Aaanyway, I decided then that I really really liked silver.
- So one day I decided I needed a silver shirt to go clubbing in. I had not seen anything like what I wanted in stores, so I had a seamstress friend of mine pick up a few square meters of the most amazing silver satin fabric I have ever seen. I swear it flows like water, or mercury.
- Well, this wonder fabric sat on a shelf, or in a drawer, for the next 4 years. I never found anyone to make the shirt for me, and I gave up.
- Unknown to me, back in September Jodi found my fabric, and knowing my crazy idea for it, mailed it to her üautber-seamstress grandmother in Florida. Via phone and instant message they collaborated for a couple months.
- So I found a package under the tree from Jodi and G’Ma Becky. Inside was the most amazing, beautiful, custom-made silver shirt!! It was like the picture in my mind, made real. I don’t know how they did it, but between a pattern one of Jodi’s aunts had, and her Grandmother’s incredible imagination, they gave me the silver shirt I always wanted.
- Thanks, Jodi and Grandma.
- Sometime Christmas Eve my sinuses started going haywire, and drained into my throat overnight. Christmas day I awoke with a killer sore throat and the nastiest congestion I’ve had in years. I went through a complete box of tissues, and spent the day on the couch.
- What a miserable two days. My one ray of hope was that Jodi and I had given her parents the complete Hobbit + The Lord Of The Rings trilogy for christmas, so I borrowed the second book from them. I finished it that evening.
- The day after Christmas I awoke with less of the sore throat, and less congestion, but I felt like I’d been hit by a truck… with big nasty wheels. I was exhausted, probably from fighting the cold all day before. Jodi and I were going to go out shopping, but I was also running a fever, so it was back on the couch for me for another day.
- Which, of course, meant that I finished the third book of the LOTR trilogy.