Wow, happy belated holidays for my Christian, Jewish, and Pagan friends. I completely missed the boat on well wishing, didn't I? Unintentional though it was, it is a good indicator of just how caught up in the spirit of things. I was working at the museum, buying gifts at the last minute thanks to one client making good on an invoice, heading back to the Petes for tree decorating and party-attendance, etc. Was it a good holiday? Why, yes it was. Among other things, there was a lot of quite satisfying sleeping and napping and reading and eating. I also enjoyed an evening at my new favourite pub, St. Veronus, with Ryan and Tanya. Ryan managed to avoid being Mr. Slick Ottawa Politician for a few hours and we ended up having a really nice time.

Christmas television is often, in my opinion, rather lacking - substituting a good story for thick spreadable cheese. So, in order to avoid this messy fondu Mom and I spent not insignificant amounts of time watching classics from our own collection. The Muppet Christmas Carol was as weird and wonderful as ever. We originally were meant to go into Toronto for Christmas Eve in order to celebrate with Julie and Jerzy (pronounced Yeh-shuh), but they had come down with the flu so rather than lament this twist of fate, we watched our favourite version of A Christmas Carol, not the 1951 version, but the 1984 George C. Scott version. We also went to Church for the first time in a couple of years.

The choir at the little United Church we go to is not very good. Their soloists could use some vocal training, at the very least, and they did something with a little quartet that made my hair stand on end - not in a good way. They tried a jazzed up version of "The First Nowell" and boy did it NOT work. Mom and I worked very hard not to look at each other for fear of cracking up. It was gods-awful. That said, the service was very nice and there were plenty of opportunities for me to sing along with many carols. My mother actually sang one carol in Latin, which caused a couple of people to look at her, but it was neat.

We did our big Christmas dinner as usual with friends in Ennismore. We played many parlour games, including Charades (a perennial favourite) and a new game that I'm going to call Cops and Killers. There was also much smacking of balloons around the living room to the point of everyone breaking a sweat and laughing like children. It was a good deal of fun, as always. Boxing Day was spent in our bedclothes, reading the books we'd received and listening to music. Again, we were supposed to try for Toronto, but again we were thwarted by sickness. Ah well, such is life.

Rick had his 25th birthday on Saturday and Mom allowed me to borrow Bernadette so that we could drive out to his parents' in Stoney Creek for much celebrating. That was a good deal of fun - a huge number of his relatives were there and Shorty, the pit bull, was in fine and very happy spirits even though he spent a good amount of the night locked in the back yard.

Well, this hasn't been the profound entry that I might have written, discussing feelings and thoughts that come at this time of the year, but I'm not up to that kind of discussion today. I hope that everyone had a good holiday where ever you might be, and that 2004 is a good year for us all. Happy New Year, folks, and best wishes.