Back-From-Vacation Quick Thoughts…
These are in no particular order–sort of stream of consciousness…
I think I’m feeling the symptoms of “postal dread.” That’s the cold, clammy feeling you get as you approach your mail box, because of the threat of bills. Seems as if I had a handle on Christmas spending–for a while. But as the holidays drew closer the spending accelerated. Especially last week while on vacation, it seemed like I was swiping my credit card every five minutes or so. You every reach the point where you just start feeling like, “what the heck, put it on the card.” Kind of the same feeling you get after you’ve wrecked your diet. The incentive to exercise self-control becomes smaller and smaller, until finally you’re eating everthing in sight. The sad thing is, there’s no escaping the payment that must be made for disposing of one’s self-restraint.
By the way, we still have some left-over Christmas cookies. Peppermint fudge bars, Rolo cookies and raspberry thumb-print shortbreads. I think I’ll bring them to the radio station tomorrow and leave them in the break room. That’s one thing about a radio station, no matter what it is, if you set it out on a plate, SOMEONE will eat it.
Me and the whole family wound up sharing more than just “peace on earth, goodwill to all men” this Christmas. We also shared that nasty stomach virus that’s going around. My daughter Janie got it first–we thought (hoped?) it was just an upset stomach from having eaten too many of the aforementioned peppermint fudge, Rolo cookies and raspberry thumb-print shortbread cookies. Instead, it was the launching pad for “the illness,” as we’ve come to call it. We’re trying to think of a better name for it, something more clever, a name that captures the essence of the lower intestinal experience. I came down with it the day before Christmas Eve, recovered in time to be able to enjoy Christmas. I put my family on a plane to Houston early Friday morning, and that night my son got it. Then my other daughter, on Sunday night. Finally my wife got it on Tuesday. Thank goodness for the big hearts of Gramma and Papa, who were willing to nurse us all back to health when we had all hoped to be celebrating together!
While we were all sick, BTW, we watched a lot of movies at gramma and papa’s house. One movie was “Mars Attacks,” with Jack Nicholson, Annette Behning, Pierce Brosnan and others. A Tim Burton movie, which means it was creepy. I think Tim Burton movies are an aquired taste. Talk about “dark humor,” yikes! The scene at the end, where the decapitated heads of Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker(?) are rolling around on the floor of the space craft, trying to kiss each other good-bye before they die–is that not the all-time BLACKEST of all black humor moments in movie history? I’m not saying I laughed at it–although I will confess that there were plenty of OTHER moments in the movie that were so creepy-absurd, I couldn’t HELP but laugh. Still–not sure I’m gonna officially “recommend” it as a movie you wanna watch…
Me and my wife caved in and got our daughters (age 11) cell phones for Christmas. We debated long and hard about it. The two things the girls REALLLLLY wanted for Christmas were cell phones, or a family dog. We decided on the cell phones. To their credit, the girls have been very responsible for the phones and their usage. That’s because we went with the “pre-paid” cell phone plan, where you pay as you go, in advance. When the minutes are gone, the phone stops working. We also stipulated that THEY are the ones responsible for earning the money to purchase additional minutes once the pre-loaded minutes are used up. So far, they’ve been very frugal about the usage of their minutes, Fortunately, they’re not charged for incoming texts–their best friend has been texting them quite a bit! No need to go into the seemingly obligatory discussion about kids and texting. Suffice it to say, the girls are conserving their texts!
That’s it for today–more stuff tomorrow! See you on the radio!