The blur of Christmas
So our flight back from New York on Wednesday evening was long, very long. The 3 hour flight was stretched further by the plane arriving almost 30 minutes late combined with a 45 minute wait on the runway because of the huge amount of planes trying to get into the air. Once we were in the air we hit a lot of turbulence. I assume the turbulence is what made the air crew wait incredibly long until they started the drink/snack service. I bet we were 90 minutes into it by the time we got our drinks. We hadn’t eaten any formal dinner so we actually paid for a healthy snack box up front. With as long as it took to get the regular food service we were glad we paid the extra 5 bucks.
As soon as we landed in Florida we were immersed into the crazy for December levels of heat and humidity. It was not welcome. When we approached the baggage area Cindy and I got very nervous when they called my name to go to the luggage counter. I was afraid they lost/destroyed my bag. Instead they had the bag sitting in the office. Since we arrived at JFK so early we actually were there when the previous Fort Myers flight took off. My bag got thrown onto that plane instead, funny.
Cindy’s mom was picking us up from the airport. I felt bad that our delayed flight made her have to wait until after 10 to pick us up. We were exhausted by the time we got home so we did little else than pile up our bags in the laundry room to be sorted out the next day. It felt good to fall asleep in our own bed without a serenade of honking horns waking us up through out the night. It felt surreal that just earlier that morning we were walking through Central Park. Various scenes from our memorable trip passed through my brain as I fell off to sleep. It was a great, great time.
We woke up Christmas Eve with a long list of things to tackle. Not only did we have to “untrip” the house, which involves a lot of washing, cleaning, and putting away, we also had last minute Christmas stuff to attend to. I also spent a bunch of time processing the various video footage we shot in NYC, the majority of which was at Stonepark with Lou. All of that footage is here, all of the stuff we shot with our phones is here.
Cindy ran out early to get some stuff for the Christmas meal we were hosting for her family. Later in the afternoon I went out to do some last minute shopping. Yes, I was going to go out shopping, in brick and mortar stores, on Christmas Eve. Although I had bought Cindy a number of Christmas gifts and the NYC trip was the real present to ourselves, I felt some bizarre need to get her just a couple more things. I wasn’t locked in to exactly what I was getting but I did have a loose idea to perhaps get her a low end mountain bike that we could use to ride around the nearby Rookery Swamp area.
My first stop was Sam’s Club. It was crowded but not crazy busy. I walked in there just walking around, wondering if something would strike me as a good gift for Cindy. I didn’t really expect much luck but then I walked down the small appliance area. I spotted a small induction cooking system. It included one “burner” which is not a good term since induction surfaces actually create no heat. They create heat in the pan through magnetism. The kit also included three induction cooking pots/pans. Induction units heat up super fast and use less power than a conventional stove top. I thought with as much cooking as Cindy does it would be a really helpful addition to her kitchen arsenal.
I then started on my mountain bike quest. Like I said I wasn’t looking for anything high end but I didn’t want junk that would fall apart in short order. When I first stopped at Wal-mart all I saw were bikes that fell into the junk category. I then hopped in the car and headed over to Target. They had junk bikes but also had some that were a step up in both quality and price level. I was debating between two bikes. One was a Schwinn that was tagged as a woman’s bike. The other was a brand I never heard of that had no gender designation so I assumed it was a man’s bike. This bike also had a fully independent suspension with shocks up front and the spring/trailer arm set up for the back. Even with the suspension it was like 40 bucks less than the Schwinn.
I was torn on what to do. I wound up walking up front with the cheaper bike with no gender designation. I loaded it in the car. pulled out of the lot and immediately had buyers remorse. The Schwinn was nicer looking and had more quality components. I turned right onto Immokalee Road and made an immediate U-turn. I marched the bike I just bought into the store, returned it and walked back out with the Schwinn. I felt much more at ease with the decision. Of course when I got home I had to tell Cindy she had to hide for a bit so I could hide stuff. The induction cooking system got wrapped and I hid the bike on the far side of the SSR.
During the day I also took some time to address the rear bumper on the Prius which got banged up when I stupidly backed into Cindy’s daughters (boyfriends) car when I was rushing to get out of the driveway when we left for NYC. The impact area had a few spots where the paint was scraped to the plastic but most of it was just surface scraping. I generously applied Scratch X to the damaged area and was able to get a good amount of the scratching to fade away. Sure you can still tell something went on in that corner but it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb as it did. I doubt we will invest in getting the bumper professionally repaired since we have a goal to “dip” the Prius sometime in 2016. This week I am having Cindy go with Katie to get an estimate on what it will cost to get the door on the Nissan repaired.
We spent Christmas Eve watching content on the dvr while enjoying our normal Friday meal of pizza. Not exactly the template for a Christmas Eve but we enjoyed it which is all that matters.
Our Christmas gift opening got the latest start of my entire life. Cindy wanted to get the chicken maintenance out of the way before we started which was fine by me. The end result was us not starting to tear paper until close to 8. Hell years and years ago I remember finishing up before 7.
Despite us giving each other the trip to NYC we still had a huge mountain of packages around the tree. Each year we proclaim how neither of us having a primal need to receive a lot of presents and each year we still get each other a lot of stuff, odd. Cindy got me a nice variety of things including several books which I need to make the time to read, clothing, workout gear, geeky things, and new office chair which I sorely needed. Cindy seemed to like what I got her as well.
Later in the morning we had a Skype session with my sister. I bought my niece and nephew kid Kindles for Christmas which evidently were a big hit. When we got connected both of them were very busily playing with them. It made me feel good to be the “fun gift” uncle. We had a good session catching up and being able to do so via video call makes it a different type of experience.
Cindy had to start digging into prep for the the Christmas brunch she was preparing for her family. As usual Cindy made big plans for the meal. I contributed by trying to get the post gift opening carnage cleaned up and organized the best I could. The first people started showing up between 12 and 12:30.
Cindy’s brother and nephew, Owen were among the first to arrive. Owen is very shy by nature but each time I see him he opens up to me a little bit more. He and I spent a lot of time talking/playing with his Minecraft toys as well as him explaining the Mario game he was playing on his Nintendo 3DS.
We hoped to wait to eat until Cindy’s daughter and boyfriend got there. They were coming from the east coast where they were visiting Katie’s dad and his family. They weren’t going to get there for awhile so we eventually just dug into the food. As usual Cindy did a fantastic job with the spread of food, it was all delicious.
Eventually Katie and Daniel got there. It was nice having Cindy’s family under one roof. It seemed like everyone enjoyed each other’s company, not always an easy thing to accomplish. I had several moments during the day I thought about my mom not being around to enjoy Christmas with us. I also thought a lot about Nicki not being part of my Christmas for the first time in over a decade. Even after the separation I think I had the dogs with me every Christmas because Ali was away. This was the first year that wasn’t the case. I did my best to quickly fast forward my brain to another thought before the wetness in my eyes reached critical mass.
Cindy’s family headed out late afternoon, allowing us to get stuff cleaned up and spend some time “playing” with our stuff. One of the things I got from my dad was a Belkin Wemo, a smart switch that can be tied into our Amazon Echo. The end result was me being able to do stuff like this.
On Saturday I had no desire to attempt any endurance training. My lower body was still trashed from the workout with Lou nearly a week later. Cindy’s back was hurting her as well. I got my exercise from doing stuff around the house. We also decided to head out into the day after Christmas madness which equals if not surpasses the Christmas Eve crowds I experienced. Luckily since we didn’t go out until closer to noon the initial rush of gift return mania had subsided. Cindy wanted me to find my own bike so we could ride together. I had planned to get a bike of course but was willing to wait a little bit until the big tab for the last 30 days of spending had been handled.
After not seeing anything I was nuts about at Target we wound up stopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The had a nice selection of bikes, most of which were a step up from what Target had. We found a 29 inch Diamond Back mountain bike that was on clearance. It was more than I was looking to spend initially but it was a high quality bike with quality accessories and disc brakes, I decided to get it.
While we were there we also developed another idea as far as Cindy’s bike goes. She actually liked the bikes at Dick’s a little more. They were a little more money but not prohibitively so. We decided to put a bike on hold for her with the intention to make our second bike return at Target on Sunday. I wanted to make sure Cindy liked what she was riding so letting her be involved in the process made more sense to me. Ironically over the weekend the plan flipped once more as we found a bike on Amazon she liked even more that would actually cost me less out of pocket because of Amazon spiff dollars and a gift card I had. Once it arrives we will finally be ready to hit the trails.
On our way back we picked up Sadie for a weekend visit. When we got home I wanted to get more stuff done. One of those things was repairing the hole in the pool screen Sadie created during her last stay at the house. It was the first section of screen I have replaced since I had the entire cage re-screened. With Cindy’s help I think I did a decent job of getting the new section straight and tight. Being on my swollen and stiff knees for that long was not much fun however.
On Saturday night Cindy and I watched our latest Netflix rental, The Age of Adeline. This was a movie I never heard of that Cindy picked out. It was an interesting premise and my dream scenario. A woman has a freakish series of events occur that halt the aging process. Even though she was something like 110 years old she remained physically in her late 20’s. The movie even had Harrison Ford in it which was an unexpected surprise. I found it a very solid rental worthy of a B+ rating all day long.
Saturday night I watched the Eagles efficiently complete the flushing of this season, losing at home to the Redskins with a playoff berth on the line. I was confident they would lose as I have no confidence in Chip Kelly’s ability to change in a manner significant enough to make a difference. It is now established that he totally bungled the personnel decisions he was handed responsibility for in the off season. He has now missed the playoffs two years in a row and if you factor in the losing streak at the end of last year his win/loss record for the past 20 games is atrocious. I would be fine kicking him to the curb. Hey flashy college coaches fail in the NFL all the time, this is just the latest example of it. For Jeff Lurie to give a third year NFL coach personnel control was just asinine in my opinion. That is a responsibility that is normally only given to coaches with proven track records, something Chip Kelly definitely does not possess.
On Sunday morning I still had no inclination to try to do supplemental exercise. Instead after tending to stuff around the house we combined a coffee run with returning the Schwinn bike. I think Cindy felt a little bad about returning the gift I bought her but it really didn’t bother me at all. I would much prefer she gets what she wants instead of what I think she wants. We actually made two trips to Dunkin Donuts. Once to get coffee and a second time to get Cindy’s replaced when she said it tasted like a taco.
The rest of our Sunday was pretty low key. We kept busy but I encouraged Cindy to just take a break and relax, something she is worse at than I am. She did take my advice at least a little bit, taking the time to finish the book she started while we were in NYC. I combined work and play for most of the day.
Despite this being a relatively slow week at work I have a decent amount of things to get handled both at work and at home. I am now looking forward to the end of the next 30 days after which my life responsibilities will change dramatically for the better.