SantaGus

SantaGus was good to us this year.

Other mythical entities, not so much.

Among other news, my stepmother's dog was killed by a car practically the same day Ben died, and the other day my nephew's wife called my stepmother to say that my nephew had left them. My first reaction on hearing this was, "man, we should have had a pool." I don't think anyone in the family was at all surprised.

My nephew was on hand for a while on Christmas night at my parents' house in New York. Suzanne and I drove up on Saturday and spent the weekend getting snowed on, eating good pizza, watching football, and smuggling the three wabbits around. The wabbits had a great time leaving Raisinets all over the hotel room (we brought a small commercial vacuum in anticipation) and occasionally nibbling on the wallpaper.

There was quite a bit of snow... four or five inches of snow, complete with high wind. No problem for me or most other people in western New York, but of course Suzanne was freaking out. I just let the TDI trudge around town as we got pizza, went out for drinks or dinner, or went shopping for last-minute stuff at WalRusMart nearby. Christmas Eve we watched the 1942 Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire film, Holiday Inn, on the MacBook Pro and had cookies and stuff.

This was the first year there were absolutely no small children on hand for Christmas at my parents' house. None. Not one. It was actually fairly pleasant. The wabbits seemed to enjoy it, too. They hopped around in one of the back rooms and ate oats and pooped. They got carrots and were the subject of much talk. Everyone missed Ben.

Christmas night we drove all the way back, getting home around 4 this morning. The TDI did the entire trip on much less than a tank of diesel, and except for the door locks freezing a couple of times, it was fine.

So, what did I score this Christmas? A couple of gift cards and a Rotato(tm). What did I give? A digital picture frame (pre-loaded with images of Ben) to Suzanne, and an annoying yellow mechanized hamster that played that ditty from the old "Hamster Dance" site. I tried it out on our wabbits and they were very concerned about it.

All in all, a good Christmas at the end of a fairly difficult year.