Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1071
Twelve hours of Lord of the Rings for Christmas. Nineteen Golden Rings.
Hello! Good morning! Merry Christmas and other assorted solstician holidays. Greetings from Somerville, MA. It is 8:52 AM. Jane is sitting across from me at the kitchen table drawing a picture of a girl with a rainbow, smiling clouds, tomato plants, flowers and a rainbow. The girl has pink hair. She is wearing a pink dress. Jane is wearing a pink shirt. Nick has coffee brewing. Henry and Meghan just woke up. Emma is still asleep. Upstairs, Sean and Jussi are still asleep. It is a lovely holiday.
Yesterday was just great, I woke up at 8 ish, which was a dream. Jane has been sleeping later here and I am here for it. After fixing Jane breakfast, I set her down to her art and got started on the important Christmas process of watching all three of the extended versions of Lord of the Rings. We took a break to open presents at some point, and I watched a little Youtube. But other than that? All Lord of the Rings, all day. It was just great. For Frodo.
An interesting thing about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies is that his innovative, new special effects, like his use of the AI-based MASSIVE animation system, and his monsters and whatnot, all look great. Whereas the effects that are starting to show their age are the basic green screen and matte stuff.
It did not help matters that I had drunk more the night before than I had any night this year. I mean, it was not a catastrophic amount or anything, at the end of the night I had. lovely little civilized chat with non-drunk Emma and Meghan. But after a year of mostly not drinking, I sure felt it.
Christmas Eve was the 16th or so edition of the mostly-but-not-always annual Rick Webb Commemorative Gathering of Curmudgeons, Jews, Orphans and Atheists Christmas Eve. I haven’t actually been to an edition of the Rick Webb Commemorative Gathering of Curmudgeons, Jews, Orphans and Atheists Christmas Eve in, oh, nine years or so. But it has mostly continued on without me. So I was very, very excited to finally attend again. Also we probably need to work other religions into that name. But it was a great gathering, just so many great people that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Jane did lots of dancing. Adults did lots of talking. Lotta heartbreak and challenges to process from the year before. Friends being friends and man it was just jim-dandy.
The drive up here was 13 hours, I did it all. We stopped maybe a total of thirty minutes — two gas stops and one additional quick restroom stop. My butt hurt a lot. We took some complicated route around New York involving the Garden State Parkway and mysterious interstates I’d never heard of and a bridge that is no longer called the Tappan Zee and is now the Mario Cuomo bridge but is very pretty.
Jane was an absolute trooper. The first hour she whined a bit, asked us how long we had to go, we told her twelve more hours or so. She let out a near primal scream of frustration and rage, and we thought we were in for it. We left on Saturday morning specifically so that if she couldn’t handle the trip we could do half of it and find some roadside motel and take a break. But after the scream, she accepted her fate. She was a little nauseous the whole time, she said, but no complaints and (mostly) took her medicine. It was a Christmas miracle.
On the drive we saw several Rivians, including a Rivian Amazon Delivery Van but not R1Ss. We saw a MystiChrome Mustang, and my god, MystiChrome (the prismatic color used for one year by Ford) looks so good in real life. We saw the aftermath of one real bad car wreck where the person probably died. We took a cool road that bypassed Baltimore and went through Annapolis and over a very pretty bridge (turns out Jane enjoys bridges). We did not suffer too horribly going through DC, the worst traffic in the US my god that road is the worst. We ate peanut butter sandwiches. We listened to a lot of Jane music, which got to be played at a much higher volume in the car than daddy music. I am still a bit bitter about that.
It’s god to be back, I love this town. It is rainy and I don’t really feel like going anywhere, but I like being here. Having this apartment is just so awesome, Sean and Jussi’s have really been our HQ in Boston since we moved away, so having an apartment downstairs from them feels like home. There’s tons of setting up to do still, and I gotta make an Ikea run (gulp). Domesticity rules. Who doesn’t miss crooked, squeaky floors and archaic electrical systems, century-old housing stock and roads that have been partially paved 20 times over 50 years. It is the best. Why would you want to buy a bottle of wine in a grocery store that is just absurd. Boston is the best. Got a spouse who keeps different hours than you? Consider an abode that shakes when you walk. It all takes me back to a full two decades of my life that I spent here, it’s like putting on an old comfy sweater or something. Just the best.
I’ve never actually written a GMHHAY when people are around, readers are around, bustling about around me making breakfast and coffee. It is weird and seems silly. Maybe I should talk to humans in the room. They leave tomorrow, though. So after that, it will just be me and you, my internet friends. We’ll spend some real QT together. It’s gonna be great.
Today, because I am over playlists, and I have friends here, we have a guest playlist, curated by Henry. He wants you to know that it is a playlist reflective of the songs they listened to at home over the past year. Henry is the one who got me into Castlebeat, and he has a Castlebeat t-shirt of which I am very jealous,
Happy holidays. Looking forward to regaling you with domestic pedestrianism from another jurisdiction this week.
love love love the henry guest playlist! damn he’s cool
i love the image of you in the somerville apartment writing your entry with friends around. it’s very heartwarming ❤️