Prepoceros

Woo family, woo presents. Woo tree and lights and luminaries and neighbors and food and wrapping paper. Woo tradition. Christmas is pretty much the same as it’s always been, which is lovely.

New this year: Samson, empty-nesting parents, new neighbors, opening presents *after* dawn, and no videotaping. I’m ambivalent about that last one, though I took lots of pictures to compensate. We’ve videotaped every Christmas since I was a baby, and those tapes are some of my (our) most prized possessions. I agree that we’ve sort of outgrown it, and now that we’re not kids anymore, no one changes as much from year to year. Still, I think video captures memories so much more faithfully than photographs do.

Someday one of us will have a digital camcorder, and then maybe we’ll do some more videotaping. A couple years ago my dad had all our old Betamax tapes converted to VHS, and soon we’ll have to convert all those to some digital format. Dad tells me it’s relatively easy; we’ll see how that goes.

We’ve had a good morning so far, none of us so much as Sammy, who was so overwhelmed with all the new toys and boxes and ribbons that he looked like he might explode. Once the unwrapping began, we only saw him occasionally, when he would tear across the living room, trying to shake two or three toys to death at once. Right now he’s conked out on the couch, exhausted.

Sam’s taking pretty well to the house. He’s learned how to jump up onto the furniture, where the food comes from, and where all the trash cans are. Needless to say, he’s also found plenty of ways to get into trouble. Last night when we were sitting around the fireplace, Sam came trotting out of my parents’ room with a present in his mouth: “To Natalie from S. Claus.” Oops. And this morning during present-time, Sam disappeared into the kitchen, only to come flying out a minute later chewing on a piece of pumpkin bread snatched from the table. I chased him down and cornered him on the staircase, but he started chowing down on it so frantically that I let him have it. Silly puppy.

I don’t have much to say right now—I figured I ought to post something, so I turned on the computer and started writing, which is rarely a predictor of quality output, but whatever. You’ll have to wait to see the pictures until I get back to my apartment and my own computer. This has been a wonderful Christmas, not really because of the presents (although I did get some good ones), but more because of where I am in life. These are good times. More on this in my “year in review” post, coming up in a few days.

I hope all your holidays have been cheery and cozy, that your families are doing well, and that your favorite seasonal gift-bearing figures brought you all the crap you asked for and more. Three cheers for vacation!

Tags: miscellany, Sam

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 25th, 2005 at 4:02 pm and is filed under miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.