Christmas never ends. That’s the trick with having family in far-off places. We travel and end up having multiple iterations of the holiday. It would be one thing if we shipped Christmas and concentrated on our families but so far we’ve been meeting up and there have been little explosions of Christmas over and over again.

This Christmas had a definite theme. I am becoming thoroughly French. Scott, in the guise of Santa gave me Rosetta Stone Francais, the full shot which should give me basic fluency with a level commensurate with emigration if I so choose, not that I would. I really enjoy the french way of life, the language, the cuisine, and that second part, that’s another part of Christmas. I have a Crepe Stand, a pan, several tools and a crash course with a french chef in Chicago to make french crepes. I am definitely cruising towards a fate made of crepes. There are worse things. Waking up in the morning and making a fresh crepe and filling it with Nutella – yeah, what punishment that is going to be. How ever will I cope. 🙂

Other members of my family gave me money to buy gifts I wanted on my own. With the money so far I bought two pair of Levi’s 501 jeans in my newer smaller size. My waist is about 36.5, these two jeans are 38’s and they are shrink-to-fit, so they fit wonderfully well and the style of the 501’s really appeal to me because they are button-fly, something very different from the tyranny of the copper-colored zippers. There is a part of me that doesn’t like the idea of sharp zipper teeth in that region of my anatomy. I know there isn’t any risk of anything happening, but it’s a matter of principle.

So I have lots of cash on hand and a huge number of iTunes tracks on my wish list there. That’s something that I really don’t understand. Apple enables their customers to make a wish list, but they don’t enable you to export it or build a list, or even export it socially so that other people can see your list and perhaps surprise you by buying the music and then leverage iCloud on Christmas morning to an iPod which is magically chock-full of music that you wished for. We’ll have to see if some of that will be in the plan for my Christmas cash.

Western let us know before the holidays that they would be making a one-time-payment to us employees as a kind of bonus. It was in lieu of not getting a COLA, having our health insurance premiums increased, and a factor of other reasons that are only really attractive to the accountants. I got my $400, but thanks to the IRS, I only got to have $256 of that. It is more than I would have otherwise, so I don’t complain too loudly, but still, it is a little source of irk. I’d rather have it the other way around.

So Christmas has come, and come again. When we get back Santa will eventually swing around AGAIN. I liken it to the idea that Santa has an odd case of retrograde amnesia. He visits over and over again, spreading Christmas cheer well into mid-January. It’s a theme we’ve all fallen into, we dwell in the Christmastime afterglow and then we announce with mock surprise that we found something that Santa left under the tree that the elves forgot to place properly. In a way, Santa gets the last word, even if he has to visit on Saint Swithins Day to win.