Christmas Day

For the first time in, I don't know, decades, we are in Chapel Hill for Christmas. Probably the first time ever as a family. We had been sweating the problem of how to celebrate the holiday safely with mom and Matt when Mary had the brilliant idea, somewhere around noon yesterday, of having them for dinner last night (when it was warm but rainy and loud from the huge volume of water passing over the dam) instead of today, when it's cold for sure. I of course had a little bit of a hissy fit when Mary proposed changing it, but I got over it in about 90 seconds, called up mom, and they came over.

So we have a lot of little bags under the tree, filled with little doubt preponderantly by books. I have a huge stack of books to be read, and of course magazines too, which come into the house much more quickly than I can read them. But I'm still a little excited to see what I got, even though I know they came right off my Amazon list. Fact is, I half forget what I put there.

It's also interesting to see what the kids will get. I peaked at their lists, but had little time to focus on them. This is always the way, and it gets worse every year as my business gets better and my professional responsibilities expand. Mary does all the Christmas shopping and pretty much resents it, but I have to earn all the money, so I have precious little time to shop. I wanted to go to Flyleaf to pick up some books, specifically for Natalie, who could use having a little greater depth and variety injected into what she reads -- particularly pre-WWII fiction and especially 19th century and before, but Mary wouldn't let me go because we were trying to manage down COVID exposures (we thought mom and Matt would be coming inside) and because she had books preordered from there for me. Oh well.

Looking out into 2020 and beyond, I have some thoughts... but I guess I will save them for another day because I have now written my statutory three paragraphs and am trying to post as close to daily as possible. Sayonara, suckers.