Closing in on Christmas

Much crazy running down to the Christmas holiday. Seems like every night there's something to do. Work, of course, has been going non-stop with the end of year deadline rushing. Don't know why, but all engineers and architects MUST have everything (that they've been dragging ass on for eight months!) done before the end of December. Emergencies, problems, deadlines, and general idiocy are blooming everywhere.

At home, we're trying to get the very last of the construction stuff done this weekend, so The Wife is staining trim like a mad woman (Ya know: a little madder than her usual!) so I can install it all Sat. morning, while she and The Boy are at a charity Christmas party for her workplace, and before our friends show up at 5:30 or so for a get-together. Sunday, we're heading out to my Mom's (A 1-1/2+ hour journey into the sticks!) to take her and my brother out for the afternoon. Should be nice: we don't get to see them all that often because of the distance and conflicting work schedules. Of course, The Boy has yet ANOTHER school project with a friend that we'll have to shoe-horn in there somehow as well. I am really looking forward to Christmas. I'm a huge fan of the holiday in general of course, but the best part is the week after, where I stay home and do NOTHING (except read, eat, watch movies & play video games with The Wife and The Boy!) With a little luck, the house will be done and I'll be able to sit comfortably in my living room, with a nice blaze working in the new fireplace, flipping channels on my new 50" plasma TV, as I lounge -with book in hand- on my brand new over-stuffed couch! Sweet, eh?

I think the Christmas shopping is all done at this point (yay!) so maybe next week we'll have a chance to relax and get more into the spirit of the season. I really want to have the nights free so we can relax and do some of our Christmasee type stuff. One thing I really want to do is our annual reading of "A Christmas Carol". We had to skip it last year because of the contractor mess but I wanna do it this year. We are supposed to trade chapters, each of us reading one out loud every night in the days leading up to Christmas, culminating with old Ebeneezer's conversion on Christmas Eve. Somehow though, I always wind up doing most of the reading. The family says they like the way I do the voices (What? You don't do voices and accents when you read aloud???? You don't know the fun you're missing!) The Boy does a pretty good cockney tone himself, so I think it's mostly laziness on their part, but that's alright. I enjoy the time with them, so I'll do the reading if that's what they want.

Don't know how many posts I'll get in between now and the holiday, but I think I'm gonna post about our Christmas traditions. Ya' know: the dorky things that we love to do but will make you all shake your head at our silliness. Yea. I like that plan.

Geekiness shall ensue in my next post!!!!

Later!