Holiday Wrap-Up Part 1: Florida

Any spelling/grammer errors that were not corrected in this post were a byproduct of the double Southern Comfort Manhatten I had earlier.

I apologize for bad form but not for the good drink.

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Florida:

Quality time with the mom and the pop. I'm one of those lucky kids whose parents didn't screw me up. So now that I'm adult and past the parenting/child dynamic, I like spending time with the folks. And that's what we did.

Christmas Eve was spent attending a church service held in a side-room of a larger church. Large enough that it had one mall maps of the grounds with a "You Are Here' arrow. My parents church was destroyed in October of '05 when Hurricane Wilma hit their part of Florida. A neighboring church has been hosting theirs, free of charge while theirs works to rebuild.

The ceremony was a traditional reading of bible verse telling the story of Christ's birth. Modern twist... powerpoint presentation on a titaninum Apple laptop. The sermon was interspersed with the crinkle of cellophane, hard candies being urwrapped to bribe kids to stay still and quiet for the hour Highlight of our evening was the little girl in the row in front of us. A serious little girl who looked like a young Lucy Lui (freckles included) who wriggled around, made faces at her exasperated sister and tried to make my candle go out during the candle lit part of the service. Good Stuff!

Christmas was spent opening really cool gifts. I got...

1) "Shepp's World's fair photographed. Being a collection of original copyrighted photographs authorized and permitted by the management of the World's Columbian exposition"



It's old (1894) and I got me one now! It's a big heavy book, in need of repair. But I like it very much.

2) A bright orange Varsity shirt. The burgers aren't the best but the shirt is cool.

3) A big world map bought from Victory Vintage in Decatur. Our map came from the county's schools system. In addition to world and county maps, the store also has deliciously creepy anatomical "maps" that hang from the blackboard, like cross-sections of the eye and such.

4) A belt and socks. You're old when the stuff you hated getting as a kid is what excites you now.

Plus some other things that I can't recall right now.

And a bonus gift even before leaving for vacation, I saw the Brick Car with Christmas lights on it while driving home from Buckhead. I was on the phone with the wife at the time and I told her I didn't care how stupid the traffic on the 400 was (and it was stupid) that car made my night.