'Tis the Season to Be Dealt With

We open this year's first December entry with the mandatory Christmas-tree shot. More on that later. But isn't it pretty? It's the same artificial tree, same lights and mostly the same ornaments, though we've added a few more, as we do every year.

An avid reader of this blog has written an e-mail, chastising me for not writing an entry for a month. To be sure, things have been hopping for me. And, too, a lot of the goings-on have been fairly mundane.

Since Halloween, I've been busy starting up at school. The lecture classes are all-day affairs, supplemented with what is called "mentored learning," which is basically self-paced labs with an instructor available in case you get stuck. The lectures fall one or two a week (sometimes three), and then I fill in with half-day labs. There's no real rhyme or reason to the scheduling of the lectures, except that two-day lectures occur a week apart.

So far, things have been fine, since I'm taking classes in programs I pretty much already know. But, as with any computer program, you tend to know the functions you use, and others you might be totally unaware of, so they've been good refresher courses for me. This Friday starts my Web-specific lectures (Dreamweaver and Flash), and I am sure I will find those much more of a challenge.

The big news in recent days is a visit from my sister Kittie and her husband Dave, who came down for the Thanksgiving weekend. They arrived on Wednesday around noon. I took the Gold Line down to Union Station to meet them, as they were taking Amtrak down from Grover Beach. The train was about a half hour late (which is typical) and we ended up on opposite sides of the terminal, me in the waiting room and them at Patsouris Plaza where the local buses make their connections. Kittie had forgotten her phone at home, so all of the detailed messages I was leaving on her voice mail were for naught. Luckily, Dave had his cell phone, so I got a call from him: We located one another and were soon on the Gold Line back to Pasadena.

Once back home, I took them to a local Japanese restaurant for lunch, then stopped by Trader Joe's to pick up a few things I had forgotten (like chips to top the tuna casserole for dinner). Steve got home from work a few minutes before we returned, and we spent the evening watching "Coraline" (a very weird movie) and catching up. On Thursday we headed out to McCormick and Shmick's for our Thanksgiving dinner and returned home to watch "Pumpkin Chunkin'" for two hours (which is basically bubbas who have built bizzare contraptions to hurl pumpkins unrealistic distances: we're talking 2-, 3- and 4,000 feet. If you've ever seen Dave's Volkswagen bug, you'll understand his fascination for this sport).

On Friday we had brunch at Green Street here in Pasadena and then decided to do our patriotic duty, going out to the Beverly Center Mall to do a little shopping and catch Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls aerial show. The traffic was horrendous, and there is no easy way to get from Pasadena to West L.A. (we took Santa Monica out to Fairfax), but I had decided that if we were going to brave a mall on Black Friday, we should go to one of the glitziest. Actually, I was kind of disappointed in the decorations. The place was crowded, but not nearly as bad as I had expected. One good thing, though: the parking was free for the day, so we saved $10 or $15 right there.

Yes, only in L.A. would you have a buffed out twenty-something Santa with his six-pack abs highlighted with airbrushing (it looks better in the pictures). Here, the season isn't about kids and presents or even celebrating the birth of Christ. Only in L.A. can we take a most important holy day and turn it into self-indulgent hedonism. We do know how to market on the West Coast. And we know how to consume.

I am glad we went, though: It was good timing. Two days later, one of the Candy Cane Girls fell about 20 feet while performing, breaking a hip, a leg and a rib, from what I understand (see the video below). The show has been canceled for at least a week until a replacement can be trained, although I'm sure Hunky Santa is still making his regular appearances.



Dave checked out some boots at Gucci's that cost $3,000 (or some such vulgar amount). We window-shopped in Bloomingdale's and Macy's and all the smaller shops. Everyone bought candles at the Moonlight Candle Shop, and Steve purchased my first and most expensive Christmas present, a copy of Microsoft Office for the Mac (since most of my study materials are either in Word or Excel). Late in the afternoon we left, wending our way back to the provincial pace of Pasadena. Friday evening was pizza and a viewing of "National Treasure."

Saturday was a stay-at-home kind of day. We pulled out all the Christmas decorations and made up a list of stuff we needed (spending quite a bit of time at OSH and Home Depot getting this and that). While we were decorating, Dave installed a flue for our stove vent (the previous owners had removed it and we had never bothered to have it reinstalled), replaced the pump in the patio fountain (which had died a few weeks before) and put in a door stop in the downstairs bathroom (he was the first person to realize we needed one). The rest of the day was putting up the tree (assembly required), decorating it and the general living area downstairs and indulging in cheese, crackers and egg nog. We even had Christmas carols, as I had loaded up a seasonal mix on my iPhone, which plugs into the sound system. That evening we screened "Team America: World Police." Kittie's only comment was, "You actually purchased that movie?" I guess she doesn't like pornographic puppets.

Sunday I scrambled up some eggs for breakfast and we took off for Union Station around 1:30, returning our guests to the good graces of Amtrak and their ride home. All in all it was a really great visit and a nice way to face the fact that Thanksgiving is no longer about gathering at the Moms' house.

So here it is, December 1st, and the Christmas cheer is bearing down on us fast. Yes, sir; 'Tis the Season to Be Dealt With. But thanks in part to Dave and Kittie, we have a really nice leg-up on the process. And with the stove vent operational again, I may just get some holiday baking done. You know, I've always threatened to make a gingerbread house. Maybe this is the year.