Monday, January 03, 2005
Three
This past winter's break was a strange series of days arranged around celebrations, visitations, adulations, "hip"notic salutations, and (surprisingly) very minimal inebriations. Workdays alternated with holidays with vacation days. Slipping in and out of each day required taking one's bearings before proceeding on. Was it a casual day for dress? Or was a modicum of spiff necessary to make it through with minimal sartorial embarassment. Gifts were exchanged..and then exchanged again.
Stories were repeated until one was utterly bored reciting them again. The fam was defintely not hanging onto every word!
Liberties were extended.
Tales were improved upon.
Cast and characters changed from one telling to the next.
Christmas was spent travelling up and down routes 295 & 27 in NJ. Driving back and forth through Princeton was errie. The town was empty, deserted of students and professors. Philly was relatively quiet as well, dozing on its discarded wrapping paper couch, waiting for the 26th to come. The Iggles were to play the Rams; a two week display of pitiful 2nd string football would follow. WIP radio was inundated with sports fans' calls of woe; the Iggles bandwagon was getting lighter; Santa had not brought a magic cure to T.O.'s ankle injury.
Christmas day in Jersey brought multitude servings of Croatian brown food. All spicy and delectable and ....brown. Two servings minimum; 3 to 4 certainly do-able. Just a wallow in Old World cuisine. The annual feast of the Trencherman.
Thought of Ray Romano's comedy bit warning his friends about his mother's cooking portions. "If you really don't want another serving, you'll have to shoot her. And you better not graze her; she'll just keep on coming with a full plate."
Had a chance to see the Mummers go through their pre-New Year's Day Strut on Dec. 30 at Philly's Convention Center. The fancy brigades were polishing their Jan. 1, 2005 Broad Street parade with some run-throughs. For $3, you got to watch them in the warm confines of the Center and even to try on some old Mummer costumes. Shame that we didn't have a camera; 2005 Christmas card photos could have been finished! What a way to kick start the next year by already marking off an item of the 2005 Honey-do list.
An admission of prejudice here. I've ridiculed the Mummers in the past. Their costumes, the perceived waste of time, the musical instrument playing, the shuffling dance steps... just the whole damn thing. After watching them practice and seeing them up close (very up close) I've seen the error of my ignorant ways. New respect will be shown to them from now on; these folks work like fiends... and the costumes??...well,up close, they are a thing of beauty. No, I'm not suffering from a hangover here. I'm being serious!
What's 2005 to bring? No resolutions yet but I seem to have the number "3" stuck in my head. At a New Year's Eve party, we did the Sad Sack gift exchange thing in which a pile of items, nicely wrapped but unwanted Christmas waifs, were distributed by virtue of numbers drawn from a hat. I drew 3. Fate or Adam Smith's Invisible Hand was involved. So 3 will be this year's resolution. The third choice. Three of a kind. Door #3. A minimal commitment, but a stance of sorts.
This past winter's break was a strange series of days arranged around celebrations, visitations, adulations, "hip"notic salutations, and (surprisingly) very minimal inebriations. Workdays alternated with holidays with vacation days. Slipping in and out of each day required taking one's bearings before proceeding on. Was it a casual day for dress? Or was a modicum of spiff necessary to make it through with minimal sartorial embarassment. Gifts were exchanged..and then exchanged again.
Stories were repeated until one was utterly bored reciting them again. The fam was defintely not hanging onto every word!
Liberties were extended.
Tales were improved upon.
Cast and characters changed from one telling to the next.
Christmas was spent travelling up and down routes 295 & 27 in NJ. Driving back and forth through Princeton was errie. The town was empty, deserted of students and professors. Philly was relatively quiet as well, dozing on its discarded wrapping paper couch, waiting for the 26th to come. The Iggles were to play the Rams; a two week display of pitiful 2nd string football would follow. WIP radio was inundated with sports fans' calls of woe; the Iggles bandwagon was getting lighter; Santa had not brought a magic cure to T.O.'s ankle injury.
Christmas day in Jersey brought multitude servings of Croatian brown food. All spicy and delectable and ....brown. Two servings minimum; 3 to 4 certainly do-able. Just a wallow in Old World cuisine. The annual feast of the Trencherman.
Thought of Ray Romano's comedy bit warning his friends about his mother's cooking portions. "If you really don't want another serving, you'll have to shoot her. And you better not graze her; she'll just keep on coming with a full plate."
Had a chance to see the Mummers go through their pre-New Year's Day Strut on Dec. 30 at Philly's Convention Center. The fancy brigades were polishing their Jan. 1, 2005 Broad Street parade with some run-throughs. For $3, you got to watch them in the warm confines of the Center and even to try on some old Mummer costumes. Shame that we didn't have a camera; 2005 Christmas card photos could have been finished! What a way to kick start the next year by already marking off an item of the 2005 Honey-do list.
An admission of prejudice here. I've ridiculed the Mummers in the past. Their costumes, the perceived waste of time, the musical instrument playing, the shuffling dance steps... just the whole damn thing. After watching them practice and seeing them up close (very up close) I've seen the error of my ignorant ways. New respect will be shown to them from now on; these folks work like fiends... and the costumes??...well,up close, they are a thing of beauty. No, I'm not suffering from a hangover here. I'm being serious!
What's 2005 to bring? No resolutions yet but I seem to have the number "3" stuck in my head. At a New Year's Eve party, we did the Sad Sack gift exchange thing in which a pile of items, nicely wrapped but unwanted Christmas waifs, were distributed by virtue of numbers drawn from a hat. I drew 3. Fate or Adam Smith's Invisible Hand was involved. So 3 will be this year's resolution. The third choice. Three of a kind. Door #3. A minimal commitment, but a stance of sorts.
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
