The Servant's Quarters

Christmas Moments

Obviously, events and activities prevented me from continuing with my blog throughout the Christmas season. No excuse except to say that when you've got six kids, stuff like this does happen.

So, I'm just going to cover a two or three really special (in my mind) that went on this past Christmas, and close the book on it until next year.

Christmas Day was great. Really a nice time. Memorable gifts included the Shooter Bots that I bought for Than and Philip on a whim early in the year. Philip was jumping up and down yelling with excitement when he opened his. Isaac received a very nice iPod from Grandma and Grandpa, and it has quickly become his new best friend. For myself, I was completely happy with my haul. Probably my most memorable gift was the complete Star Trek Original Series on DVD from my parents. (For anyone who doesn't know, I am a complete geek when it comes to Trek.) Also, my very good friend, Mr. Brooks Carlson, gave me a used copy of William Shatner's latest album, Has Been, that he picked up at a library used book sale. The music is so mind-numbingly awful that it is wonderful. Really funny stuff. Lest I forget, my darling wife came through with an item that I've needed for a while - a new car stereo. My old one croaked last summer, and we've never had the cash to replace it. But that was my one and only gift from Rita this time around, and I love it. The best part - it has an auxilary jack in the front where you can plug an iPod, MP3 player or some other music machine in and play the content over the car speakers. I use this feature daily with my Pocket PC and the MP3s of old time radio shows (Jack Benny, the Shadow, Gunsmoke, etc.) that I love so much.

I think that, without a doubt, my most memorable moments came with my trip up to Mom's and Dad's house at Higgins Lake between Christmas and New Years. We'd had some company at the house in November (another family who my Mom had loaned the house to), and I'd promised my parents that I would take a trip up to ensure that everything was buttoned down for the winter. I took my three oldest boys with me. It was really nice. We got up to the house on the first day after dark, and after unpacking the car, we headed out to the nearest Wendy's on nearby Houghton Lake. We had the joint to ourselves, and I gave the boys pretty much free reign to order what they wanted. Frosties all around for dessert. By the time we finished up, a few other people had started to trickle in, so we went back home. While I cleaned up some rough areas of the house and did some straightening, the boys hunkered down in their sleeping bags and turned on some DVDs that I had checked out from the library just for this occasion - Season 1 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. (Note: This was a show that I loved as a teen back in the early 80's. I watched it first run, and after going on to college, watched it every night after dinner in reruns with a group of my friends. We'd eat at the dining hall and then go up to John Anderluh's room and watch his old black and white TV set with the screen the size of a postage stamp. We had a blast laughing at the campiness and thrilling to Buck's latest adventure. Flash forward to Higgins Lake. I was appalled at how very seriously bad this show was. I mean, it was horrible. It hasn't held up at all. Very dated. The boys enjoyed it well enough, but I was completely turned off and couldn't help regretting the many hours I had wasted watching this tripe. Here's the best measure of how truly bad it was - one episode featured a very young, pre-fame Jamie Lee Curtis as an inmate in some desert planet prison who Buck has to rescue for some reason. Jamie spends a lot of the episode running around in a fairly form fitting tank top because.... I guess it was the prison uniform. This gratuitous display had no interest whatsoever for me. Was it because I'm 43, married, and shouldn't be interested in such things? NO. It's because that's how bad the show was. Wow. A real stinker.) The next day, I finished the work, and we headed home, stopping at Big Boy in West Branch for brunch. All in all, we were gone a little more than 24 hours, but just the chance to get away with the boys was a blast.

New Years Eve was great fun. We hosted Pastor Philip, Michelle, and Austin. There was lots of eating, talking, and laughing for all. Because Pastor Philip starts to fade out super early (like around 8:00 AM), the Harris beat a retreat well ahead of the ball dropping at midnight. The younger children went to bed shortly after they left, and the rest of us played games until the countdown to midnight.

Regrets this past Christmas? Oh yeah. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have allowed the Ford situation to cost me a week of the Advent season. My discouragement over my buyout offer and the resulting depression saw me moping around the house for several days. As a result, we lost a lot of time and didn't do some of the activities which I usually champion. (Like going to the Wayne County Lightfest and watching all of the classic TV Christmas Specials. No Grinch this year. YIKES!)

But next year's coming soon. Only 349 shopping days until Christmas. And I've already started.

I kid you not.

# posted by Tim @ 10:06 PM