Tag: Holidays

Boston Holidays

March 17th is a big day for the city of Boston. As most people know, it’s St Patrick’s Day and Boston does love to get its Irish on for a day. For me personally, I am of Irish descent (with the red hair to show for it… for now). My father’s mother’s family came to the US from Ireland. My mother’s parents were from New Foundland (before it became part of Canada) but prior to that we believe the family was in Ireland as well. My father’s father’s family was from Nova Scotia (I think) and before that the family was from England. I guess no one is perfect.

While St Patrick’s Day is the big deal for most of us around here, people in Suffolk County also have another holiday today. Evacuation Day. George Washington placed the cannons stolen from Fort Ticonderoga onto Dorchester Heights, where they could threaten the English warships in the harbor, thus breaking the Siege of Boston. When I was a kid I was insanely jealous of the kids in Boston because they had the day off from school on March 17th and those of us in Middlesex County did not. They didn’t have to go to school on St Patrick’s Day and we did. What a rip off! There were people from the Merrimack Valley fighting with the Continental Army during the siege, why don’t we get the day off to honor them too?

It wasn’t until I was 21 or 22 years old and going to school at Northeast Broadcasting School in Boston that I got to have Evacuation Day off. Better late than never, I guess. As for today, happy St Patrick’s Day. Most of Boston drank themselves into the annual stupor over the weekend, so there isn’t a lot of actual celebration today. We used to have Corned Beef for dinner on St Patrick’s Day, but I think tonight we’re just going to have chicken. Maybe we’ll do something next weekend to celebrate. I am wearing a green shirt today though. Not because I chose to wear green today, but because a green shirt just happened to be on the top of my laundry pile. Call it the luck of the Irish.

Plans Change… or I Got Them Wrong

I thought we were going to have both kids at the house until Sunday. Why did I think that? I was wrong.

Harry is leaving on Saturday. I’m not sure what time of day. Bellana’s leaving today. Boo. Sometime this morning she’s going to head back to Vermont to go to work this afternoon.

As always, I am sad when one of the kids leaves, but also really happy that they were here at all. They are adults now and both live their own lives and I respect that. I just love them both so much that I selfishly want them around all the time.

New Years Day

How’s your New Years Day going? I slept late. I didn’t fall asleep until 2:00am and I woke up at a little after 7:00am… so I slept REALLY late and am still completely exhausted. Hooray.

The only definite item on today’s agenda is taking down all of the xmas decorations. I can’t wait! I’m so excited for that. I love how much my family loves xmas, but I also love it when we put it away for another year. I want my house back, you know?

HoHoHappy New Year!

Back to Work

It was like a three day weekend except that it happened in the middle of the week. Now it’s Friday and xmas is over and I am back at work and it sucks.

Well… sucks is probably over dramatic. I feel more like I wish I had taken today off as well and given myself a six day weekend, which would have felt more like an actual vacation. I’m off again on Wednesday for New Year’s Day, and then we’re back to normal for a few weeks until we go on Jen’s birthday trip to Florida late in January.

I planned to work in the office today, but my cold is still a thing so I am working from home. I probably won’t hit my in-the-office-quote for December now, but being sick and not wanting to spread the bug is an acceptable reason for coming up a little short. I do feel quite a bit better, but I am far from over it. Worse, I have a cold sore on my lip now. Oh good.

Okay. Time to get caught up on all of the email that came in while I was out. That should take a while. Wish me luck.

Happy Boxing Day

Hello and welcome to the annual December 26th edition of the “What the hell is Boxing Day, anyway?” post.

That’s rhetorical, of course. As someone from Massachusetts I have no experience of knowledge of what Boxing Day may or may not be and I do not really want to know, I just like speculating. The rest of the English speaking world (well… the UK and Canada… anyone else?) celebrates Boxing Day on the day after xmas. Why? Who? What? This year I chose to assume that it has something to do with Guy Fawkes (another English story that I have no clue about) and maybe boxing up little pieces of whatever he was going to use to blow up Parliament. Yeah, that works for clueless old Robbie.

I took today off from work, which is nice given that I still have a cold. I am a little bit better over the last two days, but it’s still pretty bad. Boo, and stuff. It’s cold. I overslept (and I really, really needed it). Now I have nothing on my agenda outside of hitting the grocery store.

Well… that and buying a new guitar. HA!

Happy Boxing Day to the world that celebrates and to those of us in the former US happy nothing special day that happens to be the day after xmas.

Two More Days

We are down to the holiday wire and, somehow, I wrapped the final present this morning. We had a few things delivered yesterday and today before work I took them to my wrapping station in the cellar and cranked them out.

The Wrapping Is Complete.

I still need to go out and pick up one or two little things that are fun but not required. I will do that either tonight after work or tomorrow. I am off work tomorrow. Actually, I am off work until Friday. I was going to work in the office today but I am still sick so in order to not screw up anyone else’s holiday I stayed home. I am well enough to work, but not well enough to be in public guilt free. If I do go out at some point tonight I will wear a mask.

One more work day to go and then I am off for xmas eve, xmas, and Boxing Day… even though the US doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day. Whatevs, right? HoHoHo.

Calendar

I don’t like what the calendar does to me at this time of year. We’re so close to the holidays that I just stop being able to deal with the days that still lay between me and the big dates.

We are currently seven days away from xmas and 14 days away from New Years. That means 13 days until New Years Eve, but NYE is a work day for me so that’s pretty screwy in general.

As an added bonus, we are 38 days away from the next vacation too. I sure hope it’s nice and warm in Florida in January. Last time we visited in January it was cold-ish in the morning and warm in the afternoons. I can live with that.

With the possible exception of anything that might be added to any one of the many piles of xmas gifts in the next few days, everything that isn’t for my wife or for a Secret Santa has been wrapped. I’ll have it all done by the weekend, with oodles of time to spare before the big day arrives.

I just want it to get here. I want Santa to arrive and unlawfully break into the house do his dirty work. I want the kids home with us, even if it is just for a short time, and I want to see the niece and nephews and the siblings and the in-laws on both sides of the family. I just want it to get here already. Is that too much to ask?

Nothing

It’s been a quiet day. Not a lot going on. One issue at work that should have been wrapped up on Friday came back to us today (Tuesday) and was immediately taken care of. It should not have come back to us though. There was another issue that one of my staff members worked on over the last month or so. He wrapped it up nicely last week. We were talking about it yesterday and we were both a little sad that his hard work did not seem to rate a pat on the back or a thank you from the customer. It’s okay if they just move on with their lives, but this was a kind of issue where we thought a simple thank you would have been nice. Well, he got a thank you today. Thanks for the thanks, customer.

Most years at work I am part of two holiday celebrations. One is a big lunch with a yankee swap and the other is a smaller, quieter group lunch. The yankee swap happened today. The quieter group lunch happens tomorrow. Both of them take place in Foxborough, which is the office that is as far away as I am willing to go to. It could be worse. It could be Fall River. That building has been open for a decade or so and I have never been there. It’s just too far away. If I ever have the need to go there I will, but I am not going by choice and I will avoid it whenever I can. I’ve been lucky so far. Foxborough though… today and tomorrow. It’s okay. I’ll handle it. It’s only about 70 miles away. Yikes.

At the Yankee swap thing today there was a sign that said there are only 15 days left until xmas. You know… I wasn’t feeling a holiday crunch before I saw that… now? Oh yeah, I’m feeling the holiday crunch. Panic is setting in.

There is a new episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew coming out at 9pm tonight. Hopefully that will make me feel a little better. I’m still not 100% sold on the concept of Goonies in Space, but I am liking it so far. I’ve only seen two episodes. I am optimistic that tonight’s episode three will be good. The bad guys are Pirates. Arrrr, righty then.

What else can I write about? Nothing. I think I need to wrap this literary masterpiece and click that publish button. Okay, loyal readers… here it comes!

December

Good morning and welcome to December. Ugh. If I were looking on the bright side I’d say something like, one day closer to spring… but we haven’t even hit winter yet. December sucks.

Thanksgiving Part Two was a huge success. Dinner was fabulous, thanks to my wife. The xmas decorations are all up. I plugged in the lights on the outside of the house (that I never took down after last year) and a couple of short strands are out. I’ll have to figure out what to do about that. We had the annual Muppets Christmas Carol viewing. We did not manage to get a watch of Elf in, but maybe we save that for xmas eve?

Our kids are still here. They are both going back to Vermont today. One is going after breakfast, the other after dinner-ish. I love every second we can get with them here. I selfishly hate to see them leave but we are actually going to see them again next week. There’s something huge brewing in Bellana’s world and next weekend is when it hits. We’ll be there for it.

Until then, tomorrow I go back to work after a glorious five day weekend and I am sad about that. What can you do. I’ll be in the office which is making it feel worse, but oh well.

December is here. I put it off for as long as possible. Oh well, what can you do.