Xmas after-action report
Dec. 26th, 2017 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingGreetings from (cold, snowy) Ithaca!
To summarize:
I drove down to NJ on Thursday, and Mom and I spent Friday in the city touring the Morgan Library and the Tenement Museum, both of which were extremely cool. (We also ducked briefly into the NYPL's business library building because we had to kill ~15 minutes before the Morgan opened, even after deliberately walking veeeeeery slowwwwwwly along 34th St and spending ~15 minutes in the Amazon.com bookstore. (Yes, Amazon has physical bookstores. It weirds me out too.) The library was an excellent delaying tactic; I made note of several recently-published books that I either put holds on via my own library or purchased for my Kindle.)
Vicky arrived super-late on Friday night (technically Saturday morning, but whatever), and Saturday was a slow day all around. We went out for dinner at Mitsuba, a nice Japanese restaurant in Chatham. Mom and Dad are not enthused by either the concept or the reality of sushi, but they got some nice cooked entrees. We started with gyoza and shrimp shumai, then all had salad and miso soup. For entrees, Mom got red snapper teriyaki, Dad got tonkatsu, Vicky got vegetable hibachi with a side of spicy tuna roll, and I got the spicy maki combo and stole vegetables from the others' plates. *evil grin* Obviously we brought home a bunch of leftovers!
(FYI, the reason I note restaurant orders when discussing family visits is because Mom often wonders what people have ordered on previous visits, and it saves a bunch of pointless bickering if I can answer constructively rather than shrugging and saying, "I don't know, probably food?" I am much more likely to remember stuff I write down, so.)
Sunday morning Mom and Dad went to church to usher at the 10am pageant. Their church (my childhood church), now does four Xmas Eve services: a scripted and rehearsed pageant in the morning, a free-for-all pageant around 4pm, and two adult services at 7pm and 9pm. We generally go to the 9pm service, and Vicky and I often get volunteered as assistant ushers. We are okay with that, though it's nicer to be able to sit down instead of trying to switch lights on and off at the right cues, collect the offering, and take a head count for the attendance records. This year we got to sit down, though because of a minor logistical glitch unrelated to church stuff, we arrived 10-15 minutes later than usual and could not find a row of four seats together; Vicky ended up stranded across a side aisle on her own. :( But she made a new friend who was attending on her own, so it worked out all right. :)
Sunday afternoon, I drove to Target out on Rt. 10, in search of a specific sweater. See, Vicky showed up with this super-comfy buttondown sweater (cardigan? for some reason I associate that word with frilly lightweight sweaters with about half a million buttons, but the style is named after a dude, so... whatever) that still looked professional enough for office wear, and I asked where she'd gotten it. Turns out it's a boys' Cat & Jack brand style in XL, so I figured I'd see if the local Target had any left. In the event, they did! I also bought a navy blue pullover sweater (also Cat & Jack boys' XL) and four Mossimo ladies' longsleeve t-shirts because they were on sale for $6 each and they're very comfy and surprisingly warm for such thin fabric. That was a good trip.
Then it snowed overnight! I wouldn't say that we had a full-on white Christmas, but we did have a white-ish Christmas -- a moderate dusting of snow, enough to lightly coat the roofs and lawns (though the grass tips showed through all prickly-dark) -- so that was nice.
My family opens presents on Christmas morning, but after breakfast and generally also after everyone is showered and dressed. Some years this means we don't actually get to the presents until 1pm, but this year we were more organized and got started at 11am. I received some lovely gifts, including five pairs of wonderfully warm, soft, and fuzzy bedsocks (♥!) and a new computer chair from Ikea that I will attempt to assemble in the next few days.
Xmas afternoon Susan and I headed over to Mrs. M's house to see Cat and do the annual holiday cookie exchange. Cat had brought some lemon coconut cream cheese cake down from her job, so we all had cake and tea and chatted for three-ish hours -- after admiring the newly replastered and repainted house, which was much brighter and more cheerful/spacious-feeling than it used to be. (On a related note, Mrs. M has gotten rid of thirty boxes of Mr. M's miscellaneous saved papers, yikes. She hasn't begun to touch his books, though. That is 2018's project.)
And then I drove home to Ithaca today, leaving Madison around 11:45 and arriving in Ithaca almost exactly four hours later. I haven't completely finished unpacking -- I still have all my clothes to put away -- but all the other stuff is mostly where it ought to be. And while a few of my plants had gotten very thirsty in my absence, none of them had died, so that's nice. :)
I will try to make a post about Yuletide stuff later tonight, but if not tonight, tomorrow for sure.
To summarize:
I drove down to NJ on Thursday, and Mom and I spent Friday in the city touring the Morgan Library and the Tenement Museum, both of which were extremely cool. (We also ducked briefly into the NYPL's business library building because we had to kill ~15 minutes before the Morgan opened, even after deliberately walking veeeeeery slowwwwwwly along 34th St and spending ~15 minutes in the Amazon.com bookstore. (Yes, Amazon has physical bookstores. It weirds me out too.) The library was an excellent delaying tactic; I made note of several recently-published books that I either put holds on via my own library or purchased for my Kindle.)
Vicky arrived super-late on Friday night (technically Saturday morning, but whatever), and Saturday was a slow day all around. We went out for dinner at Mitsuba, a nice Japanese restaurant in Chatham. Mom and Dad are not enthused by either the concept or the reality of sushi, but they got some nice cooked entrees. We started with gyoza and shrimp shumai, then all had salad and miso soup. For entrees, Mom got red snapper teriyaki, Dad got tonkatsu, Vicky got vegetable hibachi with a side of spicy tuna roll, and I got the spicy maki combo and stole vegetables from the others' plates. *evil grin* Obviously we brought home a bunch of leftovers!
(FYI, the reason I note restaurant orders when discussing family visits is because Mom often wonders what people have ordered on previous visits, and it saves a bunch of pointless bickering if I can answer constructively rather than shrugging and saying, "I don't know, probably food?" I am much more likely to remember stuff I write down, so.)
Sunday morning Mom and Dad went to church to usher at the 10am pageant. Their church (my childhood church), now does four Xmas Eve services: a scripted and rehearsed pageant in the morning, a free-for-all pageant around 4pm, and two adult services at 7pm and 9pm. We generally go to the 9pm service, and Vicky and I often get volunteered as assistant ushers. We are okay with that, though it's nicer to be able to sit down instead of trying to switch lights on and off at the right cues, collect the offering, and take a head count for the attendance records. This year we got to sit down, though because of a minor logistical glitch unrelated to church stuff, we arrived 10-15 minutes later than usual and could not find a row of four seats together; Vicky ended up stranded across a side aisle on her own. :( But she made a new friend who was attending on her own, so it worked out all right. :)
Sunday afternoon, I drove to Target out on Rt. 10, in search of a specific sweater. See, Vicky showed up with this super-comfy buttondown sweater (cardigan? for some reason I associate that word with frilly lightweight sweaters with about half a million buttons, but the style is named after a dude, so... whatever) that still looked professional enough for office wear, and I asked where she'd gotten it. Turns out it's a boys' Cat & Jack brand style in XL, so I figured I'd see if the local Target had any left. In the event, they did! I also bought a navy blue pullover sweater (also Cat & Jack boys' XL) and four Mossimo ladies' longsleeve t-shirts because they were on sale for $6 each and they're very comfy and surprisingly warm for such thin fabric. That was a good trip.
Then it snowed overnight! I wouldn't say that we had a full-on white Christmas, but we did have a white-ish Christmas -- a moderate dusting of snow, enough to lightly coat the roofs and lawns (though the grass tips showed through all prickly-dark) -- so that was nice.
My family opens presents on Christmas morning, but after breakfast and generally also after everyone is showered and dressed. Some years this means we don't actually get to the presents until 1pm, but this year we were more organized and got started at 11am. I received some lovely gifts, including five pairs of wonderfully warm, soft, and fuzzy bedsocks (♥!) and a new computer chair from Ikea that I will attempt to assemble in the next few days.
Xmas afternoon Susan and I headed over to Mrs. M's house to see Cat and do the annual holiday cookie exchange. Cat had brought some lemon coconut cream cheese cake down from her job, so we all had cake and tea and chatted for three-ish hours -- after admiring the newly replastered and repainted house, which was much brighter and more cheerful/spacious-feeling than it used to be. (On a related note, Mrs. M has gotten rid of thirty boxes of Mr. M's miscellaneous saved papers, yikes. She hasn't begun to touch his books, though. That is 2018's project.)
And then I drove home to Ithaca today, leaving Madison around 11:45 and arriving in Ithaca almost exactly four hours later. I haven't completely finished unpacking -- I still have all my clothes to put away -- but all the other stuff is mostly where it ought to be. And while a few of my plants had gotten very thirsty in my absence, none of them had died, so that's nice. :)
I will try to make a post about Yuletide stuff later tonight, but if not tonight, tomorrow for sure.
