Yup, the jew did just say that!

I was invited to sped Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Ruth and her family, that was certainly a first for me. It is definitely a little different and I sorta find it kinda awkward, but it was fun. I was probably the only one thinking it was awkward, and that probably only stems from being Jewish and not believing in what Christmas is all about.

I have to say, I enjoy spending time with Ruth and her family. They do their big dinner on Chrismas Eve, which is ironically a Jewish kinda mentality in starting the holiday the night before. Steve made a great dinner with turkey, ham (which I don’t eat), taters, rolls and more. We forgot to make the salad, so we didn’t end up having one. It happens.

After dinner we all watched Pixar’s “UP” which I hadn’t seen yet, so that was a lot of fun. All five of us “kids” piled into the living room to watch the movie. Midway through the movie we all got to have some of Steve’s cheesecake with caramel sauce, which was great.

Before going back to the movie we started in with the Jones’ traditions which include the opening of a Chrismas Eve gift which is always PJ’s. So we all got awesome hand made fleece PJ pants made by Ruth’s mother, they are pretty comfy. Ruth’s mother also made me the “Jew Stocking” (pictured above) that was hung with the rest of the stockings.

To the sound of Wendy’s most annoying cell phone alarm we were roused out of bed at 5:45AM for the Christmas morning festivities. I managed to score us a few more minutes of sleep by staying down as long as I could. They aren’t allowed to open presents without the entire family and they aren’t allowed to wake their parents without all of them being there.

There were lots of fun gifts, lots of things that people were excited to get, and then there were the projectile weapons. Yup, all the boys (Steve, Rob, and me) got marshmallow shooters. A bow and arrow one and a pump action one that shoot the mini mallows and a crazy single shot bolt action one that shoots big mallows. As can probably be imagined, hyjinx ensued. There were flying marshmallows all morning and mallows smushed into the carpet and into new PJs.

On top of all that, there was even a “Legendary Original, Red Rider 200 Shot carbine action, range-model air rifle…” Well it was actually a 600 shot and it didn’t have a compass and this thing which tells time built right into the stock. It was for Wendy, and she was pretty excited. She even managed to almost pull off an “A Christmas Story” moment when she took it out in the back yard, missed the target and had a BB ricochet around the yard off the fence. Pretty exciting, it even made the classic ricochet sound.

I very much appreciate the hospitality of the Jones’ and the gifts that I was given. It was a lot of fun, though I have to say, I am pretty darn tired now. The funny thing is that, according to Ruth, her mother wants to celebrate Hanukkah next year. I find that interesting because Hanukkah isn’t really a big deal holiday, but it is nice that they think of me like that.

The big holiday party was lat night and it was a lot of fun.  Getting to see people who i don’t get to see very often is a treat.  It is an awful lot of work to pull off a party like that though.  We had twenty-some odd people at the house.  My mother and I made almost 20lbs of potatoes into latkes, we made 16-ish pounds of corned beef, a turkey and more.  I don’t remember what my father said was the count on number of bottles of wine drunk.

Seeing family and friends is fun, but it is mighty tiring.  People started to show up at 5 and the last guest left between 9 and 10, plus we did all the prep beforehand.  I think I got to tell the same stories over and over to different people, and it is hard to keep up with all of that.  Seeing my cousins Greg Weisman, and Sarah and Brian Swett was nice.  I have not seen them in a long time.  I don’t know if I can convince greg to come out to Utah this year, he has all kinds of other adventures planned.  Maybe SCUBA diving in Israel this spring, he sounded interested in that.

Then of course there are the gifts.  As much as I like getting money as a gift, sometimes I feel like it is a cop-out.  I do kinda need money to pay off all my bills, what with buying a washer and dryer and such, but then I feel like I didn’t really use the gifts that I was given.  There are things that I want to get, but then i feel like I could have used the money to be practical and pay the bills.  Worst of all, is that most of the gifts were in cash, and when i have cash I tend to spend it on things that really are not gifty, like dinner.  It is kind of a dilemma.

Over the course of this trip I did get to visit some friends of mine.  Best of all was getting to see Jesi, who, unfortunately is not working currently, thought that allowed her the time to visit.  We went out to see “Radium Girls” produced by the BU Theatre Department.  It was a great show and I got to finally tweetup with a couple more friends: @gizm770o, @jamisonkissh, and @lightingguru44.  The production was really great, a very interesting show.  I would recommend it to anyone who likes going to the theatre.  One of the other great things about the performance was the fact that they has a talkback after with the playwright, which was very interesting.  I enjoy hearing how good plays came to be.

What really bummed me out was not getting to see my good friend Molly who is currently working at Shakespeare and Company in Lennox, MA.  She had performances most of the days that I was home and then it started to snow on the night that she hoped to come visit.  To tell the truth, out of all the people that were at our party, if i had been able to see Molly, it would have made me a lot happier.  Another time I guess.

So, now thanks to Delta for free wifi on the airplane, I can post this entry.  Go figure that they would actually give something away.  I mean the fact that you have to pay to check bags now is totally ridiculous.  It is even more ridiculous that its costs you MORE to check your bags in the airport rather than online at home even though you still have to go see a real live person at the airport to actually check the bag!  It makes no sense.  More people would fly if it cost less to fly!

I think that is all I have, time to sit back and watch a movie to kill the time before we get in to Salt Lake City.  Then i have to go to work, huzzah for photo call!