Spring Time in December

We had some persistent April showers all day yesterday which is only problematic when you consider rumor has it that we’re in the middle of December. I mean the cherry blossoms are blooming in Washington! This is either El Nino or some sort of cosmic balancing for the pain of last winter. I’m thinking we can forget the hope for a white Christmas which certainly lost its luster after last year’s snowmegeddon. The white stuff just doesn’t have the romantic allure it once possessed. I blame the driveway from hell for this seismic shift in my relationship with weather.

Yesterday's Production of Spritz

We’re into day two of the Christmas cookie production effort which put any thought of rain induced depression firmly out of mind. My wife has established a Buddy-free zone in the kitchen during the baking process. For some reason she objects to the odd black hair in her cookie batter (it’s all protein!). Buddy hasn’t taken his exclusion form what he considers “the magic room” well; especially since my wife was at work there – usual a target rich environment. He did score a raw peanut butter blossom dropped outside the quarantine zone. At least he has his ridiculous scarf to console himself with. He was up early this morning scouring the floor for dropped crumbs and the odd spilled bacon fat container (that latter would be my contribution).

Wingman and Family In California Representing

The cookies are thankfully headed for deep freeze until Christmas time. If this precautionary step wasn’t taken I stood a good chance of breaking the 300 pound barrier in body weight and there wouldn’t be any cookies left for the actual holiday. It’s how I roll.

Two Beautiful Ladies!

Excitement is starting to crest for the upcoming Star Wars movie, due out on Friday. I know Wingman is having some serious pre-combat stress out in California, balancing his need to see this at the earliest opportunity and the whole new father effort. I’m much calmer back here, I just spent five minutes with the projected movie schedule trying to figure out if I can sneak away from work to catch a matinee ahead of seeing it next week with the Favorite Panamanian. I remember walking out of the theater back in 1977 with my then future ex-fiancé and saying, “well they’re certainly set up for sequels.” I think it’s unfair that we’ve had to wait nearly forty years to find out what happened after the Return of the Jedi.

She Seems to Have a Lot of Pleasant Dreams

On a certainly more esoteric level the company’s lawyers took us out for a Christmas lunch which I guess should be described as holiday lunch since they’re Jewish. The improved management-union relations we’ve had over the past few years have cut seriously into the revenues their firm used to get from us so I guess they just wanted to insure we remembered who they was. We went to an upscale restaurant where I re-discovered the inverse relationship between exclusivity and the size of the serving. I ordered a steak and it came sliced into portions that would trouble an underfed field mouse; it did look good though – from a distance. That only made the task of returning to a house permeated with cookie baking smells much more of a challenge. I quarantined myself from the magic room as much as possible.

Out for a Walk With Mom

Some Late Night Wingman Requirements