Tag: holidays

Explain it like I’m five

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I need someone to help me understand how the hell I know about Groundhog Day, and no, the answer isn’t the movie, because that came out when I was 17 and, trust me, everybody knew what Groundhog Day was before the movie came out. It is absolutely unreal to me that this weird little holiday, which by rights ought to be confined to one or two tiny ethnic conclaves in no more than one or two states, is practically a national holiday. It makes no goddamn sense, and what’s weirder is that I live in America, a country where “racism” is the answer to any question starting with the word “why” 90% of the time, and I can’t figure out any way how racism might contribute to me knowing about the day that the terrified river rat lets everyone know what the weather is going to be.

I mean, have you heard of Casimir Pulaski day? The weirdest unexpected day off of my life was due to Casimir Pulaski day. Have you heard of Dyngus Day? Having heard of it for the first time just now, are you at all surprised that Polish people are involved? People talking about Groundhog Day and taking it seriously should be viewed with only slightly less frightened condescension than snake handling, and once the phrase Gobbler’s Knob enters the conversation … Christ.

Anyway, every single other thing I might choose to talk about today is horrible, so I’m leaving you with that.

A nearly perfect Christmas Eve

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

I’ve been in sweatpants and a hoodie all day.

Haven’t left the house. Not going to tomorrow, either.

Got some reading done. Took a nice nap in my recliner this afternoon. Spent a couple of hours gaming– if you’re looking for something to fall into before the world starts up again, you could do worse than Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. And now that the boy’s in bed, I’m going to wrap the rest of the Christmas presents.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope it’s peaceful.

Keep on trying me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I am bored and kvetchy and it’s making my anxiety act up something fierce. I actually got quite a lot done today– no big projects, but a ton of little jobs around the house and I got the oil changed on the car– but since the sun went down I’ve turned into a mess, and I can’t concentrate well enough to read.

That part’s the alarming part, honestly. It’s rare that I can’t focus enough to read. I’m watching someone else play a video game while I’m writing this, and I’m starting to think I need to dive back into Skyrim or something like that; I simultaneously need something new to do and am kind of aching for something familiar and comfortable I can just fall into.

I’m also, for the first time in several years, pretty excited (or at least not actively dreading) Christmas, mostly because I feel like I definitely won Christmas this year. I don’t know if other families do this thing, where they’re competitive about who gets each other the best gifts– hell, I don’t know if my family does this thing or if it’s just me– but one way or another it’s me, hi, I won Christmas, it’s me.

Anyway, I’m going to go take down the wallpaper in the library or something.

That can’t be right

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Parenting1 Comment

Not that my immediate family is that large, but I’m done with all Christmas shopping for my immediate family, and everyone else is pretty much gift card people. My brother will send me a list for my niece and nephew, who are too young to get mad at me for buying the wrong thing anyway, and the basement goblin will likely get cash. The tree went up after Thanksgiving and I’ve been changing the lights every time I walk into the living room just because I can.

(Seriously, Govee lights are amazing. Ignore the price; order these. They’re absolutely worth every dime.)

Anyway, what this means is that everything’s going to show up broken, or not show up at all, or I’m suddenly going to realize four days before Christmas that my wife and son don’t actually like any of the things I got them for Christmas and I’ve somehow accidentally ordered a ton of stuff for me instead. This is actually a bit of a risk with the boy; he and I have enough tastes in common that I actually rejected a gift I was thinking about for him this year because I decided I wanted it and not him. He’d have liked it, I think, but it was a little too expensive for “he’d have liked it, I think.”

I have one thing left to do for my wife, which is going to involve Doing Art, and which will be a funny joke even if I completely fuck up Doing the Art. She looks at the blog kind of irregularly, so I could probably get away with telling y’all the plan, but … nah.

How’s your shopping going?

In accordance …

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

… with our most ancient and cherished traditions:

Our Thanksgiving plans got cancelled by Michigan weather, so we’re having lasagna today. I was actually looking forward to seeing a couple of people, but I’m pretty sure I’ve had worse holidays.

In which I’m not complaining but I definitely am

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, life2 Comments

I am not big on the whole St. Patrick’s Day thing. I have been more strident in my dislike in the past, especially when I lived a life more likely to expose me to drunken idiots in green (ie, when I lived in Chicago) but I am not willing to even pretend to be remotely Irish, am definitely not remotely Catholic, and I don’t drink, and between those three things I don’t have any particular use for this holiday. This means that when my wife told me that we were getting together with her side of the family today, and that “brisket” would be involved, I was excited as hell– I never get brisket– and I did not even think to connect it to the holiday.

You can imagine my consternation when we got to the party and the “brisket” was corned beef, which yes, I understand is from the same part of the cow and is in fact a different preparation of the same meat, but Goddammit when I get to a party and I’m expecting brisket on a Sunday afternoon and instead I’m given a reuben I might start muttering under my breath and quietly sending pointed and slightly disrespectful text messages to my wife. Don’t misunderstand me, I love a good reuben, although my particular preference for brined meats on rye runs more to pastrami– but reubens don’t at all fit into the same headspace as “brisket,” dammit, and part of me still feels betrayed.(*)

The rest of me is stuffed full of corned beef, though, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

(*) I should have learned after seventeen years of marriage into this family that I should never assume I know what is going to happen when we go to her sister’s place for a meal, even when said sister isn’t responsible for the cooking, and most of the cooking for this particular event was done by her cousins. The last time we went there for Thanksgiving there were no mashed potatoes, which is a food sin of the highest order, and I absolutely left that particular gathering with my dis firmly gruntled. You can’t even call it Thanksgiving if there are no mashed potatoes. It may as well be Mashed Potato Day. There can be other potatoes too, I’m fond of au gratin and any form of sweet potato, but either way wrongs were committed against Thanksgiving in general and me in particular.

Merry Christmas

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

A lot of the time I reserve Christmas to post about something ridiculous, since no one is paying attention. I got nothing today, and since we did Christmas three times today I am also kind of collapsing from exhaustion. So I hope your day went well one way or another, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

We put the tree up

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I recommend books and music and video games all the damn time, but I don’t stray into other products all that often. Let me say that you could spend as much as you wanted on Govee Christmas lights and they would be worth every dime:

They have a feature where you point your phone at the tree after you put the lights on, and then the app maps where the lights are, which allows you to pull off effects like this, which come from the center of the tree:

Just fucking awesome. There’s literally hundreds of preset patterns even before you get to the user-customizable ones or, y’know, just colors, and it’s all kinds of fun to sit in front of the tree and just fiddle with the app.

Meanwhile, we’re expecting 4-7″ of snow tonight, so if y’all want to start doing the Dance of Two-Hour Delay, that’d be great. I don’t actually want a snow day tomorrow because that makes the rest of the week really fucking complicated but a couple of hours of extra sleep in the morning would not be looked askance upon.

Also, yes, that’s a stuffed quetzalcoatlus as a tree topper. My son’s idea.