I hope everybody had a restful batch of holidays and didn’t kill any family members or anything. I myself killed no one, but my time to rest was sparer than a bowling scorecard with nothing but slashes on it.
Was that a stretch? It felt stretchy.
I did all the usual; 847 church services on Christmas Eve, though we found time to take Charles to the pageant at the cathedral, where he sang1 along with the hymns and the sermon. Christmas morning we set up Sarah’s dad’s video camera, which had been lent to us for this purpose, so that we might videotape Charles doing amusing Christmas things, like eating wrapping paper and ribbons.
Then we went to Sarah’s parents’, where we had eggs and no kegs, followed by a sojourn to my parents’ where I think I fell asleep once. (Christmas is stressful.) It was a super successful day; Charles, as is his wont, was BEYOND happy all day. Seriously, I’ve never seen a child so relentlessly mirthful. The only time he gets really angry about anything is when he’s tired, although if he needs to sleep and doesn’t want to, his wrath is fearful. That boy can SCREAM. Most of the time, the only thing we can do is just let him lay there and yell, and eventually he falls asleep, but it’s not exactly easy on a parent to hear your child making those noises. If he had the capacity for language yet he would definitely be yelling “SCREW YOU BASTARDS!” at the top of his lungs over and over.
He is his mother’s son.
The rest of the week I was on call and had to work, which was boring. Nobody was in the office. I got almost nothing done except for when I got paged during off hours and had to reset people’s passwords or some such frivolity. You’d think I would have used that time to maybe post something on here, but no, I was just about wiped out, and conserving my energies for the weekend. We were marrying off a couple friends, so I needed to make sure my liver was well-prepared for the weekend’s onslaught.
Also, I sang the Star Spangled Banner (TEH BANZORZ!) at a Philadelphia Phantoms game on Friday night; I have a wav file of it made on Todd’s cellphone that I hope to edit and upload later, maybe even make it into a ringtone for when Ambassadors to the UN call me and stuff. (They, and other governmental employees, frequently ask my opinion on foreign affairs. That opinion invariably is “Heck yes we should invade!” I am a highly valued member of President Bush’s team.)
The wedding was beautiful and under 30 minutes, which are basically the two things all weddings should be. (Our wedding was of course nearly an hour long, but then we had a full choir and we sang hymns and things and there was a trumpet player AND a violinist.) The reception was DJ’d by notable local celebrity Dana McDonald, who has a nice radio voice. His tones were DULCET, I tell you. Dulcet.
I drank so much I nearly split my pants. Luckily, I have large friends who are not averse to carrying me home, and there was a shuttle back to the hotel so I didn’t have to drive anywhere. AWESOME.
When I say “sing,” I really mean “yelled at the top of his lungs.” It was stellar.
