I'm getting ready to head to sleep in a few minutes in very high spirits indeed. I hope I'm not jinxing the rest of the day to come, but at just about four hours into Christmas Day 2004, it's already been an absolutely wonderful holiday.
Funnily enough, it's not like anything was radically different about this Christmas Eve than years past: it was a long, busy day at work followed by an hour of chatting, eating too much junk food and exchanging gifts with my co-workers. From there, Sarah and I took a leisurely drive around Mentor to look at the lights before winding up at my parents' house to exchange gifts with my niece (who will not be around for tomorrow's family gift exchange), talk to my sister (who is in town from her home in Indianapolis), and watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (not to mention chunks of A Christmas Story before and afterward). Afterwards, Sarah and I returned home to do our gift exchange by the Christmas tree, relax, and play with the cats.
All of the above is time-honored tradition for us (save for the plural form of "cat"), and yet something has made this past day about as near-perfect a Christmas Eve as I can remember. Maybe it's the thick and sparkling white blanket on the ground from Wednesday's daylong Snow-And-Frozen-Rain-And-Then-More-Snow Storm From Hell, the beautiful additional dusting that was coming down in tiny amounts here and there on the drive home from Mentor, the weirdly-cleansing dry chill in the air, the way my amazon.com wishlist has suddenly shrunken considerably, or maybe the fact that I somehow scored the entire weekend off from work (including the hellish Day After Christmas for only the second time I can remember). Whatever the difference has been, I'm about as happy right now as I've felt in years, and I hope the same goes for everyone reading this right now.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
NP Various Artists The Narada Nutcracker
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