Feeling a touch better and rolling at about 55% Cole, which I suppose is good enough. Peak Cole would kill some of you lesser mortals.
Nothing to report here other than that I had Chinese for dinner and slept for 16 hours yesterday and am looking at about 14-15 for today.
Hope you had a good one.
geg6
Glad you’re feeling better, Cole. And be kind to poor Thurston. He only scattered the garbage out of concern for your lack of exercise. He had no idea you were sick, I’m sure.
Evap
Spent many hours at the airport and missed our flight because of long lines and general chaos. My bag is there somewhere but who knows if/when I’ll get it back. Bah humbug!!!
eclare
Merry Christmas to you too. I wish I had a fruitcake to send to you.
Ajabu
@eclare:
I was told as a child, that they was only one fruitcake in existence. Nobody liked it, and every Christmas the last unhappy recipient sent it to someone else. Apparently, that lonely fruitcake is still making the rounds…
ETA: I was given this information, roughly 70 years ago. I imagine you need a chainsaw to cut a slice of it now.
caring & sensitive
So inspired by delurking the other day that I thought I’d report. Went to my daughter’s this morning (she lives 5 minutes away) to watch the grandkids 6 and 3 open their stockings and we all opened presents. Had the traditional Christmas morning lox and bagels (being Jewish has many benefits) followed by spinach dip and copious amounts of chocolate including, of course, a Terry’s chocolate orange and Toblerone. Came home and made a turkey dinner for everyone and made a point of not over eating. Merry Christmas everyone.
different-church-lady
Dude, true peak Cole might kill you.
Steeplejack
@caring & sensitive:
Merry Christmas! 🎄
Glidwrith
Very low key Xmas here, eldest almost fledged dragonet had four wisdom teeth pulled. Alas, nestlings these days must wait longer for true wisdom.
geg6
@caring & sensitive:
That sounds lovely! Keep being inspired!
Major Major Major Major
Merry Xmas, Cole and everyone else!
We also ordered Chinese delivery… was supposed to go to a friend’s but he got sick… so we watched Glass Onion instead. And it’s really fun! I posted a tiny review with some light spoilers over on mastodon. Recommended!
Obvious Russian Troll
Merry Christmas! We apparently have a new tradition (this year and last year) of fleeing from my wife’s family in Appalachia on Christmas Day–after spending way too much time with the them the previous week. 11 hours of driving, but it feels good to be home (and we saw everybody we wanted to see).
Raoul Paste
55% peak Cole is not quite a Christmas miracle, but progress is progress
Merry Christmas
peej01
Very quiet Christmas at my sister’s house (I live 10 minutes away) because her daughter and the 3 kids under six decamped to Colombia until the New Year. On the other hand, we didn’t start the festivities until 11am, which is a benefit when no kids are around.
rikyrah
Merry Christmas, Cole🎅🏾🤶🏾⛄🌲
rikyrah
A rural family that has internet for the first time, thanks to the Biden/Harris Administration🤗🤗👏🏾👏🏾
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRqsqnJL/
Arclite
Hope you feel better soon. I was in bed for a week with COVID over the summer. Took a couple weeks after that to feel normal again.
eclare
@caring & sensitive: That sounds like a wonderful day! Christmas is for kids.
Ohio Mom
We braved the cold and ate our Chinese food in the restaurant.
Looking forward to Wednesday when it warms up again.
Glad you are on the mend, Cole.
brendancalling
I’m not even going to get into the overall nightmare this holiday has been so I’ll go TL/DR: the kid’s Friday flight to the US was canceled, Saturday’s maintenance delays left him stranded in Toronto last night, and now he’s back home in Montreal. My dad made ham sandwiches for holiday brunch today. I’m not making that up. It was ham sandwiches.
But I met someone a few weeks back and she asked me over to her family’s annual get together, so I went and it was a lot of fun. Lots of Puerto Rican food, which I love, and Jewish food which I also love. So it was OK after all, but far from perfect and I’m still mad about my kid not being here.
rikyrah
This is true. I don’t find those videos from the PNW funny. I find them terrifying.😲😲😲 Ice is SO not a joke. #TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRqsroUv/
ronno2018
Hang in there dude. Keep posting here. Your views on stuff helps us. Sorry for your loss. It sucks.
Wyatt Salamanca
Merry Christmas Cole and to all your valuable frontpagers as well!
Gvg
I am sorry picturing you cut off from your family, but glad you are feeling better. My mother was feeling some better so we had a gathering today instead of what we were king of bracing for, a Christmas at the emergency room. We kept telling her to sit down and dad has apparently become a very good dishwasher this week (late 70’s). You can teach an old dog new tricks.
kalakal
Merry Christmas Cole, glad you’re feeling better
rikyrah
Secretary Pete playing Charlie Brown🤗
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRqsm6ry/
Suzanne
We had a very nice day, oven trouble notwithstanding. I feel so uncomfortably full of food. Definitely going to fast tomorrow. The kids had a great time and got lots of gifts.
One hilarious thing: Spawn the Youngest got a gummy-bear-flavored lip gloss. She also got a toy train. She also got some little farm animal figurines. She had a great time putting lip gloss on the pigs and the bull and then putting them in the train cars. LOL.
grandmaBear
After a white-knuckle drive from Dayton to Cincinnati on Friday, and temperatures in the low single digits, managed to just barely make our connections and so find ourselves in a cottage at the beach on the north shore of Oahu this week. Highs of 81-82. Walking on the beach, reading, catching up on b-j threads, eating chocolates. May do some touristy things. Or not. Very relaxing. Glad your health is slowly improving, John. And I hope 2023 treats you better. You deserve better.
rekoob
@Ajabu: @eclare: For what it’s worth, I heard the same thing — I believe it was Johnny Carson who said, “There’s only one fruitcake, and whoever gets it pours more rum on it and passes it on to the next person”. My mother’s side of the family were inordinately fond of fruitcake.
grandmaBear
@rekoob: good fruitcake is actually amazing. I usually make Alton Brown’s recipe, which is great. None of that synthetic-tasting candied fruit junk. Dried fruit soaked in rum with lots of ginger. Too busy and stressed this year. But I’ll get back to it next year.
pinacacci
peak cole is a christmas present. xox
edited to say nobody in my surviving family appreciates fruitcake except me. Stupid brothers.
Glidwrith
@grandmaBear: Emeril Lagasse’s recipe here, hot simple syrup to hydrate the fruit, La Grande and Amaretto liquor to finish the job. Discovered that converting to a cupcake format enhances the bake.
mrmoshpotato
Brunch at my sister’s and BiL’s with their two kids and our parents. Won a game of TROUBLE against my mom and nephew. Won one of the two 4-player Uno games. Watched the Dolphins choke.
Finished Glass Onion a few minutes ago at my parents’. Watching Bucs-Cardinals in overtime on Sunday Night Football. I’m exhausted.
eclare
@brendancalling: I’m so sorry about your son. Hopefully he can visit you soon.
Old Dan and Little Ann
The In-laws lasted 2 1/2 hours before they went off the rails. My fil acted disgusted when my wife opened up Michele Obama’s book and mentioned pedophilia. My bil then started ranting against Biden and Zelinskyy and praising Putin. My wife and I gave them a rash of shit as they muttered themselves out the door.
patrick II
Merry Christmas everyone.
eclare
@rikyrah: No one EVER has traction on ice. I don’t care if you have 4 wheel drive, special tires, whatever. Unless your tires are wrapped in crampons, you do not have traction and will not have control. Which is terrifying.
eclare
@rikyrah: So fun!
eclare
@grandmaBear: So glad you made it! And I am so jealous.
Redshift
@Ajabu: i like fruitcake. Always have. Ms. Redshift usually gets me one for Christmas, and I eat it all myself over the next couple of weeks.
Redshift
Glad to hear you’re on the mend, Cole. Hope it continues to get better.
Frankensteinbeck
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Thank you for giving your wife a sane alternative to her blood family, then. Yeesh!
mvr
Merry Christmas to Cole and all! I came here earlier in the day expecting a Christmas cursing from John, but all seemed to be calm. I was puzzled, but I’m glad to see that things are now returning to normal.
Glad you’re doing somewhat better John. Hoping for continued improvement at a quick pace.
And hope everyone had a good day!
Craig
Merry Christmas. Thanks for running this place.
The Moar You Know
76 degrees in San Diego and all the relatives were well behaved. The last part is the Christmas miracle. The 76 degrees is kinda normal; it should start raining in a week or two. Hopefully.
JaySinWA
@eclare: I had some old SnowTrax that worked really well walking on ice. Current versions don’t do as well, but other vendors have better reputations. OTOH pretty much nobody has that kind of traction in automobile tires. Ice is death to traction for cars. Even studs can become ice skates in the wrong conditions.
eclare
@JaySinWA: I was in a five or six car pileup here a little over a decade ago on an ice covered overpass. I was on my way to work and reports were just coming on the radio about ice in Memphis. I remember sliding into a car, not a damn thing I could do about it.
Luckily I was not injured, and my car was drivable til later that day when I got a rental. But I remember that terrifying feeling of no control and wonder what the hell all those people in OH were thinking.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Good to hear that you’re “rolling Cole”…lol! Happy holidays to you and yours.
If I had stupid money (IOW, Musk money) I would pay for a line of trucks to dump horse shit in front of Abbot’s house.
For a week.
mvr
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Why just in front?
Ann
Adding to food mentions, my 92 year old mother and I ate out at noon at the local Chinese restaurant, and topped off the day (at her request) with a hoagie from Wawa. Yes, we are just outside of Philadelphia.
Kelly
Eugene, OR, at the south end of the Willamette Valley, had it’s warmest Christmas Day ever, a high of 63f. A couple days ago temps were in the low 20s and the entire city was covered in a 1/2″ of ice.
TJC
A lurker but I hope you can find some peace. My mom died suddenly in June and hoping for some peace not involving my idiot brother
eclare
@Ann: Sounds like a nice day.
eclare
@TJC: Oh holy shit! I am so sorry. I lost my mom a few years ago, it’s tough.
Betsy
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Wow! That’s some hard-to-take sh*t.
I hope you didn’t have a long decompression. When family is jerks, it takes me a long time to be able to relax again, I sleep poorly, etc.
dp
Merry Christmas, hope you feel better soon.
Betsy
@TJC: I’m so sorry to hear that. And conflict / someone being a jerk in the situation makes grief processing more difficult.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mvr:
Good point! I’d need more trucks but that’s what stupid money is for!
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Betsy: I’m going to sleep like a baby. Start talking like an asshole after I’ve hosted you for 2+ hours and then you’re going to let your freak flag fly. No thanks.
Kattails
Cole, I am so deeply sorry for the loss of such a friend, but glad you’re coming around slightly.
My mom is still recovering from major hip surgery, but made it through.
My week can’t compare with yours, but not the best. It’s been low teens at night here the last few days. Tried to get to work on Friday only to find a tree down across the driveway, had to go do my lumberjack routine. After work I did some errands & then drove home, up-elevation, into almost white out conditions. On the second trip back to the car to bring in groceries, my feet went out on slippery stair treads and I went down on my tush, then right thigh, bicep, and ended up face down on the rock retaining wall just below the steps. The sequence is writ in my bruises. The bridge of my glasses gashed the bridge of my nose quite nicely. Glasses miraculously survived.
The weekend before, one of the cats suddenly developed a serious UTI so a $300 visit to the emergency vet an hour away in the dark.
Thankful for Mom surviving; family and friends; carols and making food gifts.
eclare
@Kattails: That sounds awful, but I’m glad the fall wasn’t worse. And glad your mom is recovering. At 92, that is a blessing.
Betsy
@Old Dan and Little Ann: That’s good to hear.
Yeah, serious jackassery on the part of guests in YOUR HOUSE.
I guess the incredible rudeness goes with the territory – All magats are essentially different levels of sociopath, from low-grade asshole on up.
Kattails
@eclare: Thanks! the kitchen steps are only 3 high, but that’s quite enough. Nothing broken is the big blessing.
Wow, I’m amazed that you recall Mom’s age!! But she will actually be 94 on the 28th. Still in hospital while they stabilize some issues, like hemoglobin levels; but well enough to complain about the food :-)
eclare
@Kattails: Your mom complaining is awesome.
NotMax
@eclare
FYI.
History of the Antarctic Car Industry.
;)
eclare
@NotMax: How do you have all of these files in a mental rolodex?
NotMax
@eclare
Brain ballast.
:)
WaterGirl
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Ugh. sorry that happened, but glad they left.
WaterGirl
@TJC: So sorry about your mom. Siblings can be maddening.
brantl
@different-church-lady:
Dude, true peak Cole might kill you. The 2 of those together should be one rotating tagline.
brantl
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I’m glad you gave them a rash of shit, they’ve earned it.
StringOnAStick
Spent Christmas dinner with the first close friends we made when we moved here two years ago. Family made from friends is so much better than the crazed magats that compose most of my thankfully far away blood relations.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
I’m in eastern LA county and it’s supposed to rain Tuesday and every other day this week. And it’s 80 outside right now.