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Jewish Christmas, 2016
Sunday, December 25 2016
I was up before 7:00am because I couldn't sleep and my mind was full of features I wanted to implement. And any work I might do on a productive Christmas morning could justify slacking off in the middle of a workday. I'd finally figured out how to implement live searches in this godforsaken Javascript framework so I could make a number of tools (with their endless navigational lists) easier to use.
Gretchen also got up early, though a couple hours later, and she proceeded to make scones while I made two french presses of coffee (caffeinated for me, decaf for Gretchen). And then Gretchen got me my Christmas socks full of stuff: nuts, tiny canvases, little candies, a tiny bottle of Doc Herson's absinthe, an even smaller bottle of Bulleit bourbon, a little cable clothesline with tiny clothespins for displaying tiny images, and a set of retro ballpoint pens (to remind me of the US Government pens she imagined, correctly, that my father had used when I was a kid). I tried to present Gretchen's gifts in her socks, but there was no way the pyrexware would fit. I did manage to cram in the collapsible funnel, which Gretchen appreciated more than I expected her to.
After that, we just had a peaceful time in the living room with our dogs and a raging fire in the woodstove. It being that time of year, by 2:30pm the sun was already going down.
For the Jewish Christmas portion of the evening, the plan was to return to the Kingston Wok (over near Staples), but this year that place was closed for some reason. So instead we returned to a restaurant we hadn't been to in years, Chinese Gourmet Restaurant. It's the place with the wacky over-the-top Chinese architecture and cluttered decorations. Evidently the other restauran's not being open caused a lot of customers to do what we were doing, because we actually had to wait in a line to get a seat when we arrived. We were soon joined by Susan and David, and we were sure to order the moment we had the opportunity from our harried, overworked waitress. It ended up taking over an hour for us to get anything more than soup, which is the slowest service any of us could remember from a Chinese restaurant. The food, however, was surprisingly good (if a little uneven). The restaurant offers Japanese food in addition to the Chinese dishes, and David had a sushi roll he seemed to like okay.
Gretchen and I left the meal early to see our movie at the mall cineplex. We'd chosen Office Christmas Party, since it looked like a good time and Jennifer Aniston is usually fun. Also, I love T.J. Miller, that doughy curly-haired guy from Silicon Valley. The reviews were pretty bad, but the movie had great things about it, particularly the many comedic tropes it set up and subverted. It also had a delightful absence of sentimentality regarding children; one scene where a child with a tablet computer stumbles bewildered through the smouldering ruin of an of an office made the whole experience worthwhile all on its own. Both Gretchen and I had smuggled booze into the theatre; I drank my little bottle of Bulleit bourbon and Gretchen had made herself a cocktail of cherry juice, cranberry juice, and rum.
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