Winter break has begun!

me, in the early 90's

In grad school, I lived in lots of places.  My favorite was a little house with Chris and John and Cisco and Pancho and those cats whose names I forget.  We played lots of RPGs and learned to rock climb together.

One day we were sitting on the couch watching CHiPs, and Chris started laughing uproariously at every little hijink that Ponch and Jon played.  After 20 minutes of this, one of us said, "Er, Chris, this show's not that funny..."  Chris, in a deadpan voice said, "This show is much better if you laugh while watching it, even if it's not funny.  Try it."  Chris is good at getting people to do stuff, and we did it.  It kind of worked...we all had a good time that day.  I must say it was one of the most pleasurable CHiPs viewings I've had.

cisco, best dog evar

On a side note, Chris's other theories included that if you didn't keep saying unpredictable, interesting things, you could be replaced (with no moral implications) by a robot, and also that it would be a good idea to build self-replicating robots based on mobile homes and junk cars.  He later got a PhD and is now head of a successful tech company.  If you look out your window one day and see a mobile home stalking down your street, you'd better start thinking of something unpredictable and interesting to say.

What's my point?  I just wanted y'all to know my plan for the holidays.  We've got a house that's literally torn apart.  We're gonna have house guests.  We're gonna have a party.  In-laws are coming!  (love them) We're gonna have Bubba's 10th birthday party.  And we're gonna have it again, so that Ben can enjoy.  We're gonna have kids off from school for 2 weeks.  We don't have a cake yet, and we haven't bought all our xmas presents, and we haven't done diddly about holiday cards.  Ok, that's not a plan, that's just all the stuff that's going down.

Here's the plan:  Laugh.  Every time there's a choice, I'm gonna choose laughing.  You just watch, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this.  It doesn't matter if things aren't perfect.  Anybody who gets a little whiny is going to get picked up and hugged and twirled around (here's hoping Uncle J doesn't need that, 'cause he's bigger than me). 

Don't get me wrong...Ben and I will be doing our walkabouts, and we'll be doing every damned thing that we need to do (and I do mean need).  I guess I'm going to pretend that I'm medicated or something. 

Happy holidays to all of y'all.  I'll post if I can.  If I can't, it's because I'm busy laughing.  Maniacally.

Tip o the day:

There are often two ways to go.  When things get weird, you can react like you are conditioned to, or you can go sideways...blow a zerbit or make a funny noise.  I don't know what's best...but sometimes you need to hear giggles instead of screams.  Think twice...maybe you can get a giggle.