Of yesterday's festival of bad traffic and whatnot, the less said the better. I95 remains my long national nightmare. Moving on...
Back home and it's freakishly warm around here (which it is so often that I probably shouldn't term it "freakish" but my sense of what counts as normal late December weather is conditioned by having grown up in the northeast and there's nothing I can do about that at this late date). We almost had a white-ish Xmas up on Staten Island. There were still patches of snow when we got there on Wed. But then the temp spiked up into the 50s and it started raining so it was the more typical brown and muddy Christmas after all. But, anyway, while sitting around the house all afternoon w/ the doors open doesn't exactly fill me w/ holiday spirit, at least I was sitting around the house all afternoon and there's something to be said for that.
As for the hols, we had nice visits w/ Sarah's parents and w/ my mom and my brother. Low key. Pleasant. Good food. And a Top Chef marathon so we're almost caught up and ready for when Bravo hits NC (new episodes will start next week so we may have time to catch the 1 or 2 episodes that we've missed). If it wasn't for all the driving it would've been great. I know it's gotten bad when I find myself thinking that flying isn't that unattractive an option after all.
Another highlight was a Friday night cruise around random sections of Staten Island looking for crazy holiday light displays. We didn't see my holy grail -- the electric manger scene w/ Santas or toy soldiers mixed in with the wise men and shepherds. This usually happens on SI because the yards are so small that there's just not enough room to separate the secular and churchy decorations. On our way back from dinner tonight we saw one in Durham where the Santa has clearly been intentionally added to the manger scene. There's plenty of room so he seems intended to be there. Which is cool. But I find the inadvertant collisions slightly more charming. But there were still plenty of impressive displays including one house w/ so many inflatables that not only couldn't you see any actual grass in the yard, you could barely see the house thru all the crowd of decorations out front. An impressive effort indeed.