Merry Christmas Everyone

I had an awesome uncle when we were kids (70's). He was a mover and shaker, a real-life hustler, the kind of guy who carried around a stack of 100s with a rubber band around them. He wore a long fur coat with a black hat. He looked like Cramer in the episode of Seinfeld where he had the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Every Christmas Eve after dinner he would take me and my brother out to the movies. Good Times....Good Times....

Cheers homie! I'll go pour myself some Angels Envy and drink with ya.

* approx age 6-7: unwrapping a Nintendo entertainment system (part-time English teacher single-parent mom but investment banker uncle)

* a few years later: same thing with SNES

* middle school: coming back from a small ski trip and starting to read John Grisham novels.

* college: staying over one break in western mass. Biking to Hadley mall where they had an Amy’s cheese pizza and bringing it back to the German house that had an oven.

* mid 20s: watching whatever odd PBS documentary while hanging out with my mom.

* early 30s: my aunt’s lasagna and extended family meals we took for granted at the time.

* late 30s: good news after a fertility journey.

* early 40s (today): my wife and I using our decade of experience navigating edge cases when filling prescriptions to help my MIL fill an important heart medication so she didn’t have to go to the ER for Christmas.

If you are visiting SF, Christmas is the very best time to sightsee, especially in the morning. Every major location has plenty of free parking and no one is there. I have lived here for decades but Christmas is my favorite time to bring visitors because they can see everything that is normally hard to see because of parking, too many tourists etc.

Merry Christmas!

I had rented Final Fantasy 7 from Blockbuster so many times that my brother decided to get it for me for Christmas. Even though I never really snooped for presents he decided to mess with my head and wrapped it in two large bath towels and put it in an even larger box. This giant package below the tree for me, and it sounded like cloth - I figured it must've been a jacket or something until I opened it.

Another time I was looking for something (not presents) in my parent's room, and happened to find a very poorly hidden Playstation 2 from my father. The waiting until Christmas part was fitting punishment for accidental snooping.

Some of the finest memories are just a jumble of similar situations though. Christmas Eve was the night my entire local family would gather at my maternal grandmother's house, and we'd all have a big meal and sit around chatting afterwards.

Then there's that one Christmas Eve when I asked my now-wife to marry me. I knew she'd say yes but there's always that little bit of fear about it. I wanted to ask when everyone I loved would be around.

Time sure flies. Both my father and my maternal grandmother have passed since the last time we all celebrated Christmas together.