holidays

Our Country is Facing a Crisis, Friends

Don’t you love the word “friends”? It adds emphasis and gravitas to just about any situation. Compare, “We’re out of toilet paper,” which seems like a banal observation, to “We’re out of toilet paper, friends.” Suddenly, you know you’re facing a life changing moment of immense importance. Stuff just got real, folks. (Folks is another word like “friends.”) In any case, my confrontation with the harsh realities of our time came–as most confrontations of this sort do these days–during a recent visit to Walmart. Denisa and I have been on the busy side lately, and so I went shopping with her […]

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Why Groundhog Day Might Be Better Than Christmas

Let’s get the religious argument out of the way right off the kicker. I’m not here to say that Groundhog Day is more important than the celebration of Christ’s birth. (Though I might argue that Christmas these days is about more than the celebration of said birth. But today’s blog post isn’t about that, and it would take me too long to get into it at the moment . . .) No–for my current purposes, I’m just looking at the expectations we all have of any particular day. When I get up on a work day, I have an idea

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My New Favorite Christmas Movie

I do a fair bit of movie watching, and I’ll admit that when the holidays come around, I sometimes suffer from movie fatigue. I love me some White Christmas, but I’ve seen it a slew of times, and sometimes I’m just not up to watch it again. And so I go searching elsewhere. I look for movies that I’ve missed out on. I check Top Ten lists–look to see what other people are watching for their holiday cheer. It’s how I came to my last blog post on this subject. But I’ve continued to be on the  lookout for more

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Which Would You Choose: Staycation or Vacation?

I go on a fair number of vacations. Big vacations. Off to Orlando. Germany. Slovakia. Utah. Pennsylvania. You name it. And I enjoy those vacations. I’ve made wonderful memories on them, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. But they take an awful lot of work. Work to plan. Work to travel. And that work creates stress. This time last year, I was embarking on a big European vacation with the fam. It took a ton of time to plan and execute, and it really went marvelously–all things considered. But like I said–it took a lot out of me.

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Gingerbread Houses for the Lazy!

Not that my son is the lazy person in this instance. Rather, it’s me who’s the sloth. My k ids have wanted to do gingerbread houses for the last few years, and each year, Denisa and I plan on doing them. But it’s a fairly time-intensive project that requires planning and forethought. Let’s be honest–that description covers a lot of what goes on at the holidays, and there’s only so much planning and forethought I have to go around. (See  my post on why I don’t do Christmas cards for more on that.) Still, nothing like starting a new tradition

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