Christmas 2018

Christmas this year was a very wonderful day, to add some cheer to an otherwise very difficult year.  It started with fruitless stop to pick up fresh bagels at my local bagel shop--I should have known it would be closed!  As I proceeded to my friend's house to celebrate the day, I stopped to wish a Merry Christmas to my friend Treavor at his workplace on the corner of Highway 29 and I-66 and I stopped briefly as the noon hour approached at my local pizzeria, but I didn't recognize anyone who was around.

Bloody Marys made with a succulent mix and celery and horse radish made up for the absence of bagels, and then we had stuffed omelettes and ginger cookies to cap off the meal.  Because of the weight-limitation imposed upon me because of my recent surgery of five pounds, I didn't bring over to my friend's house my five-foot artificial tree to trim, rather we made do with a lightweight plastic snowman as a tree this year.  We opened our gifts, reflected upon our ties to other loved ones with phone calls and thoughts, and enjoyed holiday cheer for awhile by watching the puppy channel and dancing to Chuck Berry on the jukebox.

Before dark, we drove back to my house so I could drop off my car before darkness, because of my nighttime driving limitation for now, and as we drove around my neighborhood, we were amazed to see an owl with a 5-foot wingspan fly right past the windshield before it perched nearby on a fence where we watched it for awhile as it occasionally rotated its head around to see us; I have never seen so large an owl before.  Then we went to the teeming Eden Center in Falls Church and walked around its grocery stores where we marveled at the mostly Asian products offered there, two-feet tall thick carrots, long-neck clams with necks protruding eight inches out of the clamshell, lemon grass with chili peppers, and coffee laced with chicory, a New Orleans treat which I haven't seen in my supermarkets for decades and which I enjoy very much; I bought a can.

We capped off the wonderful day with a dinner of Indian fare at the Haandi's in Falls Church, where we split a bottle of its signature beer, a Taj Mahal IPA.  I received some wonderful, thoughtful gifts this holiday season, the Ken Burns PBS documentary The Vietnam War, a graphic bound comic book on the Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination, two bottles of whiskey barrel aged especial beers, a handsome flannel work shirt, a bottle of Argentinian wine and a pound bar of Belgium chocolate.  Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.