As this day begins I find myself stuck under a torrent of adversity. Cutting the razor’s edge with my time (as I so usually do) I got out the door a little light in the pocket. It wasn’t until a half hour later that I would find out that I had left my wallet (and by extention all of my money and train tickets) at home. Well, nothing like getting back from a holiday weekend in grand fashion.

But this is all tempered because of just how grand of a holiday weekend it was. By far the best one I have had in many, many years. Wayne, set the scene to Tuesday, December 23rd if you’d please:

Diddely-do. Diddely-do. Diddely-do. Diddely-do….

Tuesday (The day I truly realized how much I love online shopping)
Here I was just days before I had to have all my shopping done and I had exactly half as much as I should have had done. Let’s give it up for the great art of procrastination! Well, there was also my overwhelming need of pay from the odd projects I had been involved in that hung over my head far longer than I had figured on, but let’s be honest here.

Anyway, I stepped off the train with a mission and come hell or high water I was going to complete it. I had only the short trip over to Monmouth Mall to psyche myself up so I would not be overrun in what was sure to be a consumer war zone. When I arrived at the parking lot (after getting stuck behind some clod going 25 in a 45, which made me want to rip his tail lights out with my bare hands) I found a halfway decent parking spot. In fact, while the lot was full, it wasn’t anywhere as full as I thought it would be. “Maybe this won’t be so bad after all” I thought to myself as I locked my car and shuffled off inside.

I was wrong. It was that bad.

The innards of the beast were echoing with the sounds of screaming children, cash registers, shuffling feet and lightly muffled swear words. I began my systematic search of every store up and down the corridor in search for the multitude of gifts I had to purchase, deftly weaving my way through the mass of slow walkers who would stop in the middle of doorways for no good reason. I swear, if people were driving instead of walking there would have been more than a handful of 20 car pileups and totaled cars on this night.

Through all the hustle and bustle I was still managing to make it through my list. It took three complete circuits of the mall (along with one pit stop to my car for the unloading of merchandise) but I managed to get gifts for everyone I needed to, and I had a whole 24 hours extra to get that uber last minute gift if need be. I limped home tired, but content.

Now I would come to find out later on that this nightmare was nothing compared to the scene at Ocean County Mall, my usual mall-type stop for buying things and stuff. I certainly don’t doubt the fact and thank my lucky stars I didn’t decide to make the trek down there for my last minute shopping. Someone could very well have died at my hands, and that is most certainly against the the Spirit of Christmas.

Well, not THAT spirit of Christmas. ^_^

Wednesday (It’s Christmas Eve all day long)

A full day of commuting for a half day of work. My first christmas gift of the season came from the Art Director at Drumbeat Digital (the company I’m currently freelancing for) when he informed me that the office would be closing early. I don’t think I’ve had an official half day in quite some time, like maybe back in high school or something.

I couldn’t help but think that in my orgy of consumerism the night before I missed a gift or two, so I made one more pit stop over at Monmouth Mall, but arrived just in time to park, walk inside and see all the shop shutters being pulled down. So much for catering to the last minute shopper.

Anyway, my next stop was over to my cousin Sharon’s house for her annual Christmas Eve get together. There house was decorated beautifully with many a Christmas light, by far the most decorated house on their block. Of course they did have this oversized waving and singing santa that I could hear from the street and that probably could scare the living hell out of small children and the elderly.

I was informed that up until that night they hadn’t turned Santa on, so singing and waving were a one night performance. That was probably a good thing because I fear their neighbors might have done something drastic if they heard Santa singing “Jingle Bells” every five minutes.

Santa could very well have been the victim of a drive by, ladies and gentleman! Lord knows I wouldn’t want to write the headline on that one. but I digress; I’m getting off point here.

What was my point anyway? Ah yes, family! family, and the fact that it was nice to see them in such a festive setting. The assorted rug-rats that in attendance were bouncing from room to room (figuratively and literally, depending on what point in the party you’re talking about). The rest of us “grown ups” mulled around and swapped stories and other pleasantries while feasting on the good food provided us. I stayed for a few hours but had to dismiss myself early to head home and wrap every one of the gifts I had bought.

Give it up for procrastination! Twice in one saga! Damn if he’s not the hardest working word in my vocabulary! Well, as hard working as any procrastinator can be. ^_^

Thursday (Christmas Day and AJ’s travelin’ show)

So there I was, having the most blissful dream of me sleeping in this unbelievable comfortable bed when I was stirred to sleep by a rapt at my bedroom door, followed by the head of my sister poking into view. “It’s Christmas”, she spoke with more child-like exuberance than I’ve heard in her voice in years. The clock read something like 7 AM, which was just on the right side of the “too early” line; not too early to be called obscene by those who love to sleep (such as myself).

Shannon and her fiance Chris were downstairs waiting when I made my way to the couch to play Santa. All in all it was a very controlled chaos. The wrapping paper went from gift to garbage bag rather promptly, leaving only piles of unsheathed gifts it the wake.

The lion share of the gifts went to Shannon as Chris really went to great lengths to spoil her; his own pile coming in a respectable second. I was content with the small stash that I got, including
some decent music and decent reading material among other small trinkets and gift cards. I think I got more pleasure from watching the last minute gifts I so thoughtfully bought be so greatly received than opening my own.

I hauled my gifts to the disaster area I currently call my room and crawled back into bed for a little more shut-eye. I had a bit of running around to do later in the day and I wanted to be at my freshest.

The first stop was to visit my dad and deliver his gifts to him. I was playing my schedule completely by ear, and wound up staying much longer than I thought I would. My dad and I talked about this and that; how he’s starting back into doing model train scenes like he used to do when I was much younger, the work he’s done on his compositions and how he’s now recording his own sax playing along with it and so on. There was a far more open level of communication than usual, which was about as great of a Christmas day gift as I could get.

I turned my compass southward and made my next stop visiting my friends Adam, Kelly and Brian (a.k.a. Dookie); dropping off more gifts and seeing what Santa had already left for them. Adam must have been extremely good this year because Santa actually purchased him a battle axe that could easily sever a limb — in fact, sharp enough to cut time itself. Well, maybe just a tad duller than that. YOu get the idea. While there my other friends Jesse and Eileen stopped by, so I got a chance to catch up with them for a few minutes before heading out to my next stop. This would not be the last time in the day I would see them.

Next on the itinerary was Beachwood and good friend Don along with his newly blooming family (Mary, along with daughter Madeline and son Don IV). It was great to see them all, but it’s still a little strange to see Don as the family man. We sat on the living room floor and talked with Madeline dug into her toys and little Don slept quietly.

After a brief stop-over at my place for a dinner break, I made my way back to Adam and Kelly’s place. Along with the crew that had been assembled earlier, new cast members Sue, Pat and Brian (a.k.a. Big Truck) had been added. We had drinks, conversed and just enjoyed the rest of the day. When I finally went home and got into bed, I did so with the knowledge that this was by far my best Christmas in many, many years.

Friday (The veg-o-matic, jam-a-riffic day off from responsibility)
Zzzzzz…zzzzzzzz…zzzzzzz.

* BEEP * * BEEP * * BEEP *

Huh? Humm. Whozther? Whyuwakingme? Damn alam clocks.

SLAM!!!

Zzzzzz…zzzzzzzz…zzzzzzz.

That’s a loose reinactment of how my Friday morning began. I had all the motivation of a garden slug and with good cause: because I could afford to. Drumbeat’s offices were closed and I had myself a nice little extra weekend day to use or not use at my discretion. I had been going full throttle for quite some time and my body decided “no more”.

While I did spend a majority of my day resting, I still did manage to get out for a bit. I got to stop by Jesse’s house to visit for a bit (not to mention get some practice in — more on that later). Slacking can be a good thing sometimes.

Saturday (Run, gun and coffee talk with Joanna, the Ohio refugee)
Feeling a tad more motivated than I did the day before, I decided to go out and use some of my newfound holiday wealth (mostly in the form of those lovely gift cards) to grab those things that Santa neglected to put in my stocking. I wound up getting some DVDs and spent a lot of time drooling over HDTVs (not in my near future, but someday soon…soon my precious). Consumerism is nice sometimes.

In the evening I caught up with Joanna who was home from school for the holidays. We hit Coffee Blue for Chai teas and conversation; her regaling me about a newfound interest in the Cleveland jazz scene, a realization of her groopiestic tendencies, school work and her many, many suitors while I countered with tales of new career adventures, the form of fire and wisdom that had my attention directed some of my thoughts to Savannah (a city which I’ve never been to but for some reason or another seems to play some kind of role in my personal life) and other such nonsense that friends talk about after not seeing each other for a month or so.

We took a long and convoluted path back home to give us that much more time to talk, because I find night drive conversations to be some of the best you can find and I had severely missed having one in the past months. I think I was in my house just a tad before midnight and still felt it a full day.

Sunday (The mildly spectacular jam-o-rama)
Now up to this point all of my holiday gifts had been doled out except for one gift. This one was kind of a bowling ball gift: four hours of practice studio time for Jesse, Brian and myself. It had been some number of months since we last got a chance to plug in and play loud due to a number of different reasons (money, jobs and what not) and I personally was looking forward to it.

On top of that, our trio had recruited a forth member for the day: Sue’s boyfriend Pat, who is quite the accomplished guitarist from my observations. Seems as though he had been just as hungry to jam and he, Jesse and Brian had been forming musical connections during other impromptu jam sessions, so this was the perfect opportunity to act upon it. I welcomed the influx of new blood to the session.

I took along my trusty cassette recorder and ran tape for much of the session time, though I have yet to listen to it so I have no idea if it’s of any quality recording wise. But as far as content is concerned, I think there are some real rough diamonds in there. One of the nice things about the break between session is that it gave us all a chance to work on some new things and Sunday became kind of an on-the-fly alchemy session; trying to give birth to swatch of golden tones.

This is all just the first step in our newly formed master plan to get into the recording studio to finally preserve some of our creations for posterity (and who knows, maybe even profit someday!). If we get enough practice time in and stick to schedule, then we should be going in to lay down tracks sometime around Valentine’s Day. Stay tuned for that.

My final act of the weekend was to start my efforts to realign the energies of my room with an act of feng shui more commonly known as the cleaning of the room of beds. My living quarters had begun to match the same shambled state as my thoughts leading up to the holidays and I wanted to at least be on the way to getting a clean start to the new year. I find you can’t very well do that with in a filth hole.

I would say I am going to remember these past few days with much fondness in the years to come. And just think, I still have New Years to look forward to. Yup, 2003 sure is going out with a bang. Hopefully all this good luck I’m riding right now carries over to 2004 as well. We shall see…we shall see.