Okay, I freely admit I stole the title from Jake. Everyone have a good holiday? Mostly? Good.

There’s no denying it, Christmas is for the kids. We had more presents under the tree than ever, I think, almost all for them. And, they’re just at that age now where Christmas is a Big Deal, possibly the Biggest Deal of the Whole Year, so it was full frontal X-Mas this year. (Yeah, I chose that phrase deliberately, just to weed out the pervs. I’m watching you.)

So, here’s a (mostly boring) list of what I got this year, both for my birthday and Christmas (no particular order):

• Two big fancy bottles of Rogue beer: Imperial Pilsner and Imperial IPA.
• The Confusion and The System of the World (books by Neal Stephenson).
• Clothing: a sweater, a long-sleeved flannel shirt (gotta love the flannel), pajamas.
• A Disney World shot glass mug, etched with my name.
• A new wallet, with a hundred dollar bill in it. I almost didn’t find the money, I thought the wallet was nifty enough.
• The board game “Brewopoly.”
• Peanuts: the Art of Charles M. Schulz
• A Barnes and Noble gift card
• Money! Some of which I’ve already used to buy some books and fancy beer
• The annual Christmas ornament with the picture of the kids
• DVDs: The Incredibles and Batman Begins
• The Forty-Niners, a graphic novel
• A reading lamp—a standing lamp with a gooseneck lamp addition
• The Budweiser Brewery from Department 56—a porcelain model building of the original brewery
• And oh yeah, a cat.

After the morning of opening presents and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over new toys and cleaning up and everything, we went out to my parents’ house to spend the rest of the day eating and visiting in our traditional Christmas manner. This is actually my favorite part of Christmas, I think, family and friends getting together to celebrate the holiday.

This year we caught up with a family friend we hadn’t seen in four years, with an interesting backstory: he’s a forensic criminalist based in Ontario, Oregon. That’s right, he’s a CSI, although, as he put it, without the guns, the drama, or anything like that. He wants to get transferred to Portland because there’s not enough homicides in Eastern Oregon… seriously. Mostly it’s lab work, identifying meth and other similar drugs.

What’s funny is that I was under the impression for years now that he was a forensic psychologist, which is what I’d been telling people. Doesn’t that seem more exciting or interesting somehow? I don’t know, but I was pretty amused by the thought of him matching wits with the Hannibal Lecters of Eastern Oregon…

Ah, such is Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year!