Christmas 2008

Holiday Season 2008

Christmas '08... what did I do? How was it? My 24th ever, the 4th since Grandpa's health issues started.

Well, it was in Chicago this year, and everybody was there except Ken. He was leading a tour in Africa for some New York lawyer's family. I think that's the first Christmas that he hasn't been here at all. The other big difference was that Grandpa was in a nursing home. He went back to the hospital a few days after I left from my Thanksgiving visit, due to the terrible pain in his back. Turns out it's a crushed L3 vertebrae, and there isn't a "fix." So he was in the hospital for a few days, and he's been in the rehab section of Manor Care nursing home since then. He walks a few times a day, trying to build up strength, but he's very weak, and if his back flares up, he's pretty much laid out till some morphine can take effect. So, each day was structured around who was going to see Grandpa when. I think Grandma went almost every morning, and various combinations of us would come in the afternoon and evening, usually bringing him some sort of restaurant food for dinner and/or lunch. I flew in on Christmas Eve, rolling from work to the airport to Grandma and Grandpa's. That evening we all went to the nursing home together and had our traditional Christmas Eve program in the lounge. KFC replaced a home-made dinner, but we still did some scripture readings and carol singings, and UK provided tech support to play "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from his iTouch on the little TV in the room. Interesting the places life takes you.

Christmas day we all went to see Grandpa in the morning, and did presents back home later in the afternoon. I actually had good ideas for most everybody this year, hooking Dad up with some tools, getting a gadgety new wrench for UK, Fiesta bakeware for Mom, and some Starbucks lovin' for Danmybro. And UK got me an ESPRESSO MACHINE!! Apparently he and Daniel went on quite a quest to find a good one, but this one is solid, and gets the job done. It was fun concocting espresso-based beverages from the hissing steaming machine in the basement. Nogttes were definitely the favorite. And I kinda think Grandma's washer and drier will forever smell like coffee :-P

Most days were split up with different groups at Grandpa's, eventually congregating back home around 9 or 10 for a movie. There were a couple exceptions, though. Uncle Keith got 4 standing room tickets for a Blackhawks game, so us four men went to the United Center on the 26th, Friday. That day was freakishly warm - 60+ degrees! The day before the sidewalks had been over an inch thick with ice. Yes, we had strange weather. But weather notwithstanding, there was nothing wierd about how the Hawks TORE UP the Philly Fliers! It was a great game (my first hockey game ever), and the crowd definitely was full of energy. Record size crowd, by the way, and franchise record-tying 8th win in a row.

The other more differenter day--for Dad and me at least--was Saturday. I had seen an ad in the Chicago craigslist page for a "Sound City foot pedal synth." In short, a very odd and rare analog synthesizer, but not the $2000 dollar mainstream one, but an off brand cheap one! I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, so Dad and I headed out to Burr Ridge at noon. I ended up buying the synth after checking it out and talking him down to $275. Then the day got pretty more cooler: turns out Lagrange, where Dad grew up, was just 5 minutes down the road! So we drove there, and Dad had a crazy trip down memory lane. We drove up and down his street, took pictures of his old house, found lots of his friends houses, his grade school and junior high school, and even ate lunch at the local Taco Bell, across the street from the Arby's where he got his first real job. Pretty cool for Dad, and I really enjoyed getting to see what was once so familiar to him. On the way home we stopped at 2 music stores, and I got some great help in my search for a satisfactory overdrive pedal. Pretty cool day, and we topped it off by picking up Aurelio's for dinner. Ahhh :-)

Funny as it sounds, one of the marks of this Christmas was BLU-RAY. Uncle Keith got Grandma and Grandpa a Blu-ray player, which puts their huge HDTV to good use. And he had a slew of Blu-ray movies, which we watched pretty much every night. I don't know why, and I don't know if it's definitely a bad thing to be avoided, but watching those movies was a fun thing that sorta brought us together. And the picture was impressive, no doubts. Quite remarkable.

As always, we had a huge spread of cookies and sweets on the side table, complete with Grandma's chocolate cookies, Fannie May buttercreams and mint meltaways, and much much more. The basement fridge was well stocked with Dr.P and Diet Pepsi, with a new addition: Diet Dr.Pepper. It has fallen into much favor with the diet drinkers. I never did have corned beef hash and eggs for breakfast, and without Grandpa we couldn't do the jolly jump-ups, which are his signature breakfast creation. Mom cooked up a great pork roast for Christmas dinner, which was a great spread. Other than that, and spaghetti 2 nights ago, we kinda ate out most of the time.

The trip ended for me on Wednesday. UK, Dad, Daniel and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:30 in the morning and piled into the Suburban. They dropped me off at Midway Airport, and headed from there to down town, where they hung out until the afternoon Bulls game that UK had tickets for. I got checked in and securitied pretty quickly, and chilled by the gate till flight time. Didn't really sleep, just laid there. I decided to watch the ground for the whole flight, since the pilot mentioned that it was only 50 minutes of actual air time. So, I watched every foot of ground between Chicago and Pittsburgh. Except where there were clouds. And then I watched the clouds. Hard to make myself think that we had actually traveled that much distance.
Thus sorta endethed Christmas 2008, but folks still had a few days in Chicago till they left on Saturday, and I still had great times with people who were back on break in Pittsburgh. More on that later.

Christmas '08: Grandpa in the nursing home, espresso machine, Blu-Ray... good times.