We must be living right. Tonight, at 6:30 PM, we took a walk with the kids to see the Christmas lights in our neighborhood. We all had jackets on, with the girls also wearing hats. Ten minutes into the walk, I felt like I needed to ditch the jacket. The sky looked like snow all day long, the only problem was the thermometer was pushing 70. There wasn’t even a chill in the air tonight; it felt like a nice April evening. I’m a big fan of the white Christmas, but you can beat spring-like weather for the holidays.
We had a sitter Saturday night, so we ended up having a big night on the town. We had plans to meet some friends for drinks at 9:30, so before dinner, we hit the mall and Target and knocked out most of the last few Christmas purchases we needed to make. Some nice Indian food to follow up our shopping, and then we hit the bar at 9:00. We grabbed a table, ordered our drinks, and sat back to watch the Dallas-Atlanta game until our friends arrived. Right at 9:30, the DJ cranked the music up. They had been playing random stuff at a reasonable volume since we arrived. Suddenly, S. and I couldn’t even hear each other talk, and we were seated right next to each other. We ended up with a group of about ten and conversations were truly brutal. We got at least four incorrect orders from our waitress because she couldn’t hear us. We all agreed that we’re old, and don’t have the ability to carry on conversations in a loud bar that we all used to have, but this was ridiculous. I was talking to my sister-in-law, and she asked if I had a cold. I said, “No, I just don’t go to bars anymore.” After ten minutes, I sounded like I used to sound around 3:00 AM after a night of drinking and yelling at people over the bar music. But we had fun, which is the only important thing.
Some other stuff:
I know he had a crappy day Sunday, but Vince Young is an outright phenomenon. I saw him a lot in college, and saw him do all kinds of crazy things when he was at Texas, so I figured eventually he’d turn into a solid NFL player. But what he’s done over the last two months just isn’t fair. How good is he going to be once he figures out the pro game and they put some more tools around him? He’s going to be everything Michael Vick was supposed to be, because he seems humble, willing to learn, and just a better person all around. I know the Texans passed on Vince and Reggie Bush because they argued you have to play defense to beat the Colts, but Vince is 1-1 and nearly went 2-0 against the Colts this year. For all their efforts, it seems as though the Texans have fallen behind the Titans in the battle to challenge for the AFC South title in recent years.
C. was baptized Sunday. It was a fine event, although a bit unusual. C.’s godparents were also baptizing their five-month-old son in the same service, so we had six people standing up together. Unlike M., who was lucky enough to get baptized in a regular mass, this time the kids had a separate ceremony with only family present. So that was good, but I think the priest rambled on a little since he wasn’t trying to squeeze the ceremony into a normal mass. He did quote Mick Jagger, though, which was cool. I’m not sure if he knew one of the parents (me) was a heathen and was trying to bridge our the gap between our beliefs, or he’s just cooler than I thought. I’ll leave it at that, because I don’t want to get my girls in trouble with the nuns before they even start Catholic school.
Less than a week until Christmas. We’ve been slowly stoking M.’s Christmas fires. She loves our tree, is really into our manger scene (she tells Baby Jesus to go to his room a lot. He must be a bad little savior), and likes looking at lights when we drive around. I’ve knocked two of my four Christmas movies out, and have a couple more on the DVR to review this week. Now, if we could just get a little snow. Thanks to that request, we’ll probably get a foot on the 23rd, when most of our out-of-town family will be flying or driving in. They can thank me later.