What · do · he · know · about · the · buttery · flow?

I had a holly-jolly time protecting my extremities from frostbite and skidding along the roads of Chicago and Wisconsin last week. The weather was seriously awful nearly the entire time we were there: burning cold, icy wet, snowy and slick. Amazingly though, after experiencing all those reasons I hated winter in the Midwest, I felt more homesick for the place than I usually do. It was great seeing all the old people and places and feeling all the old feelings, and I reminded myself that even the weather we were experiencing was relatively unusual.

But Ginnie, on the other hand, who normally waxes poetic about the "changing of the seasons" and snow and the joys of winter weather and most especially about Chicago itself, told me afterwards that she now can't imagine moving back and having to live with that stuff. Hm. Well, we'll be back in August, when everything is green and warm and hopping, and I'm sure she'll be back to pining for the Big Windy and the old Upper Midwest.

Anyway, Christmas weekend was pleasant. The adults always exchange names and buy a gift with a $50 cap: I'd gotten my Step-Dad Gene's name and my sister got mine. He's hard to buy for (never makes a list), but a big music fan and bought his first iPod this year (they live waaaay out in the boonies) so I got him a $50 iTunes gift card. My sister? Apparently I'm hard to buy for and didn't provide her a list soon enough. So she got me a $50 iTunes gift card. Hmm. Oh well--for some time now Christmas has been much more about the eating (lots of that, uff da. I ate my weight in cheese) and drinking (plenty of that, too--this was Wisconsin after all. Homemade wine, brandy, New Glarus beers, glogg, etc etc etc) and football (the Badgers and Bucs are killin' me) and most of all, communion (or at least a lowest common denominator version of it--who doesn't like trading dirty jokes with the family?).

Since my sister and her family were there from Florida, we had everyone together, which made for a crowded, occasionally crazy house, but ultimately a warming time. Especially fun was watching my 3 year old nephew, visions of sugarplums now in his little head, plunge into the cornucopia quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice early early early on Christmas morning:

Uncle Joel wasn't quite as bright-eyed:

"Didn't I get a tie this year?"