As for me, these things like Christmas now have a tendency to sneak up on me before I am really ready, much less having spent days or even weeks to anticipating the arrival of the Christmas Holiday as in bygone days. Like the victim of a playful ambush with a packed snow ball rudely filling my ear - I think, "Where did that come from?" Christmas already?
The kids now away at college look forward to arrival home and some sleep-in time and some of the vestiges of the old home routine and a reunion with High School friends. Grant at the University of Missouri is on a semester system; finishes up with Fall semester finals mid-December, returns for Spring semester later part of January. Inga at the University of Oregon is on a quarter system; finished finals early December but has classes begin for Winter quarter the very first week of January.
Grant texted he had plans to finish up his last final the morning of Wed. December 12 and drive home in 10 hours arriving late that night. Sunday night the revised text message arrives, "B home 2morrow night".
I just gotta ask, "What about your Sociology final on Wednesday morning?" No problem, he can take the final online from his laptop computer at home (in bed), the professor will post it, it is an open-book final, an he can take it twice before Friday, and the Prof will use his best score to compute his semester grade. So he and fellow classmate Sean (also roommate) use skype and work on the answers and submit their best answers (twice) from Texas and New Jersey. I am thinking, "Back in my day a final exam was something that one ..." - but I don't tell him what I am thinking. Life is just so cool and easy these days, no sense in bring up the analog past and mimeograph sheets and all of that pain.
Inga's Christmas travels and arrangements are a bit more complicated than her brother's. She texted her preferred days of departure from Portland (she listed 3) and she definitely had to be back on January 6th, as classes begin the following day. She and her two apartment mates, Alex and Jasmine (plus a couple of boyfriends) ended up at Jasmine's parent's beach house in Tillamook for a few days after the end of Fall Quarter. She was ready to fly home after a week of down time in Oregon with friends. It was my job, as holder of the credit card, to book the flights. She had a $50 coupon (courtesy of United Airlines through Jasmine) which took me awhile to get the codes right before I booked a one-way flight to DFW Airport. I did make the reservation to Texas; but I emailed her and told her I did not book a return flight since a Mayan friend of mine told me that the world was going to end on the 21st of December. I thought maybe I should save the money that I would spend for a return flight to use instead on buying a generator or something handy like gold or maybe more stone to carve a few additional years onto the Mayan Calendar. Then I remembered that Hollywood already made a movie about this Mayan end-of-the-world prophesy, so I figured if Hollywood scripted it, it can't be true. So, I bought a return ticket a couple of days later.
Here it is January 6, the world looks about like it did on December 20th, for better or for worse; and Inga has texted that Sean, her faithful boyfriend was waiting for her with some surprises at the Portland airport when she landed. For Inga, she will sleep in Eugene and have visions of sugar plums (or more likely lemon tea and a juicy steak) dancing in her head, then the sun will rise on another winter morning tomorrow and she will trundle off to class with the lights of Dallas far behind her.
And somewhere in the steamy jungles of Meso America, the chip-chip-chip of the Mayans are no doubt hard at work carving out another set of glyphs on a limestone wheel that will add another two millennia to our predicted earthly existence and yet many will turn their attention all too soon to the next doomsday thing and then fret. As for me and my family, I think tonight I will plug in the Christmas Lights that adorn my eves and front bushes and hold to the hope that is heralded by this Christmas Season: God's Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.
These are tiding of great joy! Peace on earth and good will toward men with whom He is well pleased.
The kids now away at college look forward to arrival home and some sleep-in time and some of the vestiges of the old home routine and a reunion with High School friends. Grant at the University of Missouri is on a semester system; finishes up with Fall semester finals mid-December, returns for Spring semester later part of January. Inga at the University of Oregon is on a quarter system; finished finals early December but has classes begin for Winter quarter the very first week of January.
Grant texted he had plans to finish up his last final the morning of Wed. December 12 and drive home in 10 hours arriving late that night. Sunday night the revised text message arrives, "B home 2morrow night".
I just gotta ask, "What about your Sociology final on Wednesday morning?" No problem, he can take the final online from his laptop computer at home (in bed), the professor will post it, it is an open-book final, an he can take it twice before Friday, and the Prof will use his best score to compute his semester grade. So he and fellow classmate Sean (also roommate) use skype and work on the answers and submit their best answers (twice) from Texas and New Jersey. I am thinking, "Back in my day a final exam was something that one ..." - but I don't tell him what I am thinking. Life is just so cool and easy these days, no sense in bring up the analog past and mimeograph sheets and all of that pain.
Inga's Christmas travels and arrangements are a bit more complicated than her brother's. She texted her preferred days of departure from Portland (she listed 3) and she definitely had to be back on January 6th, as classes begin the following day. She and her two apartment mates, Alex and Jasmine (plus a couple of boyfriends) ended up at Jasmine's parent's beach house in Tillamook for a few days after the end of Fall Quarter. She was ready to fly home after a week of down time in Oregon with friends. It was my job, as holder of the credit card, to book the flights. She had a $50 coupon (courtesy of United Airlines through Jasmine) which took me awhile to get the codes right before I booked a one-way flight to DFW Airport. I did make the reservation to Texas; but I emailed her and told her I did not book a return flight since a Mayan friend of mine told me that the world was going to end on the 21st of December. I thought maybe I should save the money that I would spend for a return flight to use instead on buying a generator or something handy like gold or maybe more stone to carve a few additional years onto the Mayan Calendar. Then I remembered that Hollywood already made a movie about this Mayan end-of-the-world prophesy, so I figured if Hollywood scripted it, it can't be true. So, I bought a return ticket a couple of days later.
Here it is January 6, the world looks about like it did on December 20th, for better or for worse; and Inga has texted that Sean, her faithful boyfriend was waiting for her with some surprises at the Portland airport when she landed. For Inga, she will sleep in Eugene and have visions of sugar plums (or more likely lemon tea and a juicy steak) dancing in her head, then the sun will rise on another winter morning tomorrow and she will trundle off to class with the lights of Dallas far behind her.
And somewhere in the steamy jungles of Meso America, the chip-chip-chip of the Mayans are no doubt hard at work carving out another set of glyphs on a limestone wheel that will add another two millennia to our predicted earthly existence and yet many will turn their attention all too soon to the next doomsday thing and then fret. As for me and my family, I think tonight I will plug in the Christmas Lights that adorn my eves and front bushes and hold to the hope that is heralded by this Christmas Season: God's Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.
These are tiding of great joy! Peace on earth and good will toward men with whom He is well pleased.
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