collwen | Happy belated Holidays everyone

Well, there are a couple of ongoing holidays (like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa)... so enjoy them while they continue.

I wish I knew when I was getting my "thank you for not getting another job bonus" so I can get the other gifts I'm planning to get for my friends.

Tuesday night

marnen and I went to the Southbury, CT area for a Winter Solstice celebration that is the one thing that the remnants of the Hat City Morris team do. We left right after I got out of work, and were going to meet the group in a small park near the hosts' house for the Horn Dance. Well, the road we were supposed to go down was blocked off, so we hiked around to find that the group had been there and gone... So we hiked back to the car and got to the house in time for the fire/candle dance and the mummer's play. It's a highly modified St. George and the Turkish Knight tale. Marnen's dad usually plays Father Christmas (but he had an exam to give- he's a bio-chem professor at Westchester Community College), and Marnen plays St. George... yeah, the two most obvious Jewish guys play the most Christian characters in the play. There was a lot of food, some good sake, and a decent wine called "Druid Juice" I think.

Friday night we went down to Staten Island to have dinner with the Amesee's (they're a couple in the country dance scene) to have an early Christmas eve dinner. Tom is an incredible cook with an Italian background. There were 5 courses of fish dishes (one course had 2 seafood dishes, so it was 6 fish dishes total). HMMMMMMMMMM it was yummy.

Saturday we went up to Albany and briefly say

tetsujinnooni,

chickipu_no_oni, and

tetsujinnooni's family (whom Marnen finally met for the first time, including Cara). We then had dinner at the Plum Blossom with my Mom, my Aunt Glady, and my brother

hopelrailmantic.

Sunday we went to Warwick and spent some time with

nounsandverbs,

11th_letter,

ioldanach,

purpura, Katie's parents and the kids. It was rather fun and there were a couple of pictures taken of me holding Charlie.

I'm looking forward to the next week, which should be fairly quiet. I'm at work now. I'm also looking forward to the Warwick New Year's weekend.