Christmas Happenings

Hi, friends.

Christmas in DC is off to a very good start. Last night, Jess surprised me by getting tickets to Handel's Messiah at the National Cathedral. The sound was absolutely amazing--transcendent, one might even say. A couple of etiquette issues bear mention though:

First, you cannot possibly whisper quietly enough to be unobtrusive in a venue like this. So...SHUT UP! If you want to talk, go to a bar.

Second, if a concert venue has beautiful natural reverb, DO NOT start clapping until the final chord has completely ceased.

In other Christmas news, Jess and I got our first real Christmas tree. It smells wonderful. It was surprisingly easy to set up and decorate--we got it level in about two minutes. In fact, the only awkward part of the process was loading the tree on top of my Honda and driving it back to the apartment. For those of you keeping score at home, the number of odd things I've hauled in/on my Honda are: a Christmas tree and an Ikea recliner. The latter was a spectacular bit of spacial engineering on my part, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

Oh, one more bit of Christmas related material--I bought my first eggnog of the season. I bought the 'Light 'Nog' version, so as not to die an early death. I hope that, in heaven, eggnog will be fat free. Until then, I will have to settle for the lite stuff as a concession--part of the 'not yet' of the eggnong eschatological tension.