Holiday traditions
Well, my travel reservations for Thanksgiving are made. I love Priceline, I really do. How else do I get a rental car for four days for just over $100 total? I will be spending Thanksgiving in (not so) scenic Fallon, Nevada. I've never actually been there. It's a little town about an hour from Reno and according to my family members who live there, there is not a lot of THERE there, if you know what I mean. I am looking forward to spending time with my family, and I'm hoping to sneak in a short hike near Tahoe if time permits.
I was talking to my mother last night and the topic turned to holiday traditions. For most of my life (and hers as well) we always had Traditional Family Holidays. You know. Christmas Eve church, and morning Santa, and homemade cinnamon rolls, and afternoon holiday dinner at Grandma's house with the cousins and aunts and uncles and such. These traditions still exist but we've all gotten a lot more relaxed about it as we've all become adults and people have started living other places. In a way it's sad, but in another way it's enormously freeing. There isn't that pressure to somehow engineer The Perfect Christmas anymore. You can do whatever and it's all good. I have fond memories of last Christmas, which I spent with my parents and brother in Reno. I spent Christmas Eve having cocktails and playing slot machines with my parents, and we had Christmas Dinner at one of those huge casino buffets. It was awesome.
This year Mom says we're going to have Thanksgiving dinner at a sort of down-homey restaurant that's right next to my hotel. Sounds good to me. We'd all rather spend our limited time together just talking or taking a day trip than with various people slaving over stoves cooking a big dinner.
In other news it's going to be another busy weekend. Tonight I'm FINALLY taking Rachel out for sushi for her birthday (which was two weeks ago). Tomorrow I've got a short hike in the morning. I'm going to start breaking in my brand-new winter hiking boots, which arrived last night (squee). There's a social event I've been planning to go to tomorrow night but I might skip it. I need to do some cooking. A friend of mine had a baby a month ago and I'm going to take her some food on Monday. Sunday I have a 6-mile hike with the club.
Speaking of which, last night I had the most random encounter. I went to a wine tasting at my favorite wine shop (it was a social event with the hiking club). I was the first there and there were to be several women I didn't know. I saw a woman sitting alone and asked her if she was there for us. She said no, but that I was welcome to sit and join her. We had this awesome conversation for about fifteen minutes. She was VERY excited to learn about the existence of our hiking club. I gave her my card. I hope she emails me, I kind of felt like I'd known her for years and that we could be friends. One can never have too many friends, right?
Random thing: one of the wines being tasted last night was from (hope I get this right) the Fess Parker winery. Fess Parker? Didn't he play Daniel Boone or something? Maybe it was Davy Crockett. He has a WINERY? Fancy that.
I was talking to my mother last night and the topic turned to holiday traditions. For most of my life (and hers as well) we always had Traditional Family Holidays. You know. Christmas Eve church, and morning Santa, and homemade cinnamon rolls, and afternoon holiday dinner at Grandma's house with the cousins and aunts and uncles and such. These traditions still exist but we've all gotten a lot more relaxed about it as we've all become adults and people have started living other places. In a way it's sad, but in another way it's enormously freeing. There isn't that pressure to somehow engineer The Perfect Christmas anymore. You can do whatever and it's all good. I have fond memories of last Christmas, which I spent with my parents and brother in Reno. I spent Christmas Eve having cocktails and playing slot machines with my parents, and we had Christmas Dinner at one of those huge casino buffets. It was awesome.
This year Mom says we're going to have Thanksgiving dinner at a sort of down-homey restaurant that's right next to my hotel. Sounds good to me. We'd all rather spend our limited time together just talking or taking a day trip than with various people slaving over stoves cooking a big dinner.
In other news it's going to be another busy weekend. Tonight I'm FINALLY taking Rachel out for sushi for her birthday (which was two weeks ago). Tomorrow I've got a short hike in the morning. I'm going to start breaking in my brand-new winter hiking boots, which arrived last night (squee). There's a social event I've been planning to go to tomorrow night but I might skip it. I need to do some cooking. A friend of mine had a baby a month ago and I'm going to take her some food on Monday. Sunday I have a 6-mile hike with the club.
Speaking of which, last night I had the most random encounter. I went to a wine tasting at my favorite wine shop (it was a social event with the hiking club). I was the first there and there were to be several women I didn't know. I saw a woman sitting alone and asked her if she was there for us. She said no, but that I was welcome to sit and join her. We had this awesome conversation for about fifteen minutes. She was VERY excited to learn about the existence of our hiking club. I gave her my card. I hope she emails me, I kind of felt like I'd known her for years and that we could be friends. One can never have too many friends, right?
Random thing: one of the wines being tasted last night was from (hope I get this right) the Fess Parker winery. Fess Parker? Didn't he play Daniel Boone or something? Maybe it was Davy Crockett. He has a WINERY? Fancy that.