QUIET AGAIN!

Now that the Christmas partying has ended things are back to being merely quietly dysfunctional around here again. Yesterday I made sure I took advantage of the Blockbusters gift card I got from the kids. I went to the store over at the Insalaco's shopping center in West Pittston & got a couple of James Bond movies, "From Russia With Love" & the much more recent "Casino Royale". It turns out that Lotte Lenya was a real person. I've always known of her as a character in "Mack the Knife" but she appeared in "From Russia With Love". "Casino Royale" was also the name of a late 1960's Bond parody starring David Niven. From now on, exactly because Christmas was so fattening, I'm really looking forward to cutting down on food for quite a while. New Year beckons. I don't usually bother to party for the new year in any significant way.

ON THE FEAST OF STEPHEN!

Today is the feast of St. Stephen, the Church's proto martyr, who has the distinction of being referred to in what is perhaps the only known song about a guy named Wenceslaus. Christmas worked out quite well this year. Unlike Bridget's incident last year, nobody was rushed to the hospital. Aunt Norma's been improving. As always it was entirely too fattening. On Christmas Eve, Uncle Frankie, Fran & Lisa visited us. On Christmas Day we visited them. Cathleen, as always, forgot to send me the California refrigerator magnet she got me last year. Last night we watched "Napoleon Dynamite" so today we can do the official Napoleon Dynamite dance as our Friday dance. Steve & I went to Dick's this morning to get some skiing clothes for Michael. The weather was an absolute nightmare on Christmas Eve but it's been getting better since then. There was a bitter cold rain & fog all day.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I'm especially happy this year to be able, for the very first time in many decades, to say a rousing merry Christmas to my St. Gabriel's friends, Dennis, & especially Earl. Earl & I were always the very best of friends as kids. We've all been exchanging lots of pictures, some recent & some quite seriously old. I found Gerard from those days too. My father & I went shopping this morning. The traffic, of course, was quite an absolute nightmare. At Foodtown in Kingston, they even have a stand outside where they sell all the fish. It's bitter cold out there unfortunately. Uncle Frankie came over for a while yesterday. I've finished "The Merchant of Venice" & started "Romeo & Juliet". Unfortunately Larry called yesterday. Aunt Norma will be needing lots of prayers.

COOKIES

The weather this past weekend was absolutely out of control. Snow & ice came down for most of Saturday & there was another snowfall for a couple of hours yesterday morning. Chet called to tell me the Latin Mass was cancelled. On my way home from 5:00 Mass on Saturday, the traffic was so congested it took me over ten minutes just to get a few hundred feet down Eighth Street. Fran, one of the old neighbors from Lindenhurst, called. It's good to keep up with the gossip from over there. Dennis has been showing me some old pictures from our St. Gabriel's days. There are a few of kids in our fourth grade class with Miss Elsie Petrocelli, our teacher that year. Amazingly, although it's been very many decades since then, I can still recoginze most of the faces. There are also a few pictures on the site of faculty & other classes. This morning one of the church ladies gave me a can of home baked cookies for Christmas. She does a lot of baking each Christmas for people.