Christmas 2006

Its that time again, come and gone.  I remember sitting in front of the Christmas tree as a child, scouring the stacks of presents, looking for mine.  I lifted them, shook them, and scrutinized them for what might be inside.  Then when the moment finally came to open them, it was like a moment of pure jubilation, the culmination of a season of waiting.

These days, the Christmas season is decidedly more blase.  The days of wondering, “What am I going to get?” are behind me.  This is not to say Christmas is not without its charm.  Seeing the streets lit up with lights, and getting together with the family still hold their own special places.  And spending this year with Zai made it all the better, though I could have done without the 4+ hours of driving to pick her up and drop her off each day.

Once again, Zai trumps me with her Christmas gift (I’m sensing a pattern) with an elegant silver pocket watch, with a little window to see all the gears, and the wind has been running since Sunday (I want to see how long a full wind will last).  I’ve always had a fascination with clockwork, its a technology so elegant and archaic all at the same time.  I think of the first man, I believe two hundred some-odd years ago, to say to himself, “The big clock with the pendulum is pretty cool, I wonder if I can make a tiny one with hundreds of tiny gears that doesn’t require a pendulum.”  That man must have been a gnome, only gnomes can be so crazy.

The weekend was far too short, far removed from the two weeks I used to get as a child.  Ah well, back to work.

Zel-kun out.