A Quiet Christmas

We've had a nice Christmas this year. Debbi and I both had Friday off, so she came down with the kitties for Christmas Eve. Then we drove back up to her cow-orker Pat's house for their annual Christmas Eve party, at which much food and a couple of strong drinks were consumed.

Debbi spent the past week being unusually bouncy about Christmas, especially about opening presents. It was cute! She said she didn't know why she was all excited about presents. I suspect it was pent-up excitement from last year, when she didn't seem as into Christmas as she usually is. (By the way, in the unlikely event that you didn't know, Christmas is entirely a seasonal and family-based event for us. We're not religious at all. We enjoy the decorations, the time off, and connecting with friends and family.)

Christmas morning finally arrived and we delighted the cats by creating a big pile of wrapping paper. Roulette kept bringing toys over to it and then batting them around into the pile, and scrounging to get them out. We also built a fire which I kept going most of the day. None of our cats like fire very much. My guys are actively suspicious of it, while Debbi's cats seem mostly indifferent. I guess cats have a natural aversion to fire, although my Mom had a cat named Jenny who loved to lie in front of the fire and would actively agitate for us to build one during the winter.

One centerpiece of my Christmas gifts were a circular saw and a power drill/driver. Yes, I'm a homeowner who now owns power tools. Actually the main reason I wanted them is that it's time for me to build some new bookcases, since some of my old particle board ones are wearing out, and other can be replaced by ones designed to efficiently use the space in my house. So that will be a project for the first couple of months of 2005.

I also received some DVD sets I've been wanting, as well as an assortment of books and a CD.

Debbi's big gift was a new coffee maker from her sister, as well as coffee-related items from a variety of people. I also gave her a blanket with a tiger print on it (Debbi loves tigers) and some cat-shaped earrings from a store we discovered a few months ago. Oh, and Zoo Tycoon. I think all-in-all she was pretty satisfied!

Although we'd been invited to a "Christmas orphans" party, we declined and decided to stay home and be slugs and enjoy our presents. So it was a pretty quiet day. I talked to both my parents, as well as my sister, whom I gave an iPod Mini for Christmas, as well as showering my 5-month-old nephew with gifts. Which, y'know, is what an uncle is supposed to do. Or so I'm told.

So it all went well. Even the cats got some presents. But mostly I think they were happy to have us home all day, and overjoyed to have strange, new and wonderful things going on for them to check out and get involved with.

When they weren't sleeping on the warm stairs, that is.