I never did post anything about how Christmas went, did I?
Christmas Eve and Christmas went very well indeed, thank you very much! I seem to have found a few particularly good gifts for family members, and that's always a good thing. For Kim, I prepaid for the installation and monthly service cost for a year's worth of DVR service from Comcast; she had commented on several occasions that she wished her budget allowed for the DVR upgrade, but she wanted to wait to see what 2007 would bring before adding that extra cost. Now she doesn't have to worry about it!
For Dad, there were two gifts that were quite successful: a 24" television with a built-in DVD player and VCR for his bedroom and a 7" digital picture frame loaded with a few hundred family photos to sit beside his chair in the den. I had trepidations about the former gift, but Dad had repeatedly remarked during the past year how much he wished he had a television, with a built-in DVD player and a VCR; his old bedroom TV had a built-in VCR, but with more and more DVDs in his personal library, he wanted the ability to play those as well. Furthermore, his old bedroom television was only a 13"; this is almost four times the total size. So why did I have trepidations? Because as Dad has gotten older, he has become less amenable to learning new remote controls, settings, and controls, and I was afraid that a new television would add new frustrations. Just to be safe, I had downloaded the manual for his television, which meant that I had a diagram of the television controls and of the remote, making it easy for me to trouble-shoot any problems that arose. It turns out that I haven't had to do any troubleshooting at all; he seems to have gotten the hang of it right away.
I'm surprised by how much Dad has enjoyed the digital picture frame. He told me that he spent over an hour watching it the first day I gave it to him, and he's spent a half an hour to an hour a day watching it ever since then (since it has about 300 photos on it currently and it cycles through one every fifteen seconds, he can spend about an hour and fifteen minutes watching it without seeing any duplicates). He said that part of the fun of it is seeing what comes up next, since the order of the photos is totally random; he enjoys remembering when the photos were taken, what was going on at that time, etc.
Susan seemed quite pleased with the assortment of flavored green teas that I got for her; I had tracked down flavors that she didn't even know existed! I also got her a 2007 Linda Nelson Stock Calendar; this is one of her favorite folk artist, and Susan thought she had quit doing calendars as of this coming year (what she didn't know was the artist had simply changed publishers). Otherwise, there were few surprises for her; Susan, like me, tends to acquire a lot her wants as she sees them, knowing that (due to the collectible nature of a lot of these items) they may not be there, so many of the gifts I got her were sort of predictable--a favorite candy, a 365 Cats calendar, and that sort of thing.
No real surprises for Cole, Christy, or Jessica; they come from a generation that wants gift cards rather than gifts, so I gave in and got each of them gift cards from the stores of their choice as their major gifts, with a few little personal gifts to accompany them. I don't enjoy giving gift cards rather than gifts--but I thought about it and decided that gift-giving should focus on what the recipient wants, not what the giver wants, so I did the gift-card thing even though it seems somehow impersonal to me...
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
Best. Toy. Ever.
No doubt about it--there was no toy that surpassed the wonderful Ideal Man from UNCLE Gun Set. I wanted this so very badly that I probably drove my parents crazy asking for it; once I saw this in its package, complete with shoulder holster, I had to have it.The pistol is a standard cap pistol, but it was the accessory set that made is so memorable: a rifle stock, a sight, a silencer, a rifle barrel, and a tripod, along with the aforementioned shoulder holster. Heck, the UNCLE gun surpassed any James Bond accessory on the toy racks!
Once I got one of these, I remember actually wearing the shoulder holster to school, my cap gun tucked in there securely and my jacket over that (not a sports coat, of course--just a kid's jacket). Today, that's the sort of thing that would get you expelled... but if my teachers ever noticed it back then, they said nothing at all about it. Just another one of those things that kids did...
Gradually, I lost one piece after another. The tripod went first, then the silencer, then the sight; I had the rifle barrel and the pistol and the stock for a pretty good while, and can't remember exactly when they went MIA. Sure do wish I had them again! There are people who make pretty upscale replicas of the UNCLE gun now, but I guess my emotional attachment is to this cheap plastic toy, not to the upscale stuff...
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Another Night Before Christmas...
Anyone who thinks that time flows at a steady, consistent pace couldn't have possibly been an eleven year old on Christmas Eve.
December 24th was a celebratory day at our house; Mom filled our table with a Christmas feast on that day, preparing so much turkey and dressing and potato salad and green beans and sweet potatoes and Waldorf salad and cranberry sauce that a family of four could gorge themselves and still have plenty left over for multiple meals of leftovers. For dessert, there was pineapple upside down cake, smooth and moist and redolent of pineapple and brown sugar; fudge, dark with cocoa and almost crystalline with sugar, that crumbled indulgently at the first bite; caramel frosted cake, a lustrous brown-frosted concoction whose color always reminded me of that distinctive shade of brown found on Fantastic Four #11 and a few other Marvel Comics of the era, a shade that no other comics publisher—and no other Mom—could duplicate; and there was always chocolate cake. Sometimes there would also be pecan pie, but that wasn't an every-year thing. We would usually eat earlier than most of my friends; dinner time was typically 4:30, sometimes pushing as late as 5:00, but hardly ever later than that.
After we could eat no more, we'd all relocate to the living room, lounging around the large console television set-home entertainment system that combined a 25" black and white television with a turntable, AM/FM radio,a and built-in speakers. Dad would claim his large, overstuffed chair; Mom would take the sofa, often stretching out to relax after her culinary labors. Kim and I always took the floor, dragging our pillows into the living room and stretching out as close to the television set as we could get before Mom or Dad made us move back.
About 7:30, Mom put Kim to bed; since Kim was only 3 1/2 years old, that was plenty late enough to leave her ready to sleep. She knew Christmas was an event--after all, the presence of a decorated tree in the living room served as a daily reminder that things were different at this time of year--but she wasn't so attuned to the event that she had trouble sleeping.
Me, I was 11--heck, I was almost a teenager! As far as I was concerned, I could stay up as late as my parents. Of course, they saw things differently; they let me stay awake later than my usual bedtime, but by 9:30 they were hinting that it was time to end the evening. I'd get ready for bed, and by 10:00 pm, I semi-willingly retired to my bedroom, closed the door, and turned out the lights.
And from that time until 5:30 the next morning--the time that I considered the earliest acceptable time to arise, since that was about the time that Dad got up to get ready for work during the week--I bore witness to the fact that time is not a constant. No, the progress of the minutes slowed perceptibly, with each minute running slightly longer than the one before, until it seemed like it the night had gone on forever. I'd finally sneak a look at the clock, and learn that it was only an hour later than the time I'd gone to bed.
In the other end of the house, I could hear my parents doing things; I know now that they were getting out the presents that Santa would bring, and I actually knew even then that Santa came in the form of Mom and Dad, but there was still a part of me that thought that they surely must have had some extra help from that magical fellow in order to get so many presents into our house in so little time. Mom and Dad tried to be quiet, but the house was small, and the distance from the living room to my bedroom was less than 20 feet, with only thin walls and hollow doors in between. I hear the creaks of the floorboards, the rustle of moving objects, the muffled conversations that the televison couldn't quite mask. Then I'd hear the sounds that told me that their activities were ending--the clink of coffee cups as Mom got the dishes ready for breakfast the next morning, the sound of running water as she measured out the right balance of coffee grounds and water so that all she had to do the next morning was plug in the percolator. That was a sound I heard every evening, and it was the sure sign that bedtime had arrived for my parents as well.
The last lights would go out, and I saw not even the slightest glint of light under my doorway. Now everyone was asleep, and that meant that I had to be particularly quiet. My parents' bedroom was directly across the narrow hallway from mine, and the restless creakings of my bed were clearly discernible in their room--I knew that from past experiences, when my parents seemed almost supernaturally attuned to my slightest movements if I got out of bed and tried to tiptoe to the other end of the house in the middle of the night.
So I lay there, awake, looking into the darkness to pick out what details I could in my shadowed room; the only light came through the curtained windows, the indirect glow of a streetlight between our house and the Greshams. And I speculated; what gifts might be under the tree? I wanted a copy of The Beatles on VeeJay Records; Phil Patterson had that album, and we had listened to it incessantly at his house, but I knew I would appreciate it even more if I had my very own copy. And I wanted a Creature of the Black Lagoon model kit; I had many other Aurora monster models, but that intensely-green reptilian horror had eluded me. And of course, there were airplane models on my list; in particular, I wanted a Messerschmidt ME-109, a sleek and deadly WWII fighter that would occupy a place of prominence in the aerial display of other WWII models that hung from my ceiling, suspended by string and thumbtacks.
Hours later... it had to be hours... I looked again. And I saw that it was only 12:45 am.
Looking for something to help while away the time, I thought of the AM radio that sat on the desk at the head of the bunkbeds on which I was sleeping. I took the bottom bunk ever since I had found a spider on the top bunk; I have always had a phobic reaction to spiders, so I viewed the top mattress as a protective barrier between me and spidery doom. The desk was built into the end of the bunk bed, and I could reach between the support beams to turn the radio around so that it faced the bed rather than facing the desk chair. I turned the volume way down, then turned the radio on. It lit up as the internal tubes warmed up; a few seconds later, I began to turn the radio up slightly.
And I heard static. Rome's stations cut their power to low levels after sunset; by 12:45, some of the stations were off the air entirely. So I began to tune up the dial, looking for someone else who, like me, was unable to sleep.
It was then that I found a distant signal--it seemed to me like it must have come half a world away--and heard a voice introducing a song. A voice speaking Spanish. I didn't know what he was saying, but it was a voice. I pulled the radio close to me, since the volume was turned down so low that it couldn't have been heard on the other side of my nine foot by eleven foot room, much less across the hallway.
Did he know that it was Christmas now? Was it Christmas now where he was? Why wasn't he playing Christmas songs? These, and many other questions, came to mind, but there was no one to answer. He spoke for a while, then he played songs--some in Spanish, some in English with a country twang. And for that time, I had found a kindred spirit who was just as unable to sleep as I was. He played and talked, I listened...
I must have fallen asleep, because I became aware that there was a sound of water running, and that meant that my parents were awake (or that someone had gotten up to go to the bathroom). I looked at the clock and it was 5:23... seven minutes earlier than my self-appointed deadline for arising from bed and starting the Christmas gift-opening festivities, but 5:23 was close enough...
December 24th was a celebratory day at our house; Mom filled our table with a Christmas feast on that day, preparing so much turkey and dressing and potato salad and green beans and sweet potatoes and Waldorf salad and cranberry sauce that a family of four could gorge themselves and still have plenty left over for multiple meals of leftovers. For dessert, there was pineapple upside down cake, smooth and moist and redolent of pineapple and brown sugar; fudge, dark with cocoa and almost crystalline with sugar, that crumbled indulgently at the first bite; caramel frosted cake, a lustrous brown-frosted concoction whose color always reminded me of that distinctive shade of brown found on Fantastic Four #11 and a few other Marvel Comics of the era, a shade that no other comics publisher—and no other Mom—could duplicate; and there was always chocolate cake. Sometimes there would also be pecan pie, but that wasn't an every-year thing. We would usually eat earlier than most of my friends; dinner time was typically 4:30, sometimes pushing as late as 5:00, but hardly ever later than that.
After we could eat no more, we'd all relocate to the living room, lounging around the large console television set-home entertainment system that combined a 25" black and white television with a turntable, AM/FM radio,a and built-in speakers. Dad would claim his large, overstuffed chair; Mom would take the sofa, often stretching out to relax after her culinary labors. Kim and I always took the floor, dragging our pillows into the living room and stretching out as close to the television set as we could get before Mom or Dad made us move back.
About 7:30, Mom put Kim to bed; since Kim was only 3 1/2 years old, that was plenty late enough to leave her ready to sleep. She knew Christmas was an event--after all, the presence of a decorated tree in the living room served as a daily reminder that things were different at this time of year--but she wasn't so attuned to the event that she had trouble sleeping.
Me, I was 11--heck, I was almost a teenager! As far as I was concerned, I could stay up as late as my parents. Of course, they saw things differently; they let me stay awake later than my usual bedtime, but by 9:30 they were hinting that it was time to end the evening. I'd get ready for bed, and by 10:00 pm, I semi-willingly retired to my bedroom, closed the door, and turned out the lights.
And from that time until 5:30 the next morning--the time that I considered the earliest acceptable time to arise, since that was about the time that Dad got up to get ready for work during the week--I bore witness to the fact that time is not a constant. No, the progress of the minutes slowed perceptibly, with each minute running slightly longer than the one before, until it seemed like it the night had gone on forever. I'd finally sneak a look at the clock, and learn that it was only an hour later than the time I'd gone to bed.
In the other end of the house, I could hear my parents doing things; I know now that they were getting out the presents that Santa would bring, and I actually knew even then that Santa came in the form of Mom and Dad, but there was still a part of me that thought that they surely must have had some extra help from that magical fellow in order to get so many presents into our house in so little time. Mom and Dad tried to be quiet, but the house was small, and the distance from the living room to my bedroom was less than 20 feet, with only thin walls and hollow doors in between. I hear the creaks of the floorboards, the rustle of moving objects, the muffled conversations that the televison couldn't quite mask. Then I'd hear the sounds that told me that their activities were ending--the clink of coffee cups as Mom got the dishes ready for breakfast the next morning, the sound of running water as she measured out the right balance of coffee grounds and water so that all she had to do the next morning was plug in the percolator. That was a sound I heard every evening, and it was the sure sign that bedtime had arrived for my parents as well.
The last lights would go out, and I saw not even the slightest glint of light under my doorway. Now everyone was asleep, and that meant that I had to be particularly quiet. My parents' bedroom was directly across the narrow hallway from mine, and the restless creakings of my bed were clearly discernible in their room--I knew that from past experiences, when my parents seemed almost supernaturally attuned to my slightest movements if I got out of bed and tried to tiptoe to the other end of the house in the middle of the night.
So I lay there, awake, looking into the darkness to pick out what details I could in my shadowed room; the only light came through the curtained windows, the indirect glow of a streetlight between our house and the Greshams. And I speculated; what gifts might be under the tree? I wanted a copy of The Beatles on VeeJay Records; Phil Patterson had that album, and we had listened to it incessantly at his house, but I knew I would appreciate it even more if I had my very own copy. And I wanted a Creature of the Black Lagoon model kit; I had many other Aurora monster models, but that intensely-green reptilian horror had eluded me. And of course, there were airplane models on my list; in particular, I wanted a Messerschmidt ME-109, a sleek and deadly WWII fighter that would occupy a place of prominence in the aerial display of other WWII models that hung from my ceiling, suspended by string and thumbtacks.
Hours later... it had to be hours... I looked again. And I saw that it was only 12:45 am.
Looking for something to help while away the time, I thought of the AM radio that sat on the desk at the head of the bunkbeds on which I was sleeping. I took the bottom bunk ever since I had found a spider on the top bunk; I have always had a phobic reaction to spiders, so I viewed the top mattress as a protective barrier between me and spidery doom. The desk was built into the end of the bunk bed, and I could reach between the support beams to turn the radio around so that it faced the bed rather than facing the desk chair. I turned the volume way down, then turned the radio on. It lit up as the internal tubes warmed up; a few seconds later, I began to turn the radio up slightly.
And I heard static. Rome's stations cut their power to low levels after sunset; by 12:45, some of the stations were off the air entirely. So I began to tune up the dial, looking for someone else who, like me, was unable to sleep.
It was then that I found a distant signal--it seemed to me like it must have come half a world away--and heard a voice introducing a song. A voice speaking Spanish. I didn't know what he was saying, but it was a voice. I pulled the radio close to me, since the volume was turned down so low that it couldn't have been heard on the other side of my nine foot by eleven foot room, much less across the hallway.
Did he know that it was Christmas now? Was it Christmas now where he was? Why wasn't he playing Christmas songs? These, and many other questions, came to mind, but there was no one to answer. He spoke for a while, then he played songs--some in Spanish, some in English with a country twang. And for that time, I had found a kindred spirit who was just as unable to sleep as I was. He played and talked, I listened...
I must have fallen asleep, because I became aware that there was a sound of water running, and that meant that my parents were awake (or that someone had gotten up to go to the bathroom). I looked at the clock and it was 5:23... seven minutes earlier than my self-appointed deadline for arising from bed and starting the Christmas gift-opening festivities, but 5:23 was close enough...
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Have Yourself a Balmy Little Christmas
I don't know how those of you in California do it; I just can't fully embrace the Christmas season when the temperature is hitting 70 in the afternoons. Even worse, it was 61° last night when I went for a midnight walk (okay, it was really 12:30a.m., but close enough). I recall a couple of other Christmases that were hampered by excessively warm weather, but I was young enough then that a tropical heat wave couldn't have lessened my holiday enthusiasm.
I still need to wrap a hefty stack of presents for Kim, Cole, Jessica, Dad, and Christy--but I suspect I won't actually get around to that until this evening, since I've always thought of wrapping as a night-time activity. The warm weather, combined with an incredibly busy week at Dr. No's, has left me all too little time for wrapping during the week.
I still need to wrap a hefty stack of presents for Kim, Cole, Jessica, Dad, and Christy--but I suspect I won't actually get around to that until this evening, since I've always thought of wrapping as a night-time activity. The warm weather, combined with an incredibly busy week at Dr. No's, has left me all too little time for wrapping during the week.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Christmas Vignette
Every year affords us interesting new memory scraps with which we can assemble a wondrous mental Christmas scrapbook. This year, one event that stands out involved Tommy Sanes.
Who's Tommy? He works the loading dock at FedEx Freight, where we pick up our comic book shipments every week. He's a gregarious, good-natured bear of a man, burly and always smiling, no matter how busy things are. He's a master of the forklift, moving it around with deceptive ease. And Tommy always takes care of us; often he is waiting for us at the loading dock, our skid ready to go, because he knows what time we usually arrive.
This year, as a way of saying thanks, I got Tommy a Christmas card and a gift card for Olive Garden, because I had heard him mention that he really liked eating there. I stuck the gift card in the Christmas card, put it all in an envelope, and had it ready so that I could hand it to him.
As it turned out, this was one of those mornings when Tommy was bringing our books to the loading dock just as we were pulling up. As he brought the forklift down the ramp to put the skid down right next to the van, I handed him the envelope. He grinned and looked a little bit surprised. "I've never gotten a Christmas card from a customer in all the years I've worked here--thanks!" he said. We wished each other a merry Christmas, and he steered his forklift back up the ramp and into the football-field-sized warehouse.
About three minutes later, as we were finishing loading the boxes into the van, the forklift dashed back down the ramp, steered by a grinning Tommy. He stopped a few feet away, got off the forklift, and said, "Aww, man!..." Then he headed over, started to shake my hand, and then changed his mind and gave me an enthusiastic bear hug. "I couldn't believe it!" he said. "No one's ever done anything like that for me in all these years!" I assured him that it was just a small token of our gratitude for all he has done to make our job easier. "I just hope you have a great Christmas," I told him.
"I will now!" he said--and I believe he really meant it. For some reason, this simple gift seemed to have had an impact far greater than its value, and I was very happy for that.
Tommy was still grinning as he drove back in to the warehouse a second time... and I have a sneaking suspicion that grin stayed with him for a while. I hope so.
Merry Christmas, Tommy!
Who's Tommy? He works the loading dock at FedEx Freight, where we pick up our comic book shipments every week. He's a gregarious, good-natured bear of a man, burly and always smiling, no matter how busy things are. He's a master of the forklift, moving it around with deceptive ease. And Tommy always takes care of us; often he is waiting for us at the loading dock, our skid ready to go, because he knows what time we usually arrive.
This year, as a way of saying thanks, I got Tommy a Christmas card and a gift card for Olive Garden, because I had heard him mention that he really liked eating there. I stuck the gift card in the Christmas card, put it all in an envelope, and had it ready so that I could hand it to him.
As it turned out, this was one of those mornings when Tommy was bringing our books to the loading dock just as we were pulling up. As he brought the forklift down the ramp to put the skid down right next to the van, I handed him the envelope. He grinned and looked a little bit surprised. "I've never gotten a Christmas card from a customer in all the years I've worked here--thanks!" he said. We wished each other a merry Christmas, and he steered his forklift back up the ramp and into the football-field-sized warehouse.
About three minutes later, as we were finishing loading the boxes into the van, the forklift dashed back down the ramp, steered by a grinning Tommy. He stopped a few feet away, got off the forklift, and said, "Aww, man!..." Then he headed over, started to shake my hand, and then changed his mind and gave me an enthusiastic bear hug. "I couldn't believe it!" he said. "No one's ever done anything like that for me in all these years!" I assured him that it was just a small token of our gratitude for all he has done to make our job easier. "I just hope you have a great Christmas," I told him.
"I will now!" he said--and I believe he really meant it. For some reason, this simple gift seemed to have had an impact far greater than its value, and I was very happy for that.
Tommy was still grinning as he drove back in to the warehouse a second time... and I have a sneaking suspicion that grin stayed with him for a while. I hope so.
Merry Christmas, Tommy!
Get Your Own Title
You may simply refer to me as
(And thanks to Charles for pointing this one out!)
 | My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Milord Sir Lord Cliff the Pertinacious of Longer Interval Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
(And thanks to Charles for pointing this one out!)
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Last night was the Twentieth Annual Get Together at Dr. No's And Exchange Gifts Extravaganza, an event that began with a much smaller group back in 1987 and has grown ever since (one might argue that it began even earlier than that, since Charles and Ward and I swapped gifts for a year or two before that, but it wasn't as semi-organized as it has been since '87, when we began doing the gift thing on the Wednesday before Christmas, followed by our big weekly dinner event, which is almost always at El Rodeo). I think this was our biggest year ever; in attendance were Charles, Chris, Brett, Allyson, Ralph, Buck, Chrissy, Jared, Jenny, Whitney, Bobby, and me. (Trish and Amy didn't make it to the store, but they joined us at the restaurant afterwards.)
Got lots of great gifts, including Beatles and Philosophy (don't know how I missed this one, but Jared's unerring gift sense led him to secure a copy for me), Everyday Life in Mesopotamia (thanks, Charles!), another exceptional cheesecake and an exceptionally bizarre Nativity-scene-reenacted-by-cats figurine display (it must be seen to be believed!) from Brett and Allyson, dark chocolate and a hot chocolate kit from Whitney, delicious homemade cookies from Chris, a wonderfully weird original Psycho Bunny ornament from Ralph (he debuted his latest creation at DragonCon--picture Berke Breathed's Bill the Cat transformed into a bunny by Ralph Steadman), a subscription to a "how-it's-done" magazine called Makers from Buck and Chrissy... all sorts of goodies!
I always wish I could find the perfect gift for everyone, but it doesn't always work out that way. This year, though, I did hit a couple that were right on target. For Charles, an avid fan of Lin Carter, I managed to track down the cover painting to Mind Wizards of Callisto, a Lin Carter book that's part of a series of which Charles is quite fond. Serendipity was with me; I managed to luck into the original, only modestly scuffed, back in September and kept it hidden away until then. I had owned one of the Callisto cover painting originals and had given it to Charles a few years ago, knowing he would appreciate it more than me. I thought I had tracked down another cover back in July, but it turned out that the owner had cut it in half because he didn't like the solid color area at the top where the logo would be overlaid. Then, by methods so esoteric that I can't even begin to explain them without rambling on for far too long, I ran across this one and knew I had found the gift for Charles. He seemed to be really pleased with it, which was great--that's what we always hope for every gift!
The other was my gift for Bobby, a Jane Monheit Christmas Dual-Disc. Bobby's a big Jane Monheit fan, and I had remembered that this disc came out and then went out of print very quickly; I ran across a second copy (already had one for myself) and gambled that Bobby didn't have it. The gamble paid off; not only did he not have it, but he didn't even know it existed until he opened the gift!
Alas, other gifts were less perfect; I hope that they were appreciated as a sign of friendship and affection, though!
(Incidentally, this was the first year that Bobby and Jenny joined us for the event; hope it's not their last!)
Got lots of great gifts, including Beatles and Philosophy (don't know how I missed this one, but Jared's unerring gift sense led him to secure a copy for me), Everyday Life in Mesopotamia (thanks, Charles!), another exceptional cheesecake and an exceptionally bizarre Nativity-scene-reenacted-by-cats figurine display (it must be seen to be believed!) from Brett and Allyson, dark chocolate and a hot chocolate kit from Whitney, delicious homemade cookies from Chris, a wonderfully weird original Psycho Bunny ornament from Ralph (he debuted his latest creation at DragonCon--picture Berke Breathed's Bill the Cat transformed into a bunny by Ralph Steadman), a subscription to a "how-it's-done" magazine called Makers from Buck and Chrissy... all sorts of goodies!
I always wish I could find the perfect gift for everyone, but it doesn't always work out that way. This year, though, I did hit a couple that were right on target. For Charles, an avid fan of Lin Carter, I managed to track down the cover painting to Mind Wizards of Callisto, a Lin Carter book that's part of a series of which Charles is quite fond. Serendipity was with me; I managed to luck into the original, only modestly scuffed, back in September and kept it hidden away until then. I had owned one of the Callisto cover painting originals and had given it to Charles a few years ago, knowing he would appreciate it more than me. I thought I had tracked down another cover back in July, but it turned out that the owner had cut it in half because he didn't like the solid color area at the top where the logo would be overlaid. Then, by methods so esoteric that I can't even begin to explain them without rambling on for far too long, I ran across this one and knew I had found the gift for Charles. He seemed to be really pleased with it, which was great--that's what we always hope for every gift!
The other was my gift for Bobby, a Jane Monheit Christmas Dual-Disc. Bobby's a big Jane Monheit fan, and I had remembered that this disc came out and then went out of print very quickly; I ran across a second copy (already had one for myself) and gambled that Bobby didn't have it. The gamble paid off; not only did he not have it, but he didn't even know it existed until he opened the gift!
Alas, other gifts were less perfect; I hope that they were appreciated as a sign of friendship and affection, though!
(Incidentally, this was the first year that Bobby and Jenny joined us for the event; hope it's not their last!)
Another Pioneer Passes
Jack Burnley died at the age of 95. Burnley was best known as the co-creator of Starman, but he also 
did some work on numerous other DC books, including a few Batman covers. In addition, he did the Golden Age Superman comic strip for a while. I'll confess that Burnley is one of the Golden Age creators whose work I appreciate on an intellectual and historical level, but not on the more visceral level at which I appreciate many of the others Golden Age creators. I was never an avid fan of his work, and I never had a chance to see him at any convention; nevertheless, I recognize that he was a contributor to the creation and success of a medium that I love, and thus his passing saddens me.There are so very few of these pioneering talents left, so the loss of each one has an increasingly greater impact on the field as a whole. Stan Lee, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, and Joe Kubert are the last surviving major talents; let's hope that many years pass before I have to make note of their passing as well.
In the Bleak Midwinter...
I worry about my Dad all the time, but I worry most of all at Christmas.
Dad has always embraced Christmas with great enthusiasm; he virtually epitomized Christmas spirit, and that enthusiasm was so infectious that everyone who knew him was inspired. Since Mom died in December of 2002, though, his Christmas joy has been intermingled with a solemnity and sadness because of the memories of her final days.
Dad wants to like Christmas. He tries to rekindle the old fires of excitement for the holiday. He speaks of it often. He decorates early. He listens to the Christmas songs that he used to enjoy.
But as December reaches its midpoint, he misses Mom more than ever. He seems more frustrated with the season, and I'm not sure he really knows why. And I think he gets frustrated with himself that he can't find happiness at this time.
My sister mentioned that, for the first time, Dad is talking about "if I'm here for next Christmas" when he discusses his plans. It's a change that we've both noticed, and one that disturbs me.
One friend mentioned that, when her mother died, her father worked methodically to complete things that he had promised her mother that he would see to. Once they were done, once his mental list was checked off, he felt that his mission was complete. He died a few months later... not of anything any particular other than subconscious decision that it was time to move on.
I fervently hope I'm not seeing that scene play out right now with my own father...
Dad has always embraced Christmas with great enthusiasm; he virtually epitomized Christmas spirit, and that enthusiasm was so infectious that everyone who knew him was inspired. Since Mom died in December of 2002, though, his Christmas joy has been intermingled with a solemnity and sadness because of the memories of her final days.
Dad wants to like Christmas. He tries to rekindle the old fires of excitement for the holiday. He speaks of it often. He decorates early. He listens to the Christmas songs that he used to enjoy.
But as December reaches its midpoint, he misses Mom more than ever. He seems more frustrated with the season, and I'm not sure he really knows why. And I think he gets frustrated with himself that he can't find happiness at this time.
My sister mentioned that, for the first time, Dad is talking about "if I'm here for next Christmas" when he discusses his plans. It's a change that we've both noticed, and one that disturbs me.
One friend mentioned that, when her mother died, her father worked methodically to complete things that he had promised her mother that he would see to. Once they were done, once his mental list was checked off, he felt that his mission was complete. He died a few months later... not of anything any particular other than subconscious decision that it was time to move on.
I fervently hope I'm not seeing that scene play out right now with my own father...
Christmas Time Is Here
Okay, we're four days away. Have I finished shopping? Of course not.
I don't think I've ever finished shopping really. Every Christmas, I reach that point where I simply can't find any more gifts to get, so I have to settle with what I've gotten. Every January, I think of things that I wish I had gotten for gifts, but it's too late.
When I was a kid, Christmas was a time when you had to settle with what you got. As an adult, you have to settle with what you give...
I don't think I've ever finished shopping really. Every Christmas, I reach that point where I simply can't find any more gifts to get, so I have to settle with what I've gotten. Every January, I think of things that I wish I had gotten for gifts, but it's too late.
When I was a kid, Christmas was a time when you had to settle with what you got. As an adult, you have to settle with what you give...
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