So This Is Christmas

Christmas is a time to be with family.  Christmas is also a time for depression.  My only local family is my youngest daughter and my second ex-wife.  The ex-wife was working today.  My daughter was spending the holiday with her boyfriend’s family 40 miles away.

I did make plans with my daughter to take her out for dinner tomorrow evening.  I haven’t seen her in a while, so it’ll be nice.

I did talk to several people on the phone.  I had text messages from a few more.  I also interacted with a bunch of people over on Google+, although most of them were just taking a few minutes from there in-person holiday celebrations.

I have mixed feelings about Christmas.  I hate the commercialization of it all.  I hate the expectation of gifts.  I see financially strapped families go into debt to buy gifts for everybody.  I find that sad.

I’m not going to cover the religious aspects of the holiday.  We each have our own beliefs. I think the community and family aspects of Christmas are a good thing.  Many people have the day off work.  Families get together and actually interact (for better or worse).  This is part of what made me depressed today.  I just had my dogs.

I did give a couple of gifts online, to people I’ve never met in person.  They’re people I’ve conversed with online.  I consider them friends.  I received a rather nice gift of a bag of coffee. Somebody was paying attention.  I had casually mentioned this particular brand of coffee months ago.  I then forgot about it until the package arrived.  There was a card enclosed.  It’s nice to have friends, even if you’ve never met them.

Due to my laziness yesterday, I had few groceries in the house today.  I had bacon and eggs.  Yep, that’s it.  That’s what I ate.  I drank copious amounts of coffee.  There is no alcohol in the house.

I decided to bury myself in a book for a few hours.  Two hours into that, I got a text message from Tim asking if I’d like to go for a ride, JRA (just riding around).  This would mean not too fast, not too long, ride around town.  It was just the cajoling I needed to get out of the house.  It’s nice to have in-person friends too.

I rolled out on the rSogn and headed to The Loop where I met him.  He’s been under the weather and still hasn’t fully recovered.  We rolled around some neighborhood streets, then into Cherokee Park.  It was fully dark, but both of us were riding bikes with dyno-powered headlights.

He ended up with a coughing fit, and we wandered back toward his neighborhood.  He gave me his Big Loafer bag for the front of my bike.  I’ll give it a try and see how it works.  If I like it, we’ll discuss a price.

I took a wandering route home and ended up with 16.2 miles.  It’s not a lot of miles, but it looks like I’ll make 300 miles for the month.

I’m not drinking today.  I’m going back to work in the morning.  There’s the potential for snow accumulation overnight.  I’m considering putting the studded tires on the Fargo tonight, just in case they’re needed.

I’ve had four days off work.  I’m a little frustrated that I didn’t get the housework done that I wanted to.  I did go for the 78-mile ride on Sunday, so it wasn’t totally wasted.

Merry Christmas everyone.