WHAT I DID ON MY CHRISTMAS VACATION

Hey look, I'm back! Yeah, I figure I'll be pretty good about this for at least the first month or so, then we'll see. Despite my insistence yesterday that I was writing this for myself, the best way to get me to keep at this is if you comment at the bottom or sign up as a "follower" of these poorly thought-out meanderings. I know me...if I think I have an audience, I'll be here everyday and twice on Sunday (always a matinee on Sunday) to bask in that spotlight.

BACK TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND.

As a school teacher, I really look forward to the Christmas break. The first semester is almost over (should be over, if you want my opinion but that's a discussion for another day), I'm usually coming off at least two shows (three this year) and am largely exhausted. So for those two and a half weeks of holiday-inspired bliss, I don't want to do anything. At least, not anything that I don't want to do.

And largely, I got my wish. Oh, I worked a little on the online class I'm taking for work (sixty hours on how to teach Drama to students who don't speak English. What a thrill fest!) and I finished a script for Earl Newton at Stranger Things (www.strangerthings.tv), but beyond that, I have accomplished very little. My family all came down the weekend of December 13 to see me play Scrooge in the annual production of A Christmas Carol at the University of West Florida, so I wasn't obligated to visit anyone on Christmas, nor were they obligated to visit me. Christmas for me, was finished by the time the break ever began. And I thought that's exactly what I wanted.

But somewhere along the way...the unthinkable happened. I got bored! After looking forward for so long to collapsing into my recliner and shuffling off into a coma with drool on my chin and a movie on the flat screen, I was bored! I couldn't believe it! I had used my latent super powers to slow time and make the break last forever and I wasn't enjoying it! See, I really like my own company. I have no problem with it if I don't see another person I know for an entire weekend or even an entire week. I live alone, I don't date and I don't feel the need to make the pizza delivery guy my new best friend. I do have a cat, a brindle and white egomaniacal monster named Loki, who like all cats thinks I live for the purpose of providing his every need, but unless he's hungry or up for a game of Let's Throw the Dried Poop at the Guy Who Has to Clean It Up, we leave each other pretty much alone.

By this point, however a certain lethargy had set in. I was bored, but I was also totally unmotivated. I did a few things...cleaned up around the house a bit, did some laundry. Had my Annual Christmas Brew with the boys and watched some DVDs but I was still bored. My friends Mark and Sherry found out that I was spending the holidays alone and invited me over for both Christmas and New Years, which I was hesitant about since I was brought up believing that Christmas is for family and you don't intrude on other people's family, but both evenings turned out to be a lot of fun. I also wound up driving to New Orleans the day after Christmas and spending the day with my youngest, Sara and her boyfriend Trevor, which was also fun and on the way back from New Orleans, I stopped off for a while at an Open House being given by my friend Carol. More fun.

You can see the pattern, right? All these little islands of fun and frolic surrounded by what? Boredom and Lethargy. What the hell was up with that? Part of it, I suppose is the season. Despite the fact that I had seen my folks and all my kids and grandkids just two weeks earlier, Christmas was still a time for family and I was alone. I have been single for a long time now and don't even date anymore (another extremely long story-I'll tell you about it sometime) and if I ever despair the lack of feminine companionship, it is almost always at the holidays when people who love each other are supposed to be reminded of why they love each other and what that means. I can usually handle the holiday depression but this year it was unexpectedly combined with the death of my elderly neighbor, Dennis and that has affected me far more than I thought it would. Dennis is/was a full-blooded Sioux indian, a direct descendant of Crazy Horse himself and even though he's been brutally ill these last several years, he was always full of life. And what an amazing life it was. I'm not going to audition to be his biographer or anything, but sometimes it seemed like Dennis had been everywhere and done everything and to lose him like that, just before Christmas at the young age of 79, was and is a blow. His memorial service is this afternoon; a big Native American tribute at the Temple Mound museum and I'll be there, saying good-bye to this special individual who was my friend and doing what I can for his wife. Rest in Peace, my friend. Go with God.

So, what did I do on my Christmas vacation? Well, aside from what I have already mentioned, I saw a lot of movies. In the theatres I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (loved it!) and The Spirit (what a disappointment!) and may see Valkyrie this afternoon after the memorial. I also saw Burn After Reading (loved it), Elf (typical Will Farrell, which for me, is starting to get old), The Holiday (the kind of movie Jack Black should make more often), Tropic Thunder (the kind of movie Jack Black should take a break from, though Robert Downey Jr. was amazing!), The Dark Knight (again), Rescue Dawn (is it just me, or does Christian Bale talk funny in all of his movies?), both the Harold and Kumar movies (first one was funny, second one just gross), Made of Honor (a male remake of My Best Friend's Wedding), Serenity, Predator 2 and an old Pierce Brosnan horror movie from his days as Remington Steele called Nomads, that is worth watching because, aside from being a great flick, it was the movie John McTiernan made right before a little film called Die Hard and action movies changed forever.

And that, for the most part is my Christmas vacation. My present I suppose, was wrapped in that old Chinese proverb, Be Careful What You Wish For. A little solitude goes a long way and we are primarily social beings. I'll try to remember that in future. In the meantime, school starts back up tomorrow and I have only one question. How many days til Spring Break?