DJ's New Year's Rockin' Eve

I just got back from a brisk outdoor swim at the posh club, where I battled the elements and came out on top. I'm loaded for bear and ready to deliver one of the finest blog posts of the last week.

I hope you all had an excellent Festivus. Since we are a multi-culturally oriented household, we celebrated Christmas as well. We had a few families from the village over and we'll also be spending New Year's Eve in the warm glow of village amity. I gotta make some new friends.

Christmas was quite a feast. We started off with cocktails, including Vespers and martinis made with the designer gin I gave my wife as a present this year. Dinner was an excellent ham from Draeger's, with some killer sides contributed by the "extended team". The wife went to try to get a ham Thursday from Whole Foods, but they were all out. The butcher said that "mom and pop store" in San Mateo might have some. He meant Draeger's. Well, I guess if he's referring to the blue blood mummys and daddys of Hillsborough, that might be an apt description.

We all got our fill, especially of the desserts. The Hotelier's family went bonkers and brought enough sweets for my entire neighborhood. And they were damn good. The only thing I didn't try was the huge yule log cake that is now taking up an entire shelf in my garage freezer. I wanted to have some but the dietary advice my mother gave me decades ago has stuck with me. She told me, "DJ, never eat anything bigger than your head".

I'm off work this week so we're spending a lot of family time together. SB1 is logging a few hours doing aftercare at the club but this has not prevented him from him from jacking up my grocery bill. We all went to Costco yesterday but left him home or I would have had to write a check from the home equity line. We did pick up some NY strips which we'll save for his send off dinner. The girl has a tournament this week. They beat Castro Valley in a squeaker last night and we're heading back tonight for more. She had a hell of a game. She was the team's top scorer and made one spin move that hasn't been seen since I roamed the courts.

I could get some more yardage out of the Costco visit but I think I'll save that for my other writing gig. As you are aware, I tend to recycle blog material for those efforts. That will continue unabated. I expect my next column to be 50% blog material. Its the environmentally correct thing to do.

I got an email - I should say philippic - from my good pal The Wig after my last post. To depersonalize it even more, he sent it to my work email address. It looks like we are going to have to start working harder on our relationship. Little does he know, at least until he reads this, that an orange is on the way. That's correct, singular. It probably should have been there by now but they've had terrible weather conditions on the East coast. That's my story.

Happy New Year to all my peeps.

Merry Merry

The smile, or smirk, may have faded from your face since reading my annual Christmas letter, so it's time to give you more fodder and hit the SLA. I did get a little input on my holiday missive from The Wig. I can almost envision him now, in a pensive mood, asking himself, "Where the hell are the blood oranges?"

Sonny Boy One arrived from DC this week. We arm wrestled in a Festivus feats of strength event yesterday. I lost. The girl got back from a Fort Bragg tournament around the same time. They lost the final game after stomping the competition in the first two. Nonetheless, I expect perfection. She's getting a lump of coal.

I spent most of this past week in Palm Desert with the in-laws. Does that sound appealing? You've seen the movies of people stuck in the desert, desperate for water, seeing mirages, swimming in the sand. Yeah, add in-laws to that. That was my holiday vacation.

We actually had a very good time and are grateful to my mother-in-law for hooking us up at her Marriott timeshare. My wife did a lot of shopping and I did a lot of lying around. I had a chance to make my first foray into SteinMart. I've seen the commercials but have never been to one. I renamed it ShitMart.

The drives to and from were pretty uneventful. I did see a tractor trailer with a large sign, "Trucking for Jesus". Try as I might, I can't come up with a good line for that one so I'm just reporting the event. We caught a bit of rain on the way down but were lucky to avoid the heavy rainfall before returning. It rained quite a bit during our stay but the sun greeted us as we were packing the car to leave. Timing is everything.

Merry Christmas to all

Drug Store Blogger

I was at my local pharmacy today picking up my prescription. They have a placard with five slots, three of which contain pictures. The title is "Pharmacists Who Care". That led me to conclude that the rest of the pharmacists that work there don't care.

Waste Not

It's a new era in waste management in Foster City. I got up-to-date recycling bins this week. We no longer have to separate the recycling into paper, plastic and glass. It is now "single stream". I noticed that 4M has had this for a while in San Jose so I guess we on The Peninsula are just a skosh behind The Valley in these matters.

The wife and I went to a woman's basketball game at SF State last week to watch them take on UCSD. It was close for a while but UCSD went up by 20 at one point and took it 66-52. I felt bad for the SFSU cheerleaders. I thought they usually traveled in packs of ten or more but this crew was a few shy. They were peppy enough but their exhortations fell on deaf ears. I looked back at the crowd a few times and they were unmoved, staring blankly ahead during their routines.

The big news in my life recently is that I bought a new pair of shoes. They are both stylish and supportive of my rapidly aging body. I wore them for about a week with no problem but then at work this week they became quite uncomfortable. What the hell is going on? Is it time to trim the toenails again? After breakfast I took them off to find a sock stuffed in each one from the previous day's gym visit. Getting dressed at 6am has its downside.

I was at the farmer's market this morning and a guy stopped me and told me I looked like Bruce Bochy, SF Giants manager. I don't happen to agree with him but I didn't want to burst his bubble so we exchanged pleasantries and then I bought some artichokes. I'm going to take Sonny Boy Two for a swim this afternoon then I'm heading to a Holiday Champagne Soiree tonight. I lead a glamorous life.

Duty Bound

Yes folks, it's that time again. I don't have much to say but I gotta say something. I cannot disappoint my loyal readership, especially my good friend #1, whom I occasionally refer to as Cruel Overlord and Keeper of the SLA.

I'm a proud daddy these days. As most of you know, the girl is going to play hoops for UCSD next year. Probably only my European reader and JB have not gotten the news. JB and I are in one of our periodic lack of communication modes. These can last for years and then we pick up where we left off, emailing ten times a day or so.

As far as my kids, two of the three will have competed in college athletics. This should come as no surprise. They are the progeny of a one time third string high school JV basketball player.