orinoco flow

Merry Christmas, everyone! Granted, it's v. belated--I've either been too tired or too lethargic to blog over the past few days, so I'll give a quick recap...

I made both of my flights home, which put me into Des Moines at around 10am. This made me significantly luckier than all of the people who got bumped off previous flights; since all flights were booked solid, there were people in the boarding area of my SFO-Chicago flight who had been waiting for >26 hours already, but who couldn't get on my flight because it was booked. The only bad thing was that the baby in the row next to me screamed for the last hour and a half of the 3.5 hour flight, which means that I slept less than 2 hours on Friday night :( When I got to Des Moines, I went out for breakfast w/my parents and brother, then hung out in the mall parking lot while they all finished their Christmas shopping, then slept most of the way home. My uncle and his family were already in my house, making prime rib, when we arrived; the prime rib was perfectly cooked and delicious, which was a nice welcome back to my ancestral home. I took another nap after dinner, and awoke in time to play a second round of 'Cranium'--my cousin Andrew and I did fairly well, even though we were teamed with my grandmother, which meant that we had some difficulties with the song categories (since my grandmother was too old and my cousin was too young to know a lot of the songs).

The next day was Christmas Eve, which meant I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 9:30ish to shower before my sister and her kids showed up. We had lunch (loose meat sandwiches!), followed by presents. Then, my parents, brother, and I went to my grandmother's for the traditional Christmas Eve lasagna, followed by Christmas Eve church. The Methodists like to have a little bit of Scripture with their hymn-singing--but the funny thing was that, minute-for-minute, there was more reading of bios of the song-writers than there was reading of Biblical passages. In other words, they read 1-2 lines of the Christmas story, then a 3-5 minute mini-treatise on the people who wrote the Christmas songs that we sang. I heard more than I wanted to know about the guy who wrote 'O Little Town of Bethlehem', among others, but the candlelit part of the service was pretty, as always. Then we went back to my grandmother's and opened presents. Yay!

Christmas Day, I had to wake up at the even more ungodly hour of 8:30 for the traditional emptying of stockings and opening of gifts. Among other things, I got the Mario Batali 'Molto Italiano' cookbook and a Kitchenaid immersion blender, so I'm super psyched to get back to California and try some of the recipes (and make more creamy potato-leek soup). We went to my grandmother's for Christmas dinner (served at noon--mealtimes are v. confusing here), then came back here around three, where all four of us fell into post-meal comas. It was great!

Now, Christmas is over. I was v. lazy today; woke up at 12:30, watched the soaps, took a bath, and changed into fresh pajamas :) We had dinner, then watched 'Thank You for Smoking', which my brother gave me for Christmas. The movie was v. funny; I love satire, and I love snarky humor, so I particularly appreciated this tale of a no-holds-barred tobacco lobbyist and his attempts to protect and defend Big Tobacco. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up--and apparently it's not even that offensive to smokers, since my mother made a special effort to stay awake and watch the entire thing. If any of my Cali friends want to see this fine film, I can host a viewing when I get back.

I should go to bed; I have to get up somewhat early tomorrow (or at least earlier than usual) because my mom's cousins are visiting in the afternoon. Then, Thursday I'm going to Iowa City to meet Ritu--we may have to have an Olive Garden reunion, even though there are apparently better places to eat in that town. I hope that you all had v. merry Christmases!