What have you been up to, Dan?

Thanks for asking blog post title. Maria and I went to see the Santaland Diaries at Triad Stage on Friday. It was pretty damn funny. And let's face it, I can't get really into the Christmas spirit until I've laughed at retarded kids. It's kind of a purging thing.

The whole family went to the Holiday Parade on Saturday. Some of the highlights were Lawndale Baptist church having a real camel in its nativity scene. I wouldn't put it past them to use a horse w/ a hunchback, but the Sunday paper confirmed that it came from some guy's farm. Not to be outdone, the Unitarians sponsored a float that featured a teenage white kid yelling "Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa." And Hitz 94 was passing out stickers from their van allowing Desmond to run down the middle of Market St while somebody in the parade chased him with a remote controlled car. Fond memories of playing in traffic.

After the parade, we bought our Christmas tree. We have a lot of ornaments that have lighthouses on them. One made from a seashell w/ Bodie Island lighthouse on it, one shaped like North Carolina w/ Hatteras light on the end, a glass one w/ a bunch of NC lighthouses on it, a flat metal one from Currituck beach lighthouse, one that is supposed to plug into the lights but actually shorted out all the yellow lights when I plugged it in, and one I made from a Christmas card w/ a picture of Cape Cod lighthouse w/ a wreath on it in the snow. I don't really know what all that means, but it seems statistically significant.

I bought coffee at Starbucks for the first time ever. I don't really drink much coffee, so it's actually the first coffee shop I've been to period. I went in w/ Maria a few weeks ago, so I felt like I could buy the two of us coffees for the parade all by myself. I was impressed w/ the people who ordered all kinds of extras but did so w/o skipping a beat when placing their order. I wasn't impressed that I spent $8 for two cups of coffee.

Finally, I saw a Droopy Dog cartoon that was set in 2029 Los Angeles in a world very similar to Blade Runner. Instead of replicants, Droopy and his son Drippy were trying to save the shapely heroine from duplicates. It could have used a voice over w/ Droopy spilling his inner monologue, but it was a 5 minute cartoon so maybe I'm expecting too much.