I left Raleigh between 9:30 and 10:00, after the hassle of getting my wrapped gifts into the car without getting rain on them. I bumped the corner of my eye on one of the boxes in the process. I know we need rain, but it’s a pain in the ass on Christmas day morning.
The traffic was light, the rain was annoying, but otherwise my ride to Greenville was uneventful. listened to a dozen or more podcasts on the way, and the way back, to and from Greenville — some include:
| NPR Story of the Day | Travelers Test Rules on Flying Without Identification |
| NPR Story of the Day | A Close Bond Sheds Light on Race Relations |
| NPR Story of the Day | Time to “Try” a Woman in the White House |
| NPR Story of the Day | Museum Cancels Pirate Exhibit Over Slavery Issues* |
| NPR Story of the Day | David, Plotz, Blogging the Bible |
| NPR Story of the Day | Great American Writers and their Cocktails |
| NPR Story of the Day | Philadelphia Works to Keep “Gross” Treasure |
| NPR Story of the Day | Newly Found Gene Mutation Banishes Pain |
| NPR Story of the Day | Communal Housing Cuts Rent Costs in Washington |
| NPR Story of the Day | Harvard Reconsiders Core-Course Requirements |
| NPR Story of the Day | “Naughty Lola”: London’s Lonely Hearts Seek Love |
| NPR Story of the Day | Word for Word, “Ali Rap” Tracks “The Greatest” |
| NPR Story of the Day | Build Your Own Universe |
| Euphemisms for Sex | |
| Stump the Explainer | |
| The Year’s Top Political Moments | |
| The Despicable U-Boat Watch | |
| Hell No, We Won’t Protest | |
| Iran’s Massive Denial | |
| Barack’s Coming Out Party | |
| Happiness, The Economic Model | |
| The Autograph Man | |
| Affirmative Inaction | |
| They Mystery of Sonar Boy | |
| Listen Up! | |
| A Mighty Whimper | |
| I Want It Now! | |
| Dead Plagiarists Society | |
| Being Paris Hilton | |
| Jay-Z Vs. the Sample Troll | |
| Why HD-DVD is D.O.A. | |
| Selling the Supreme Court | |
| The Slate 60 |
*The pirate exhibit one reminds me of this joke my sister told me:
Q: How much does it cost to get a pirate’s ears pierced?
A: A buck an ear.
My sister outdid herself once again, in terms of both table decorations, and her cooking. Here’s a snapshot of this holiday’s table decorations.
She set two tables. Here’s the smaller one in her kitchen nook. Serendipitously, after already deciding on her “snowman theme,” some friends gave her and her husband a bottle of wine in a “snowman sleeve,” which became the centerpiece on this table:
This is a side table, with a killer cheese ball on it. I spread some on the Towne House cracker, and topped it (liddage) with one of those spicy walnuts all the way to the left of the picture:
This is the main table in the formal dining room. A couple of the little ornaments on the napkin rings were personalized with our names on them. The others were the little snowman.
The snowmen on the name tags were those little hard sugar cake toppers:
Beside the plates, along with the name tags, were a little chocolate snowman, and a little bag that said, well see for yourself:
Mini-marshmallows.
Here’s my sister Vivian cooling off after all of her hard work and beginning to dive into the gift-opening frenzy:
And mom telling the story of being knocked unconscious by a door of a woman coming out of the Bingo hall that she was going into:
Fortunately, everything turned out for the best, and we didn’t have to put on her tombstone, “She died doing what she loved.”
And, finally, my great-nephew, Nicholas, who’s about two-and-a-half now, and talking up a storm. On the right is his mother, my niece (my brother’s daughter), Meagan, and to the left of the picture, her husband Chris.
