A rush bus, a free lunch, bah humbug rum pum, & A Trailer Park Christmas…

~Thursday~  After putting the coffee on this morning, I thought, “What time is that damn student e-mail meeting today? I hope it’s not at 9:00.” Checking my work e-mail and calendar remotely, I saw that it was and then grumbled an expletive remembering that I hadn’t done two things that really should be done before that meeting.

To that end, I fast-forwarded through my SSS, and drove up to a Wolfline bus stop that would get me to work about 45 minutes earlier than I normally get there in order to take care of these things before that meeting.

Have I mentioned here before that I hate 9:00 meetings?!?

I got those two things done, and then attended the 9:00-10:15 meeting, in which I’m the note-taker. There was no short of discussion, and we didn’t get through the agenda—neither of which are out of the ordinary for this meeting.

I’m happy to be able to say that it was the last meeting of the year for this project.


My boss took my officemate and me out for lunch to thank us for a “great year of work.” She treated us at Red, Hot, & Blue and we enjoyed some nice social time in addition to a good lunch.

Everything on my plate came in twos—two sausage links, two mounds of coleslaw (one in substitution for baked beans), and two small cornbread muffins—so I ate exactly half and took the other half home for dinner tomorrow night.


Too often—it’s got to be outside the probability of random chance that—I hear one of these two songs when I change the radio station in my car to one of the two stations that are playing Christmas music exclusively:

I can’t say for sure that it’s the absolute least, but The Little Drummer Boy is definitely one of my least, favorite holiday songs.

The one that drives me the most batty—which is different from hating it in my rating system—is Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer due to a grammar issue I have with it.


I’d not heard any Tiger would jokes, but I’ve heard three in the last two days now:

  1. He: “Did you hear that Tiger changed his name?”
    She: “No. To what?”
    He: “Cheetah.”
  2. Q: What’s the difference between Santa and Tiger Woods?
    A: Santa stopped after three Ho’s.
  3. Q: What do Tiger Woods and baby seals have in common?
    A: They they both get clubbed by Norwegians.

Sorry, but this upside down Christmas tree is all sold out at SamsClub.com:


I picked up Robert at his place in Durham at about 6:45 and we rode over to Common Ground Theater, where we watched the 7:30 performance of A Trailer Park Christmas, co-written by one of my friends Jeffrey Moore. He also played “Meemaw” in it.

It was great entertainment. We had lots of laughs. The characters were all milling about before the play, which took me back to December 6, 1997 when my mom and I went to see Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral off-Broadway. One of the characters from that play was out before it started in the line outside for tickets thanking people for coming to Sylvia’s funeral.

Again, an evening of laughter—right up until the last minute as we were exiting. Spoiler alert: If you’re thinking about going to see the play, skip to the next paragraph. Jeffrey’s character in the play dies at the end, and he’s standing up above the stage in the lighting area, and when I waved goodbye to him, he yelled down, “I’m not really dead. It was just a play!” Cracked us up.


I stopped at the grocery store near my house and picked up some White Fudge Covered Oreos for my contribution tomorrow to this week’s holiday food frenzy.

I also picked up some pretzels and the ingredients to make a clam dip to go with them for my friend Jen’s party, which I’ll stop by for 1.5-hours before heading to dancing Saturday night.

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