Only 365 Days 'Til Christmas!

Yes, Christmas is over for another year. The gifts have been unwrapped, the children thrilled, the dinners cooked, the friends and relatives visited, etc, etc. In some parts of the world, today is still a holiday: it's Boxing Day in England, The Second Day of Christmas in Germany, and so on. Here in Northern Virginia, it's Get Your Lazy Rear Back to Work Day.

Sigh.

Agnes is still on vacation until the end of the week, having much more accumulated vacation time than I. I don't begrudge her the extra time, because she's earned the break, but I surely do wish I could take the rest of the week off, too.

Sigh again.

But regardless of my demeanor today, we had a grand Christmas. You saw yesterday's photos of our Christmas Eve celebration with our daughter and her family; we celebrated Christmas with two of our closest friends - Bakr and Nadja.

I've known Bakr for more than 20 years, since we met in a class we were both taking for our master's degree program. We discovered we had many shared interests and have been close friends ever since. One of our shared passions is photography - Bakr took most of the pictures in this post. I took this one, so that he could have his memory of a day spent with two beautiful ladies:


We first met Nadja and her husband, Ken, when they were taking dance lessons from Agnes a few years ago. Ken is now working on contract overseas, and so we invited Nadja to spend the holiday with us. No one gets a free dinner at our place, though ... here, she contemplates the onion that needed chopped for the salad. This is the pre-tears picture.


As always, when you have four people crowded into the same kitchen, tempers can flare. Here is where things almost got deadly between Agnes and I...you can see Nadja trying to escape in the background.


We did, however, end up burying the hatchet. Sort of.


It ended up being an excellent dinner, though. Agnes made her traditional German Rouladen with red cabbage. mashed potatoes, and salad.


It was much better than my expression probably suggests!


And so ends another Christmas. Back to the old salt mines. Time to take Punky for a walk, wash a few dishes, and get my poor, sad rear end to work.

Ugh.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo