Good Christmas weekend this year.
Christmas Eve Day I got up at my usual time, dinked around on the ‘puter for a bit while I woke up, packed, and headed down to the train station. Hiked down the hill to 3rd, then caught a bus over to Jackson street and killed time for about an hour before the train left.
I spent most of the train ride in the observation car, listening to the Kleptones and watching the scenery fly by. It was a pretty grey day, but I did what I could to get some interesting shots, trying to catch some of the graffitti on the train cars and bridges we passed.
Prairie and H picked me up at the station, and I got to see Prairie’s new car (something of a Christmas present to herself, as her old Jetta finally became too much of a hassle to keep over this past week), a cute little silver Honda Civic. We swung by Prairie’s mom’s house to drop off bags, and then Prairie and I went over to her dad’s place. I gave her dad some pointers with his new iBook, H and K joined us a little while later, and we had a nice Christmas Eve dinner, complete with decorating Christmas cookies. Eventually, we all headed back to Prairie’s mom’s house to crash out.
Christmas morning rolled around, and Prairie and I joined her mom and sisters downstairs to open presents. My stocking was stuffed with socks and M&M’s, I got a good pile of new clothing (all black, save one shirt that’s black and grey), a few books, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Season One of Buffy (so I can eventually own them all). Lots more than I was expecting to end up with!
That afternoon, Prairie and I went driving around the Woodland area, heading down by the Columbia river, and then a little way up past where the Louis river joins the Columbia and up to a train trestle spanning the Louis. I was a good son and called my parents after we got home — this is the second Christmas I’ve been away from home for, though Prairie and I are discussing seeing if we can head up to Alaska for next Christmas. H’s boyfriend P showed up in time for Christmas dinner, and later on I did my best at playing photographer for the traditional Christmas family photos.
Monday was another day of resting and lazing around. Lunch with P and H over at Prairie’s dad’s house, and then packing up and heading back north to Seattle.
As usual, I’ve got a selection of photos posted to Flickr (61 of the 200-some I took over the course of the weekend). Now I’m back at work, and Prairie’s doing her best to fend off a cold before the New Year’s weekend rolls around. Life returns to normal…for a few days at least.