{"id":2063,"date":"2003-12-25T13:52:41","date_gmt":"2003-12-26T05:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/12\/25\/a-quiet-christmas\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T15:00:45","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T23:00:45","slug":"a-quiet-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/12\/25\/a-quiet-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"A quiet Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:12586,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/title\\\/tt0307987&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6417,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.vogueseattle.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:12587,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B000001M1W\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260312003402\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B000001M1W\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B000001M1W\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a nice Christmas holiday this year. Due to financial difficulties, I wasn&#8217;t able to head up to Anchorage to be with my family for Christmas, so I ended up spending Christmas on my own for the first time in my life. While I missed being able to see family, all in all, it really wasn&#8217;t such a bad thing &#8212; there will be plenty of other chances for me to head back up to Alaska in the future (possibly even a few that aren&#8217;t in the dead of winter!), and it gave me a few days of just &#8220;me time&#8221; to kick back and relax without having to deal with the rigors of travel.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d originally thought I was going to work on Christmas Eve day, but things were slow enough at work that I ended up getting the day off after all. A nice surprise, though if I&#8217;d known earlier, it might have made the trip to Anchorage more likely, so there was a slight element of frustration, too. However, not being one to complain about an unexpected day off, I spent most of the day just relaxing at home, with a few hours of wandering around downtown Seattle watching all the last-minute holiday shoppers hurry from store to store.<\/p>\n<p>On the way back home from my wander, I decided that I might as well do what I could to celebrate the Christmas holiday in my own particular style &#8212; and ducked into the theater to see <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/title\/tt0307987\/\" title=\"Bad Santa\">Bad Santa<\/a>. What a wonderfully horrid little movie! The entire thing is very, very wrong, and very, very funny. Definitely not a movie for everyone, but if you&#8217;re into black comedy and don&#8217;t mind a film taking quite a few outrageous shots at the Christmas season, it&#8217;s worth checking out.<\/p>\n<p>After a bit more time goofing off at home, I headed up the hill that evening for Christmas Eve at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vogueseattle.com\/\" title=\"The Vogue\">Vogue<\/a>. What better way to spend Christmas Eve than at a goth club with a lot of people dressed in black and listening to dark music, right? ;) Hey, it works for me &#8212; especially as there&#8217;s nothing wrong with having a little fun with the night, and among the songs played at the club that night were a few of the songs from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B000001M1W\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack\">Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s been another day of nothing. A little dinking around on the &#8216;puter, a little reading and zoning out, and seeing Return of the King for the second time. My only frustration was that I&#8217;d intended on calling home to wish Mom, Dad and Kevin a merry Christmas &#8212; but I don&#8217;t have long distance, and I discovered today that my phone card had expired a couple of months ago. Of course, this being Christmas day, I don&#8217;t know of any open stores close to me where I could pick up a new phone card, so I may have to take care of that sometime in the next couple days and call them this weekend instead. Hopefully they&#8217;ll understand!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a nice Christmas holiday this year. Due to financial difficulties, I wasn&#8217;t able to head up to Anchorage to be with my family for Christmas, so I ended up spending Christmas on my own for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-2063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}