The Sandman (and his wife)

I know some of you have been waiting patiently for christmas stories. Family feuds, duels to the death and chases involving angry turkeys. Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to do without those. Let me tell you how it really went. In preparation for this dreaded feast I took a short trip to the Netherlands to say hi to some family and take care of some unfinished business. Walnut IT is now officially no more.... My arrival back in the States was carefully timed and I was taken from the airport straight to a family dinner. I have to say that some people do drink a bit more then they should and those same people do not necessarily become better narrators when they do.... I know, I'm being pretty vague about this but I honestly have no clue who reads this stuff and since I'm still on probation here I have to be careful ;-) Anyway, I was saved by my jetlag which provided a good reason not to make it a long evening.

Okay, Christmas day itself then. We went over to Lisa, one of Maria's older sisters where the whole family gathered. The number of presents for the kids was enormous. The amount of food for everyone was enormous too. After a couple of hours most of the people gathered in front of the tv to watch the football game. Luckily the Eagles finally managed to win a game and stay in the running so the atmosphere was good. There was also a nice little incident when Nicky (another one of Maria's sisters) was about to leave with her family. Her husband managed to lock himself out of the car with the engine running. Of course it was raining by that time as we used a wooden spoon to open the door a bit and a metal coat hanger to get to the unlock button. As easy as that sounds, I assure you, it was not. I managed to get whacked in the nose several times by one of the wipers.
All things considered, not a bad Christmas party. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. The big drama came later, because the day after almost everybody got sick. The opinions about the how and why are divided, even now, but I think somebody there was giving off the flue virus in generous amounts. The other school of thought points towards the food. Who knows.... fact is that as usual I got sick a day after Maria did and again as usual got better a lot quicker too.

Finally, to make good on the title of this little festive rant, we got around to sanding the floors in two rooms upstairs. It's amazing how much of a difference renting the right equipment can make. Even so, after two weekends of sanding we're both racked by muscle pains. The good news is that we're done with the sanding so all we have to do now is paint the walls, paint the ceilings, stain the floors and put a finishing on the floors (probably three layers). Pfff, one more weekend and we're done, right?