Holiday Stress Risers

This article Heart of a Husband By Stephen Fried, where he talks about "solving the puzzle of how to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, but the holidays are their own special torture for husbands," really hit home in some areas for me. Over the years, however, some solutions have evolved.

Gift Performance Anxiety - perfect gift for the perfect day? Forget it. Open all holidays to a holiday window. This works especially well for birthdays where the rule is that your birthday window in days = your new age before + your birthday + your new age after. For example, this year I'll be 48 and my birthday is 3/22, so my birthday window starts on 2/2 and ends on 5/9. Pat is welcome to give me multiple gifts throughout this time period - some will be goofy, some will be excellent, some will be actually for her, etc. Pat was 4x this year and her birthday was on 11/8, a Tuesday, a day I'm in MA working, all week in fact. Not to worry! I already started giving her birthday presents in Sept. and will continue until after Christmas - aha, but there is the 1 week holiday interruption rule for Christmas, so the birthday window is suspended and restarted, so I'll be giving gifts into January!
Let's see, so far:
Ford $50 gift card - she had to take a test ride, Sagamore massage & lunch, white&rose gold spiralling necklace, 2 bottles LongIsland Cabernet, various dinners, several cards with nice messages and pictures drawn in, a night out to a play, a night out dancing til 1 am with a hot dog snack before we went home.
Last year, I bought ~$200 worth of stuff for the kitchen at Bed, Bath & Beyond and pulled a different gift out every weekend. See, the idea is plenty of practice and if you don't get it right, there is always next week.

Whose family to Visit on Which Holiday - Alternate Holidays, Alternate Years. On even years, we do Christmas on my side and Thanksgiving on her side, then switch on odd years. New couples have to get on the schedule and inform their in-laws that this is the rule. Being the biggest sibling family helps due to precident and volume of people involved if the newer parties don't conform. Besides, if you get out of sequence, no one will be there.

Emotions and Intrigue - Just warn your significant other that the sisters, aunts, cousins, etc. are prone to sniping once you leave the room so that she'll be prepared with some snappy comebacks of her own.

Have a Great Holiday!!!!

New York City Transportation Strike

A big inconvenience for many (millions) including my son who traveled to the subway to take this picture for those of us who couldn't experience the strike first hand. A fine of $1MM/day against the union was imposed today as well.

A Winter Worcester Walk

It was time to stretch the legs after the weekend activities so I went for a walk. I brought the camera to see how long these new rechargable 2500mA NiMH AA batteries will last. They worked for a good long time whereas normal AA would have lost it 1/2 way through the trip and I would have continued to contribute to the landfill.
The train station:

The new bus station:

Skiing at Saratoga

This is one of the buildings on the grounds of Saratoga Spa State Park. It is the Baruch Research Laboratory (this link is to a .pdf that has a succinct summary of the spa) and administration building (named after Dr. Simon Baruch, who was instrumental in working out the system of cardiac therapy which had been so successful in the treatment of heart disease at the Spa). Its purpose was to study the nature and course of chronic diseases using mineral waters--especially heart diseases. Dr. Walter McClellan, M.D., was chosen by the Commission in 1930 to fill the position of medical director. Under his direction, the Spa's medical department was active in educating both the general public and the medical profession as to the benefits of the mineral waters and the spa therapy.

These open arch hallways are throughout the buildings in the area. These are attached to the Roosevelt baths. We think patients dried off out here and soaked up some sun after their mineral bath. It was alittle cool today so we saw no one out, but the indoor mineral baths were open.

Pat and I really enjoyed skiing around the golf course and eventually worked up a good sweat. Can you see Pat's Christmas present?

An interesting perspective shot along a fairway border...

Hilarious!

Pat and I went to see The SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris at the Saratoga Little Theater Saturday night. It got a decent writeup in The Saratogian. We couldn't stop laughing for a good part of the 80 minute, one man show.