I f*cking LOVE Christmas (in a purely secular fashion). Lights, trees, giving people stuff, kids putting lawn reindeer in compromising positions at night…it makes me very happy. Every time I drive by a nativity set, I have an overwhelming desire to steal part of it. This goes back to The Great Jesus Kidnapping Of 1990. My friends and I trolled through unsuspecting neighborhoods and sent my brother out to grab the Jesuses out of their mangers and put them in my trunk. I think we took about ten or fifteen. And lest ye judge, let me tell you that our plan was to bring them back at Easter! Brilliant, I know…except for the fact that we had forgotten where they had come from months later. Oops!

Met with Kim (who just finished her last paper yesterday and is done with school until January – yay!) and Audra, who is new to Austin, last night at my favorite North Austin bar, LaLas (and also conveniently down the street from me). It’s decorated for Christmas year round, of course, but seems extra festive around the actual holiday. Everyone in the city has heard a different story on why the decorations never come down – it has become one of those ever-changing urban myths. Someone told me a few years back that LaLa (one of the older ladies who runs the bar) had decorated for her son’s return around Christmas from Vietnam, but he was killed on his way back. Keeping the holiday spirit is an act of mourning. Romantic, yes. True, prolly not.