A real Christmas.

I want a real Christmas. What's a real Christmas?

My real Christmas:

The tree is the fun part. The first layer is two or three strings of lights from different decades - Some plastic flower-bulb ones, some "modern" bulby ones, with silver garland around it. Invariably, there will be some discussion on whether the garland goes up and down or wraps around. Next up are ornaments. Some cheesy construction paper ones my sister and I made as kids, some pretty porcelain ones my mom got on QVC in the mid 90's, some of those tacky thread-covered-styrofoam balls (including the TMNT one we got from Fingerhut!), and the glittery ornaments that managed to survive two kids and a cat. The topper is some cheesy circular thing that lights up. The pretty glass topper stays in the box, but maybe we unwrap it to check the dates on the newspaper its wrapped in.

The tree has a a pile of neatly (or not-so-neatly, if they're from me) wrapped gifts underneath. The pile of gifts grows as the days pass, and some appear magically on Christmas morning. The gifts range from the practical - "A toaster oven!?! AWESOME!" to the random: "Sim Earth? Uh.... Awesome!" All of the tags have ridiculous labels - "To Daddy, From Walter Mondale" or "To Honey, From Mr Pringle" until we run out of names. Then, we resort to using reindeer names.

Once everyone wakes up, we eat some chocolate covered cherries to stifle our hunger before heading to the tree. We open our gifts one by one, keeping all the wrapping paper in one pile. You have to sort through it when you're done to make sure that you don't accidentally throw away some Barbie shoes or an instruction book. Someone ends up wearing all the bows. We Oooh and Ahhh at everything before making piles.

Once the gifts are done, we retreat back to the kitchen to eat more chocolate and watch the parade while the grownups make dinner. Usually there's a ham with pineapple crap, some string beans, mashed potatoes, and a lettuce and tomato salad. We investigate the lack of television, marveling at the one day a year that QVC goes dark, and proceed like we would on any other night.

This is Christmas. I will have a real Christmas this year.

A review: Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant, Wind Gap, PA

Hong Kong has been the only Chinese place in town for as long as I can remember. That's pretty much the only draw here. Typically, their food is overcooked and bland. Tonight's meal did not disappoint in its mediocrity. Good curry chicken should cause me physical harm. This should increase exponentially when I request my meal to be extra spicy. I was sorely disappointed. I added curry powder and it still was pretty blah. Textures were all wrong - The chicken and veggies were mushy, while the rice was brittle and hard. The shrimp was chopped into pieces, giving the illusion of shrimp in every bite. John enjoyed not having to chew his General Tso's chicken but shared my feelings on the rice. Ick. The egg roll was, as he says, "Egg rolly." Take that as you will.

The most telling part of this subpar Chinese experience - I don't even feel sick. Lame.

I've been thinking.

I'm tired of having a boring ole "here's what i did today" LiveJournal. I'm tired of having an uninspired photo site.

So now.. I'll have an uninspired awesome blog.

People talk about things on their blogs, right? I've seen a lot of blogs that I enjoy - Cell phone blogs, diner blogs, music blogs, video game blogs.. So I'm going to make this all three. I'm going to review every aspect of my life that is either very interesting or very not. This will be awesome. Yes?