Good Times with Friends and Each Other
Woody went to a party at Tony’s in town on Christmas eve day. Ten different kinds of fish this year. He sat by the fire outside and arrived home wreaking of smoke. As my eyes were acting up and I knew the smoke that always comes into the living room would really irritate my eyes. I stayed home and ate leftovers. I caught up on things I’d taped but hadn’t had time to watch.
After I lit the first Chanukah candles and we sang and said the prayers, we went over to the Grotzes. Tasha made a great feast – beef tenderloin, a squash dish, red cabbage, mushrooms. Dale made scalloped potatoes. Woody made a Caesar salad. We exchanged gifts before we had Tasha’s’ gingerbread with caramel sauce and ice cream or whipped cream. It was a delightful evening with good company and generous gift giving.
We are very involved in the Netflix airing of One Hundred years of Solitude. I loved that book and read it twice back when it came out, decades ago. This production is mesmerizing for both of us. We often have different tastes in streaming, so when we can snuggle up and watch something we both find interesting, that’s great. There’s also a really crazy ‘guy’ comedy on Netflix we both find very funny. It’s called Detroiters. Set bin the Motor City, of course, and even the New York Times likes it and calls it ‘pleasantly dumb.’ Which somehow is exactly what we need.
Watching football on Netflix, however, is what we don’t need. They have very long commercials and huge numbers of them. I know the corporations that own the media want to wring every last dollar out of you, at a time when many people don’t have much if any discretionary cash. I will just try to avoid finding out who won and catch them on the NFL channel. That’s what I did with the Ravens game. I watched it the next day on NFL channel.
Soon all football games will be on streaming services and I wonder if many people will just stop watching. Or just give up. Football is partly so engaging because it’s fast moving. They slow it down with long bunches of commercials so it loses a good bit of its appeal.
The bitter cold abated around the 25th and it’s been getting somewhat milder ever since. We had a lot of work cleaning up after the holidays, but while it’s milder, there is still some outside work to do before winter weather returns: leaves to pile up to make mulch, sheds to straighten.
New Year’s Eve means nothing to me. I make my new year’s resolutions on Rosh haShonah and I think the secular NYE is playtime for amateur drunks. If you’re not looking to get laid, most parties are a waste of time. Woody is roasting a duck with a sauce made with orange marmalade and tamari. I’m doing the rest of the meal; maybe wild rice, but items to be decided as the day approaches.