Happy Holidays from the RPR

Hello from lovely Lafayette Hill, PA! From all of us here at the Ross Press Release (that would be me), I'd like to wish everyone Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, or whatever you choose to celebrate around this time of year!

As expected, there isn't a whole lot going on today, Christmas Day 2005. In fact, allow me to give you a little taste of the day so far, and what's to come in a little running diary. [I apologize ahead of time if this one isn't as humorous as the Thanksgiving running diary, as I have to admit that the Turkey Day diary was a solid piece of work.]

11:00am - For some reason I set my alarm and actually woke up when I said I was going to. No particular reason. It's not like there's anything to do today.

11:02am - I tell Mom "Merry Christmas" and she gives me the "Are you nuts?" look. Meanwhile, I make this same joke every year, with the same results every year.

11:05am - Turn on 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS. Already watched it last night before I went to sleep, so I figure I'll watch it again. Let's keep count of how many times I watch it today, either in its entirety or in pieces. Part that always cracks me up is when Ralphie's father gets the package in the mail and says, "Fra-gi-le. That must be Italian" and Ralphie's mother says, "Honey, it says fragile." Hilarious.

11:46am - My Dad tries to convince me to go out and rake the leaves. He gives me a 5 minute explanation on how he can't figure out why it's the end of December and not all the leaves have fallen off the trees yet.

11:55am - I realize that he went out there to begin raking. I feel like I should help, so I decide to lend a hand. You should've seen the get-up I had on. Dad's old winter coat from the garage and Dad's old sneakers from the garage as well. If you add the age of these two items together, probably equals about 35. This is why they've taken up permanent residence in the garage.

12:16pm - Outside raking leaves in a slight drizzle. I can just imagine what the people in the passing cars think as they see these 2 shmos outside on Christmas raking leaves. "Look honey, those people are raking the leaves. That's a hell of a Christmas gift for a father to give his son. 'Here ya go, boy. Here's a rake, now let's go get that yardwork done.'"

12:27pm - While moving a pile of leaves out to the shoulder of the street, I almost get hit by a car. I guess someone had already been chugging too much egg nog.

12:52pm - Dad gets fed up and decides that's enough raking for today. We made some progress, but with our luck, all the leaves will fall off the trees this week and he'll be back out there next week doing it all over again.

1:09pm - Watching A Christmas Story for a few minutes while reading the newspaper. This ranks right up there on the "Exciting Things To Do" List.

1:55pm - I wake my sister up by lying to her and telling her it's 3:30pm. Otherwise, she wouldn't roll out of bed. And I used to think that I slept late. I convince her to come with me to get coffee at Wawa.

2:11pm - We're driving to Wawa. There aren't too many cars in the usually crowded parking lot. My sister points out a Mercedes Benz in front of Wawa and says, "Hey, there's at least one Jew in Wawa." Way to stereotype, Jamie.

2:24pm - Enjoying my Kenya AA coffee (20 oz, with a little non-fat milk, and 2.5 packets of Splenda. I don't mess around when it comes to my coffee.) I need to start a movement to convince the folks at Wawa to build some stores up in the New York metro area. As much as I enjoy Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks, Wawa is just one step above. This movement wouldn't be too successful since they won't build any stores outside of a certain radius where they can't ship their dairy/baked products fresh daily.

2:45pm - Finally eating lunch. This is what happens when I come home...we end up eating lunch a few hours before dinner. Doesn't matter, I'm sure I'll be hungry in just a little while.

3:49pm- I sit down to write on the blog. Didn't think I'd get distracted, but sure enough, I do.

4:06pm - Get an IM from Jonny Kahn asking me if I want to go to some bar in Cherry Hill, NJ, to hear a friend of a friend's cousin's band. I tell him I don't feel like schlepping all the way out there. He says that we (myself + other friends of ours) act like we're 80 years old. So I give him one of Brandon's famous lines and say that "it's way too much effort". That's the end of it.

4:31pm - The next distraction from blogging comes in the form of lighting the Hanukkah candles. Hey, the least we can do is the basics of the holiday tradition by lighting the candles. We exchange a few presents and my sister and I have this conversation:

Jamie: I still didn't get you anything. What do you want?
Ross: I don't know I didn't get you anything yet either. What do you want?
Jamie: I don't know either. Well let me know what you want before I go back to school and I'll get it.
Ross: Yeah, we'll figure it out.

(This is going nowhere fast.)

5:06pm - Next distraction is that I make a trip over to Wawa for the second time today. No more coffee this time around, but rather I need to hit up the MAC machine. Side story: Co-workers Adam & Matt were making fun of me because I call it the "MAC machine" instead of using the term "ATM". Apparently, they say it's a Philadelphia thing, and my explanation is that its what my parents and friends always called it. I never really thought twice about it. I guess you can call it branding, like calling them "Kleenex" instead of "tissues", or saying to make me a "Xerox copy" instead of a "photocopy". That's branding, my friends.

5:28pm - I sit back down to continue with the blog. We're going on 2 hours of writing this post. I'm nearing the boundaries of writing a diary in real-time rather than writing about the past. Right now, I'm writing about what's happening right now. In the land of space & time continuum, I may self-implode. Gotta be somewhat cautious.

5:42pm - I ponder what my family would do if we did celebrate Christmas. I imagine our family gatherings would be similar to the gatherings from Thanksgiving but just a month later. (For my Christmas celebrating friends out there: How is Christmas, other than the religious & gift-giving aspect of it, different than Thanksigiving? Please enlighten me.) I'd guess it'd be a lot of yelling, complaining about the preparation of the big meal, people not liking the gifts they received, and eating a ton of food. In fact, it'd be pretty much like Thanksgiving all over again. And we all know how much of a debacle that was.

5:46pm - I just realized that there's an NFL game on right now. So I'm going to take a break, and come back later on after dinner. We found an Italian restaurant that's open all day today, and so we're going to check it out. How is an Italian restaurant open all day today you ask? I spoke to the Jessica earlier, and since the restaurant is in her neighborhood, she mentioned the fact that it's co-owned by 2 families: one Italian and one Jewish. That explains it rather well.

I'll be back later on with the rest of today.