And so this is Christmas

Worked the evening of the 23rd, nice easy pace and home early (for a Friday).

In laws arrived while I was at work so December 24th saw daughter revved up for time with Grandma and Grand Dad. We had decided to have the traditional dinner on the evening of the 24th so as to eliminate one element of stress from Christmas Day itself, so the kitchen was fragrant early with smells of onions, sausage and sage frying for the stuffing assemblage. The bird was stuffed, trussed, oiled and ovened by 1:45 so I felt comfortable in cracking a beer to help with the kitchen clean-up.

Grandma and Grand Dad arrived around 1:30 for a brief visit before whisking wife and daughter off to church for 3 pm service, as a practicing agnostic I observed by prepping veg, spuds and setting the table while carefully selecting the wine for dinner. Upon the family's return at 4:30 we were in good form for six o'clock dining, another beer, a little a la minute on the veg, one explosive gravy incident and dinner hit the table at 6:10.

Our Christmas dinner menu rarely changes:

Roast Turkey
Stuffing (bread based with celery, onion, mushroom,sausage, sage and pinenuts)
Swedish Potatoes ( mashed spuds with minced onion, cream cheese and sour cream)
Brussels Sprouts (parboiled then sauteed with garlic, butter, bread crumbs and gratineed with romano cheese)
Some combo of Brocolli/Carrots/Cauliflower (simply steamed to counteract all the other butter/cream combos)
Gravy
Cranberry Sauce

This years wines were Kettle Valley Reserve Pinot Noir 2001 - delicious with a little barnyard and a lovely dried cherry finish and St. Francis Chardonnay 2003 - nice in that big in your face Californian style.

Post dinner get daughter into her PJ's, do one round of dishes and then turn out the lights to flame the Christmas Pudding (Grand Dad's secret recipe), served with hard Brandy sauce and strong black coffee.

Throughout dinner daughter kept asking us all if we thought we would be able to sleep (if we really want to solve the energy crisis we need some sort of Monsters Inc. system to wire kids into the power grid in the week preceding Christmas, Easter, Halloween and their birthday) but she finally drifts off around 8:30, after a quick check on Santa's progress on the Norad site, leaving wife and I to wrap and fill stockings and have a nightcap, Bailey's for her - Strathisla for me.

I hit the sheets around midnight and fall asleep almost immediately........then wake up almost immediately at 2:38 am.

Daughter has been awakened by noises on the roof and wants to get up !!!!!!!!

My saintly wife gets up and induces sleep in daughter but at 6 am I am once again awakened, by wife this time, because "I can't hold her back any more".

Christmas morning now joins the "Very short list of things I will get up at 6 am for", along with playing Augusta National, watching the live CBC telecast of the Stanley Cup Parade from Toronto and sex with Uma Thurman.

Coffee is brewed, stockings are ravaged then the presents Santa left "in the tree", then "just one more" before bacon, eggs, biscuits and more coffee. Finally by 8 am the small men with jackhammers in the back of my head cannot be ignored so I go back to bed, wife calms daughter and everyone grabs some shut-eye in advance of the arrival of "The Grands".

Bolstered by 90 minutes sleep I take the role of "Santa" to distribute gifts but it is a futile effort, wife and GrandDad are notoriously slow openers while daughter cannot tear in fast enough and rather than go mad I give up and let a process of natural selection occur.

We survive.

The gifts are all lovely and well thought out as usual, with just enough of the "what the hell am I going to do with that" mixed in to make it interesting. Right around the "I need a drink" time (12:30ish) the R's arrive to save us. 10 year old Olivia and daughter entertain one another, champagne and OJ is served, neighbours arrive and adult conversation ensues long enough for my to regain my grip on sanity. Buffet is laid out and protein brings new energy to battle the high pitched voices and long distance phone calls.

The neighbours, then R's depart, and soon enough it is time for dinner. I offer some options but the consensus is for leftover Turkey/Stuffing/Gravy. I reheat the bird and trimmings while roasting some potatoes and prepping veg, we pop the corks on some cheap Argentinean plonks and dig in. About 10 minutes into dinner (6:30ish) I glance over and notice that daughter is gone - oh she's physically present but she is "gone". Her eyes have glazed over and she hasn't spoken for at least 5 minutes, the tank is empty. Amazingly daughter makes it through dinner without incident then begs for bed, she gets her wish and is out by 7:30. The "Grands" head out and wife and I do dishes, tidy the carnage before nightcaps again and bed by 11.

We survived, and actually except for the "sleepus interuptus" it was a superb day.

Merry Christmas to all and to all ............. a really good night.

Word of the Day

Occasionally words just sing out to me so once in a while I will post a word of the day.

From dictionary.com today's word is:

Sycophant - A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.

AKA - a Haskell

Profiling

We all live in worlds with stereotypes and "waiter world" is more rife with them than many.

Last night on a rockin' pre Christmas Monday my second seating on table 16 was a 3 top, two male suits and a female suit. They arrived from a short wait at the bar with one martini in front of them, not one each, I joked about sharing a drink as a good plan at this time of year and they responded with "well of course - HE'S SCOTS", indicating the man with wine list in hand. Sure enough he quickly ordered "Big Californian Chardonnay @ $150" with an accent straight out of the Highlands.

They were an easy table and Highlander followed up the Chardonnay with a well chosen Red for $175 before finishing with a round of vintage ports. Come time for the bill and Highlander asks for 2 bills one with just the food and 1 with just the alcohol........ my spidey senses go off. One of the enduring cliches in my business is the "only tip 10% on the wine" the theory being that the waiter only had to open the bottle and pour, add in the nationality of the gentleman making the request and I'm smelling cooked goose well before Christmas..

There is some validity to the "10% on wine theory", I suppose, but when waiters have to tip out 5-6% that 10% bite is a bit hard to swallow, but I console myself that it will still be $20 in my pocket.

I drop off the 2 bills and sure enough Highlander grabs the beverage bill while female suit picks up the food tab. I run the cards, drop them off and wish them a "Happy Holiday". Five minutes later they stop on the way out to thank me for the service - another cliched "kiss of death" aka "The Golden Handshake". I drop off dessert menus on table 9 and help Ed clear a bit of his large party before returning to 16 for the billfold pick-up and ......... the wine/port bill was $435 after tax and Highlander left me $85, the food bill was $148 and female suit left me $15 - go figure.