There’s nothing quite like trying to take a holiday break when you work retail. Retail management? Doubly so. For us, “going home for Christmas” usually means you should be able to get a consecutive 24 hours away from the store, schedule permitting. My biggest challenge involved getting two unwilling cats into the car (my Maine Coon loves to ride, but she gets violently carsick; my shorthair knows that he once got into a car and came back half the man he used to be). But despite the constant yowling, vomiting, idiot drivers, and other nonsense, I made it home around 9pm on Christmas Eve, and didn’t have to leave until this afternoon. Awesome.

Being Slovak, I’m on the receiving end of a family tradition called “Preparing Entirely Too Much Food For A Rational Number Of People To Realistically Eat”. My Grandmother would always prepare massive multi-course feasts for, say, lunch. Two turkeys, six dozen pierogies, four pigs’ worth of pork chops, nine pounds of mashed potatoes, several industrial-sized vats worth of Ambrosia, enough Waldorf Salad to justify the use of 18 jars of mayo, several cases of every brand and kind of soda conceivable, approximately 60 pies, egg cheese (sorry for your luck if you’ve never heard of it), and no less than 16 loaves of bread. All of this for five people. God help you if you ever said you were hungry.

O course, this massive feast was made from scratch. And it goes without saying that everything was amazing. No Mrs. T’s Pierogies here; the dough, the potatoes (self-mashed, thank you), the rolling, the crimping, all done by hand. Canned vegetables? Sure — self-canned, picked from trees in the back yard. About the only store-bought thing was the soda.

Sadly, my grandmother passed away in 2002. But such preparations aren’t limited to her. With the Human Genome project, it’s only a matter of time until we find a strand of DNA present in Solvak women that’s responsible for massive over-preparation of food. Even my own mother has been secretly increasing the size of dinner every time I go to visit. I actually didn’t realize it until this most recent Christmas dinner just last night. I suppose in the back of my head, I always noticed the additional servings, but it wasn’t until she had the third oven and sixth freezer installed that it really dawned on me. One of these days I’m going to find myself explaining why 6,000 homemade chocolate cookies is a few thousand too many, but until then, I don’t mind coming home with a few weeks’ worth of leftovers. Christmas is actually why I upgraded the Cougar to an Element; not to carry presents or trees around, but because without the seats, the Element has just enough room to bring home the leftovers.

At any rate, here’s hoping your Christmas was half as good as mine. Among other things, I got Al Franken’s latest book, “The Truth* (*With Jokes”). I also got “Creepers”, a thriller revolving around the world of urban exploring (which is sadly nonexistent in Harrisburg). And thanks to Mak and Tim, I even got a new phone to replace my old phone, which was stolen Friday night at the club. I thought about getting an LG VX-9800, but it proved to be too bulky.

So a repeated / belated Merry Christmas, happy New Year, and a joyous whatever it is you celebrate. Now that the retail Christmas crush is over, I’ll be able to update again with some regularity.