starting to realize how near christmas is. except for the extreme hit my wallet's taken, what an excellent time of year. as one gets older, one actually starts to understand that it's more about the family than anything else. i'm so excited for tuesday night, when it'll be christmas eve and i'll be at my uncle tom and aunt barb's house, and i'll get to see these great folks from jersey and florida and denver and realize that i'm related to a pretty cool bunch of folks. it's a super time of year. two of those families weren't able to make it last year, so it's basically been two years since i've spent real time with them. emma, molly, gracie, here i come!


on a related note, today marked the quad city river bandits annual holiday visit, organized by yours truly. i got to wear my plaid green tie [i believe stolen from my older brother] and my red blazer [inherited from my grandfather], while we also brought along santa claus and rookie the raccoon. happy, happy little kids. some scared, but most just happy, particularly at the final hospital we visited. i'm looking forward to doing it in 2003. santa suits rule.


on a related note, one of the highlights of my day is pardon the interruption on espn. today, during the errors segment, they had statboy dressed as rudolph. priceless.


that's all i've got. peace. [if doogie howser were born 15 years later, would he do this or livejournal instead of his dorky blue-screened computer diary? yes.]