It started with a bang.
Two days before we were supposed to head north, Jean’s work car was struck by a flying tire on the 401, a major Ontario highway. This was both unlucky and lucky.
- Unlucky: Getting struck by a flying tire
- Lucky: Sustaining no personal injuries
- Unlucky: Having to wait hours for a tow because of the location of the incident
- Lucky: Was not a car we own, so ultimately not our expense nor responsibility
Handing off this responsibility did consume much of Jean’s next day after he was finally towed back home… Getting the police report in, getting the car towed the car elsewhere, etc.
But, we were able to leave as planned in our car the day after that. Automobile was chosen as the method of transportation this year because Air Canada’s fares have basically doubled, so even the “lower fare” period of early December wasn’t all that low.
It’s a long drive. We broke it up by stopping in to visit with Jean’s sister who lives in Sudbury, which was very nice. We also briefly saw one of Jean’s nieces, who is currently residing there while she plays for the local hockey team (and goes to school!).
The roads were mostly good, though we did get some blowy, slightly slippery snow near the end. We made it to Dad’s all right. Dad has just turned 89 and is still living on his own. He had a nice dinner prepared for us.
We then had two full days there, during which we managed to pack in a good amount of visiting:
- We went over to see Jean’s other sister, catching up on family news over tea.
- Jean met up with his brothers and most of their wives at a local restaurant.
- A visit with old friends was a bit uncertain, as she was navigating her father through the hospital system. But he was discharged to his nursing home in time for us to be able to meet, which was great.
- My brother, his girlfriend, and my nephew came over for a birthday dinner (both my brother and father celebrate around this time), which was jolly good fun.
We also got out cross-country skiing for the first time in years. We have some photographic evidence of that!
The drive back went reasonably well also. Some slightly slick roads at the start, then a few somewhat intense flurries at the end, but we made it home without a bang.
Jean said that he felt as though he’d already had Christmas.
Of course, to the rest of the world, Christmas is a later December event (or early January, for the Greek Orthodox). My sisters will be heading to Timmins shortly, choosing the same method of transportation we did, for the same reason. They will bring one husband and two nephews.
Our family will be doing our little gift exchange sometime on December 26. Jean and I will be Zoom participants.
We are otherwise not being overly Christmassy here! I have a week and a half off, but Jean has only the main holidays off (though he’s been given permission to not work too hard on the other days). We have a small rosemary tree with mini ornaments, but that’s about it for decorations. The postal strike has cut our usual small number of Christmas cards received to almost zero (a couple were dropped off). Still, we had…
Parties
Jean’s company had a “holiday” (it was in early November) gathering for the first time in some years. I was kind of indifferent about attending the eating / speechifying part of it, but I did think that the dancing part would be fun! As Jean and I also haven’t danced in years. Jean was fine with me just joining in the later part, so that’s what we did—and it was a lot of fun. We haven’t forgotten everything about dancing, it seems, and even got some compliments on our moves.
I missed my company’s holiday gathering while in Timmins, but I did attend the small team potluck, which was nice. Last year we had too much dessert, and this year too many of us counter-balanced with salad! Oh well. At least there was still some dessert.
Music
I haven’t dipped too heavily into the Christmas playlists even yet—probably one day of that soundtrack will do—but we did attend the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony Christmas concert on Saturday. It was in a church, not Centre in the Square, and we weren’t sure how they were going to fit in a choir and dancers. Answer: It was just two dancers, who danced in the aisle between the seats, and I think just part of the choir, squished in behind and around the symphony members, who were already spilling over into practically the first row of pews.
Cosy!
But great acoustics, and a pretty balanced program of classics (the Nutcracker, Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3…); singalongs; soundtrack music (Home Alone, Robin Hood); and carols—culminating in a “Musicological Journey through the 12 days of Christmas”.
Food
We will have one (1) guest for Christmas dinner, so not really any need to greatly stock up for the season. Still, with the time off work, I am taking advantage to make some of those hearty, slightly more time-consuming meals. I made my one (1) tourtière on Saturday, with 100% ground bison as the meat item. Tonight will be chicken pot pie, of sorts (no pie crust, just puff pastry on top).
Into next week I’ll look into making unrolled cabbage rolls and a whole salmon. Christmas morning we’ll do a puffed pancake sort of thing, possibly with sparkling. We’re also going out with some friends to Langdon Hall’s Winter House this coming Saturday.
Christmas dinner will be reasonably traditional: whole duck, Cornish hen, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts with apples, cranberry-orange relish, and flourless chocolate cake. I’ve had friends assume that I must have had the “matching wines” picked out for this meal weeks ahead.
But I haven’t, exactly. Because, thing is, you don’t need a bunch of wines for a reasonably traditional Christmas dinner. It’s not a multi-course meal. It’s just one big course and dessert.
However, it is true that one wine was picked out well ahead. When we bought a $100 Cabernet Sauvignon last March, we decided then (for some reason) that it would be good to have that at Christmas. So, that will be one. This particular red goes surprisingly well with chocolate, which is why the flourless chocolate torte instead of my usual “pie of some sort”.
But, Pinot Noir is a classic pairing for duck, and we do have a number of nice ones, including a Thirty Bench Small Lot 2019, so we’ll open that as well. (I decided that just yesterday.) And that’s about it, cause… Only three people.
Movies
There’s no end of cheesie Christmas movies you can pick from if so inclined, but we recently went with The Ex-mas because it sounded kind of fun, and we liked the actor, Robbie Amell of Upload.
Hoo-boy this was something with the random Christmas / winter cliches: ice fishing! Hockey! Cookie baking! Game night! Accidentally consuming pot! Anyway. If it’s random Christmas cheese that you want, you could do worse. You could probably also do better.
Your Christmas or Mine?, being British, was better. In this one, our hapless couple each tries to surprise the other by showing up at the other’s childhood home. Only to have a snowstorm leave them stuck alone with each others’ families. It was kind of funny and a lower on the cheese dial than The Exmas. (I have no interest in the sequel, though.)
For upcoming rewatches, I think I’ll do:
- “The So-Called Angels” Christmas episode of My So-Called Life. Perhaps coupled with “Resolutions”, the New Year’s episode.
- Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which I’ve recently acquired a Blu-Ray of (for the great price of free).
Merry Christmas!
Cultureguru's Weblog 