Home for the Holidays
As promised, some tales of Christmas on Long Island with the family. No real laugh-out-loud conflicts this year; just some bemused observations.
It’s Christmas day, and I’m spending the evening running simulations for work/thesis (my overdue report). Don’t worry, it’s not as much as a hardship as it might sound like; I have been looking for things to keep myself occupied. After writing Christmas cards, doing several loads of laundry, flushing the hot water heater, multiple blog posts, setting up my mom’s new fridge, rebuilding the kitchen faucet, and replacing the drinking water filters, I have finally reached the breaking point of going back to work on my thesis. My current goal is to get this report done (or done enough) that I can hang out in the City without too much guilt.
Back at home, dad gets into the Christmas spirit, but unfortunately, he is the only one in the family in that camp. So he sits in the living room alone playing a record of Perry Como singing carols at ninety-year-old-Florida-driver speed. I’m not sure what my mom and sister are doing, but my answer is an iPod and Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Then, dad returns to his all-day-sports-watching marathons.
And on to gifts--as I mentioned earlier, my sister and I have the gift exchange down to its perfunctory essentials—gift certificates, Amazon wishlists, cash, done. Mom got me a calendar (um, anybody want a 2007 puppy calendar?), and an offer to take me out clothing shopping. As for dad… well, he has been following the same pattern for several years now. He buys me books that, to be honest, would appeal to the high school “me,” rather than to the person I am now. This year included Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, and The Art and History of Stan Winston Studios (the guys who did production design on Terminator, Alien, Predator, Edward Scissorhands, and many other). The books are mildly diverting, and fun for a brief read. But looking at the pile of books my dad has gotten me for Christmas for the past five years, I realize that the only time I read them is the few days after Christmas. So far, sentimentality has kept me from selling them on eBay, although they just sit in a pile, unread.
I spent some time walking around the neighborhood, just to get out of the house and feel like I’m doing something. Many of the nearby lots are now scrapers (i.e., level the house, and build a huge McMansion right up to the lot lines), or had major additions bolted on to them. To add to the Trend of Tacky, some houses went nuts with oversized inflatable Christmas decorations (see this recent New York Times article on this topic). This is the land of monster houses, SUVs, and inflatable decorations, with their fans whining away-—get me the hell out of here!
posted by Bats @ 7:16 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Dibs on the calendar, particularly if it has spaniels...
Cool... if I can pack it without destroying it, it's yours.
To give the people of that house the credit they are due, at least the house is not a snouter. Or are those against code in Lawn Guy Land?
True enough, but it seems like there are not too many snout houses in my neighborhood. First of all, I believe that there once was a local regulation that the garage could not be visible from the front of the house--no longer in effect--which resulted in a lot fewer Garage Mahals. The solution for most houses around here is to have the driveway wrap around to the side of the house, or have the garage as an outbuilding in the back. Second, I think that the lots around here are expensive enough that having the garage "snout" would be seriously reducing your buildable area (given setback lines), unless you built on top of the garage. Most of the new scraper houses around here seem to be big rectangles in footprint, as opposed to having articulation, which tends to support my "build to the setback lines" assertion.
Inflatable decorations? Oh, please. I spent the holidays in Florida. If you don't have animatronic lit-up alligators on the lawn, at least one inflatable "sno-globe", and enough lights on the house/roof/yard to make the use of car headlights optional when driving by, you ain't got nuthin'. Think of the decked-out houses in Somerville. Now think of what those people would do if it wasn't numbingly cold out when they were stringing up the lights...
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