2017 Life Logs, Day 358: Christmas Eve
Date: Sunday, December 24, 2017
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High Temp 45, Low 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA

It is twelve minutes until midnight, so well past time to go to bed so Santa can arrive. It was a good day. I did some last-minute shopping and then went to Heather and Jed’s to see if I could be of help in getting ready for Christmas Eve festivities. And I delivered the first car load of presents. Jed had to go shopping and Heather wanted to go for a run, so I stayed with the boys. Actually, Ollie went for a short run with Heather before she took off on her longer run. He called it the Christmas Eve Jingle Jog. The weather was mild enough today that the boys spent the entire afternoon outside playing in the dirt! When Heather got back, I went home to get the last of the presents and to get my bags for heading to Nashville tomorrow. I had planned to have dinner with Heather and family and then go home for the night. But the boys asked me to stay with them so they wouldn’t have to wait for my arrival in the morning before coming downstairs to see what Santa delivers this year. While I was home, I had a much too short conversation with Lynne Kirwin and then a great Skype video call with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco. They have been without electricity again for days, but with a charged phone and a bit of maneuvering around their property, Justin found a place with enough cell signal for us to have a successful call. We are hoping to have a repeat tomorrow morning so I can see what Santa brought to Ziggy and Coco.

A new post-doc in Jed’s lab from Switzerland, Nadia, came to our Feast of the Seven Fishes tonight and stayed until just now helping with the last-minute wrapping of presents. We had a wonderful dinner beginning with clams, oysters, and gravlax, and continuing with calamari, lemon sole, honey-mustard encrusted salmon, and scallops. With the anchovy salad dressing, we actually had a Feast of Eight Fishes. The boys served the chocolate decadence we made a few evenings ago for dessert. They cut Christmas shapes out of the decadence with Christmas cookie cutters and decorated the pieces like cookies. Dinner and dessert were both fantastic and fun was had by all. After dinner we did the traditional giving of ornaments. This year I gave each of the boys a Christmas spider made in Woods Hole and which come with a great story about how every Christmas tree needs a spider. Heather and Jed gave each of the boys a wooden ornament from Sweden to commemorate their first international family vacation. And Nadia was given a beautiful fish-shaped bowl. Now it is time to turn-in so Santa can do his magic. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.