It's strange how fast Christmas, and then New Year's, comes and goes. So much anticipation wrapped around a two-week period. That's the fun, isn't it? The waiting. Christmas comes and before the day's over, we've got the Christmas Blues. The song should be remade into "The 12 Days Before Christmas".

"On the 12th day before Christmas, my true love said to me, 'we need to think of getting a Christmas tree..."

It was a busy 2 weeks. My parents were nice enough (and brave) to allow us in their home through the Holidays. It was really nice. Going back home to your parents' house can be a tricky proposition, for everyone involved. I can imagine it's a mix of emotions for parents when their kids come back to visit. On one hand, you're glad to see them, but after awhile your routine gets thrown out the window. What's Christmas 2026 going to be like when Jack comes back home, somehow deletes my dynasty from my Playstation 5, eats all my chips, and leaves his dirty clothes all over his old room? Like I said, tricky.

We got to see a lot of friends. Two weeks is never enough time to catch up with everyone. It's hard to compress the past 4 months in one or two succinct sentences. The answer to, "so how's Boston? How have you been?" was usually, "uh, good. School's good." I had a tough time with that, the awkward catch-up talk...

"How's school going?"

"Good...school's good. So how's [fill in major or minor Life Change]?

"Good."

Ugh. I think I'd much rather skip the catch-up and get to the everyday-to-day stuff. And when I say "everyday-to-day stuff", I really mean, watch sports together. This is how most of us (males) communicate with each other. We're not going to sit down over a coffee or dinner and catch up. We're going to eat some food, turn the game on, and sit down. Not necessarily in that order. Oh, we'll talk about our lives, but it'll be in the course of dipping a chip or a carrot stick while commenting on the lack of team defense.

In the end, we were ready to go, but not ready to leave. Does that make sense? I got a feelin' 2006 is going to be a good year. The even-years always are.