Schreiber

OK. To Do:
Contact Adam about coffee ✓
ETA: Go HAVE coffee. ✓
Go running ✓
Wrap P's presents before I forget about them ✓ (Would have been better if I'd edited this to add "or spend two hours rereading one of them")
Start in on Clapper stuff:
- - Download, convert, & re-upload the article that came in this morning (Turned out to be spoofing someone else's account, really cleverly.)
- - Draft email to area reps. ✓
- - Put Double Beryl article into Publisher
Make sauce for lasagna ✓

Subrealm: Presents
Having received two presents with no sender listed in as many days, I half-wondered whether someone was doing the world's most extravagant secret Santa routine. It turns out, though, that the painting of the North End was ordered by my brother, and the giant box of grapefruit and juicing oranges by my Dad.
Today's addition was the box of chocolates, but in this case, my Aunt actually managed to get her name on the label. So double yay! I mean, in retrospect I didn't need to ask [M] to pick me up some chocolate at the grocery store this morning...especially since she came back with a bar the size of a decent-size book...but oh well, CHOCOLATE.

Subrealm: Phone
After sleeping on it, I decided to adhere to my philosophy of "repair and reuse whenever possible", and sent my iPhone off to Apple for servicing. This involved a good deal of metaphorical hair-pulling, especially since any number of the steps on the way required me to enter something into the phone, when the phone was the whole problem... but I eventually prevailed.

Subrealm: Beer Reviews
Southern Tier's Old Man Winter: an unexpectedly, possibly inadvertently good facsimile of English beer. I ordered another six pack this evening. The Beer Cellar would have brought it out to me, too...if I'd been able to text them to let them know I was outside, which I couldn't, because my phone is in the hopefully-capable hands of UPS. (see above)
Harpoon's From Nova Scotia with Love: I'm like legally obligated to check out any Nova Scotia/New England crossover product, so I purchased this winter-ale-with-spruce-tips last weekend and tried it on I think Sunday night. I should have saved it for Christmas. It tasted like Christmas. And alcohol poisoning.

1. I'm able to post this at this semi-sane hour because they for once sent us all home after eight hours sortin yer pakujes, instead of the usual 11.5-12. Maybe Christmas actually means something?
Nah, they just didn't have that much mail to do. Still, yay actual sleep.

2. My grandfather died last night, not unexpectedly. God keep his soul.
My uncle *did* make it there before Grandpa departed, though since the latter was apparently under a lot of morphine at the time (ouuucchhh...) he presumably didn't know who was holding his hand when.
Mom was less broken up than I'd expected; I gather because one of the things that had been preying on her was the uncertainty of the whole business; and now at last she knows. (That said, she did thoroughly vent/talk my brother's ear off when she called this morning; I guess I should have accepted his offer of being the one to actually pick up the phone.(See #3 and #4 below for explanations.)
The funeral is going to be held in North Andover, date t.b.d. but probably the second week in January. My brother and I may also see about going down for a visit with Grandma (and my Mom) beforehand. There is a possibility, however, that after that Grandpa will end up being buried in Arlington National Cemetery; if so, I may at least look into the feasibility of going down to represent the family.

3. OK, a couple of my brother's friends were just killed in a car crash? Fuckin' hell. December 2014, that's beyond fail-ly, that's ... just plain LOW.

4. I heard about all this because I actually did SOMETHING to celebrate Christmas, in the form of going over to my brother's for a Christmas brunch for the two of us before I went to work. (Incidentally, don't tell him I said this, but I think my adaptation of Bettina's recipe for biscuits produces a superior result to whatever he was using. (tree_and_leaf, feel free to disown me now.) But yeah, tasty, and we talked about whiskey and computer games, and made each other laugh, which we both really did need.

[I also gave him his Christmas present, in the form of tea, some of which we sampled over the second round of scones. He gave me my gift from Mom, in the form of Benjamins,* and also loaded me down with some extra Christmas desserts, which were also very welcome as I haven't managed to do any baking these past weeks. Well, except for baking a Stollen for the PO Xmas party, and I think I finished that at work today.]

5. Anyway, I should sleep, assuming the instant coffee will let me. Yeesh, yeah, it's like 2260 hours. And work out logistics for Christmas shopping, Peter pickup, etc.

* Inevitably leading to a conversation about whether a proper gangsta would carry his around in a wallet; the likelihood of Macklemore doing a rap about opening a bank account; irony; and what the heck the children of hipsters are going to be able to do to rebel. Oh, and R. Kelly.