Holiday Blitz Post-Game Show

Wowza what a chunk of time its been. In the three (3!) weeks that have gone by, it feels to us like two days. We've celebrated Christmas, rung in the new year, and have gone down to see the family and watch the best three and a half hours in television--the BCS Championship. Lets break it down, shall we?

Christmas Eve was topped with a fantastic celebration of church at the "midnight" service. For those not in the know, that's the service that starts around 11:00PM on the 24th and concludes with much fanfare and to-do shortly after midnight on the 25th with the celebration of the birth of a whee baby Jesus. And as only the Episcopalians can do it, there was a champagne toast after the service. The service itself was a blast, but even as two hard-core music nerds, the stuffing of four choral masses' worth of song into a singular service was a touch intense. Never let it be said that we didn't do a thorough job. On a side note, I would dearly love to be at a Christmas or Easter service where the sermon's main drift was "where have you been all year?" One of our priest friends joked about doing it, but he chickened out at the end.

Christmas Day was nice and low-key. We also technically had a white Christmas! No, it did not snow on the 25th, but remember the snow storm from the week before? it was all still around. We got some shots of the "dreaming of a white Christmas" scene, and followed it up with my parody "dreaming of a dismal, grey Christmas" in front of a sludge plowed drift. Good Times.

Then came New Year's Eve. We had a flight on New Year's Day from Baltimore--don't laugh, its crazy cheap and easy to get there--but that meant we really couldn't go very far out to celebrate. We even had to turn down an awesome party with our friends out in West Falls Church, which is most unfortunate since it was surely a grand time for all. Instead, we decided to go to the bar next door, which we can see from the window. Wow was that place crowded. It was so crowded that we had to toast in the new year with the melted ice from our drinks because we could not make it to the bar. Not a minute after the New Year, we decided to ditch the young collegiate crowd as we were not sloshed, deaf, or single. We headed back to our place and properly toasted the new year by packing our bags and enjoying pink Andre champagne. Alas, Sophistication, I knew thee well. Still, it was a good time.

Up we sprang the next morning, off on a journey that actually included planes, trains, and automobiles. We gingerly hiked with our bags to the Metro, which was apparently an odd sight. From there we rode out to the end of the line in Greenbelt, MD. Mind you, this was in a cold snap, so everything had a wonderful wintery look about it, so we enjoyed the trip. Once in Greenbelt, we hitched a ride on the B30: express to BWI airport. Once there, we marveled at how much we'd missed Arby's (Good thing too because we had it again for dinner). I guess we didn't realize how far from suburbia we'd really come. This time, the trip wasn't much to talk about, except for the fact that Southwest doesn't have assigned seats in their little planes, and our flight was so crowded that we wound up sitting apart.

Lastly, and most importantly to some, there was the modern godsend of college football. For those living under a rock, this past year, the University of Alabama was #1 in the nation to play for the BCS championship and the national title. We were in Birmingham, for the big day, and game-day was basically a statewide holiday. Everyone in the family, plus a few friends, came over to watch the TV--appropriately dressed in Crimson--and share in the emotional roller-coaster of the Championship game. We cheered and we moaned, we leapt and we argued, and in the end, we yelled for joy. Voices hoarse, and hands stung from well deserved high-fives, we rejoiced the night away in the Tide's victory.

We'll see you again in September, Tide faithful. Lets go for 14.

-Pete