Moderate, yet crazy Christmas

Moderate, yet crazy Christmas
December 24 - 31, 2001
economic downturn holidays suit me best -- a mountain with a difficult name -- Kren's become owners of a real Eagle's Nest

I promise myself every year that this time, my Christmas will be a relaxed one, I will have my presents bought and ready by September, and I will only laugh at all the December shopping crowds. Just like every year, this Christmas, again, found me unprepared -- with the only difference that I had an excuse ready this time -- I have a job now, so there, how can I remember Christmas?!?

Yet Christmas was making itself apparent enough. Since Thanksgiving, carols chimed simply everywhere, and at the Stanford Shopping Center, where my employer is located, a live Santa was installed at the largest plaza, and you could (for a "modest" fee of about $20) get a picture of him and yourself there. Christmas decorations began to appear in front of people's homes. I must have become Americanized -- while last year, reindeer made of hard wire and little light bulbs as well as homes illuminated like whirligigs, appeared to me kind of tasteless, this year I actually welcomed them as a jolly folklore tradition and a nice reminder of holidays, i.e., NO WORK.

A Christmas holiday in capitalistic society naturally means only December 25, all other days are working days. We even practiced, with Sid at home, an incredible story about our strict native religious deviation, implying no working on Christmas Eve, but it was not needed, thank God. My highest boss indicated discreetly that December 24 was not really on the list of company-sponsored holidays, but nobody would be working at the main branch anyway and we could, you know, and so on, we all have families and lots of things to arrange, you know... well, I won't need to come to work. Hooray!



	You probably recognize Golden Gate Bridge, this time from the northern end -- during normal season, the lookout is so packed with tourists that the ramp is often under police control -- in other words, we usually pass by.

On a weekend around December 15, I got slightly nervous because of approaching Christmas, but I did not give in to any madness, quite to the contrary. We went on a really easy trip with Sid to Mt. Tama (the poor mountain has a real name: Mt. Tamalpais, but nobody can say that with certainty to be correct, hence the short version). Tama is only a little bit north of San Francisco, behind the Golden Gate. From it, one can see (provided you managed to hit one of about five days of a year with SF out of fog) down town San Francisco, Bay Bridge, Oakland, lots of the peninsula, Pacifica, and a big chunk of the Bay -- as far as your eyes can, and smog allows to, see. The whole area of Mt. Tama consists of multiple parks and preserves. No private property, small parking lots everywhere, and tourist trails. Each of them seemed to be the last and highest located one, but Sid kept telling me that this "wasn't it" yet, and that we must drive higher. So we drove on and on, until the road ended -- at a hot-dog stand. There, we had to leave the warm and cozy environment of our wagon, put on several layers with a windbreaker on top, and a wooly hat, and immerse ourselves into a cloud with a vision of a peak somewhere there.

I marched merrily up, taking a loop around a nice rock (a good, solid limestone), thinking, there could be some climbing routes there; on the top, I encountered a bluish Hippo. Well, he had underestimated California winter - I had an interim fleece layer, while he wore only a sweatshirt. Ha! Who says it's difficult to find a Christmas present for a man?!? We took pictures of and gazed at anything worth seeking, had an "argument" which peak was Mt. Diablo (we had not seen it before from this perspective before), and headed back towards the warmth of our forced air heated home.



	A view from Mt. Tamalpais towards south. Water surface on the left is San Francisco Bay, highrises on a peninsula are San Francisco downtown, hills in the middle conceal the Golden Gate with the famous bridge of the same name, with the Peninsula on the other side (where we live, 40 miles farther). On the right, one can see the Pacific coast with Pacifica cliffs in the distance.

During a week that followed, I whipped myself up to heroic deeds, baked gingerbread, almond and coconut cookies; I also went on Christmas shopping. Since last year's Christmas I was mentally prepared to deal with crowds of hysterical people, with department store aisles filled with rummaged-through and discarded merchandise, with sales clerks who look more like a very ripe zombie than homo sapiens, and with maddening queues. This year, as I was walking through empty aisles, populated only with yawning double-shift salespeople, as cashiers competed over who gets to punch in my stuff, and with everything neatly piled in the racks, sorted by type and size, I felt like Alice behind the mirror. I must admit that Christmas shopping in the midst of deep economic downturn is exactly to my liking. On a Sunday before Christmas Eve, when we ran out to buy another color cartridge to Fry's (electronics store, the only place where you can see stereotypical domestic roles reversed -- a bored-to-death wife yawns, clutching the handle of a full shopping cart, while her husband rummages through racks of stuff with an ecstatic expression on his face, vividly discussing mumbo-jumbo details with salespeople and other shoppers) we spotted a shredder. Since half a year ago I have been seeking a desktop (=small) model, which we could gift to Kren's. I knew from Martina that they didn't have this item, a necessity for every American household -- every day, there is a growing pile of voided checks (which, of course, holds your account number, name, address, phone, even an authorizing signature) and credit card bills. What would be better than a machine that turns it all into little confetti? Sure, they carry shredders all the time, but typically those with the size of a smaller refrigerator and capacity to process all documentation to a small nuclear power plant -- fortunately, while stacking up for Christmas madness, they ordered a few small ones (and the madness never came).

On twenty-third of December, we went to a farm for our Christmas tree. We drove up to a shack, received a hand saw from a smiling lady in dirty jeans and worn-out sweater, as well as advice to cut the tree above the first set of branches, for then the bottom will grow another tree, and proceeded onto the plantation. I must say that I like this system (besides my impression that I, by myself, picked the most beautiful tree) mostly for the fact that I don't have to feel like a scum, who caused destruction to a piece of forest. These are all trees grown with the sole purpose of Christmas decoration, and they really re-grow from leftover branches - ours obviously did.

To make our Christmas Eve a complete success, I still had one thing left - to exchange part of our cookies for cookies by Martina and Barbara (which was supposed to triple the cookie variety at no additional baking), and to pack presents. My trick with cookies did not go well -- Sid did not only notice that there were cookies I did not make (I thought he did no pay attention), but when visiting, he was carefully picking out OUR almond and coconut cookies that I secretly swapped out. One simply cannot cheat a choicy Hippo.



	Returning from Mt. Tama, a ragged winter sun peeked out of clouds and illuminated Golden Gate Bridge for us.

To the occasion of Christmas, we also made new year greeting cards and printed a few picture calendars for our family. These had to mailed to Czech Republic, and required visiting a post office. I wrapped a box and remembered my last year's hassle when I had to cover all my plastic adhesive tape with paper tape (the one you have to lick to make it stick) so that a most honorable postal clerk could stamp it over. This year, I did not bother to tape it well. I queued for a while, got to a counter, asked for tape, and taped my parcel all over (which took another 20 minutes or so), after which a puzzled clerk told me that she cannot possibly mail a parcel this heavy as registered mail (though she had it in her hands before I took it and taped it!!!). I would not dare to mail an unregistered Christmas parcel from America, so I went home, sad and defeated. I split the contents into two parcels and ran to post office (reinforced by Sid's presence) again. There, another clerk objected that our parcels were not properly taped (but of course, how can we tape it properly when we don't have the only correct post office grade mailing tape?), and suggested that we go home. This we refused; and we stayed right there at the corner, demanding the correct tape from her, either free or against our money, and we would tape the parcels and she would mail them. She kept trying to get rid of us through several other ways (here is your tape now go home and tape it), but to no avail; Sid quickly taped both parcels and I filled out all required forms, while our postal clerk sulked in a corner. Why is it worth mentioning? This time, she gave us a regular transparent plastic tape (the same grade that was ALL WRONG only a day ago), with the sole difference that the paper core had "mailing tape" printed on it!!! Well, if any of you know about a land where a post office is a functional and useful organization, with intelligent and nice clerks, and with unchanging, logical, and understandable rules, please let me know, I will apply for immigration there right away :-) .



	Christmas Day crew alternated from Thanksgiving assignments - Martin toils at mashed potatoes instead of Tomas, under a close scrutiny of our host.

The very Christmas Eve happened relatively trouble-free: Sid put on his new fleece jacket, and since then, I saw him without it only in a shower (he even slept in it once -- that was at a motel where we had to choose between not sleeping from cold, or not sleeping because of noise coming out of a heater -- we opted to sleep in a cold room, wrapped in our own (outdoor grade) sleeping bags). When it gets warmer again, I will have to cut the jacket from him with scissors :-) . After exchanging presents (I got -- finally!! -- a good bag for my digital camera, three volumes of Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings, an educational book on name origins of towns all over America, and a DVD with "What Dreams May Come"), we spent about two hours at our neighbor's, where Matthew, assisted by Sid and Martin, was putting together a computer - another Christmas gift.

Our following day was rather busy, as we both (and each of us, separately) arranged going to a Christmas party -- long ago, I accepted Martina's invitation to come eat their ham, while Sid organized a visit with his colleague. We managed to see both -- first to Scott's, who's friend Sarah is English and I got a chance to recover briefly from American language -- and then on to Kren's, where we seized the ham, the aforementioned shredder got presented as well as other objects; and several bottles of wine -- as it happens at Kren's -- disappeared.



	During a high tide, Kren's apartment in Monterey (upper stories) literally hangs suspended over the ocean. During a low tide, excavators and other heavy machinery rushes in and tries to remedy what was swept away.

Among other things, our debate turned around an unfortunate fate of their Monterey place. A few days before Christmas, Martina took two days "vacation" from the family and drove to Monterey. She arrived to a crowd of reporters, cops and firemen, instead of a cozy beachfront apartment. She found that a winter storm had easily swept away most of the beach sand, which shifted their condo OVER the ocean surface. And so, albeit without planning, Kren's own a real eagle's nest. Some steps are being taken to save the whole building complex, but, as usual, bureaucratic reasons (quite an oxymoron, is it not?) undermine the rest of the houses, whatever water could not destroy.

I had to go to work on Wednesday -- December 26 is no holiday, but I think it should be. I would propose to name this day a "Day of Unwanted Presents". Stores were deserted before Christmas; still, people seemingly managed to give each other lots of useless stuff -- the day after, they wreaked total havoc everywhere - people were returning and returning and returning (nobody really gives you any hassle about giving you back money here, if you don't like the thing - no questions, why and what if, no lengthy haggling -- a shelf would not fit, I got two same books, this skirt does not go along with my other clothes, a crystal vase is from out aunt but we would really like the money instead... no problem). Many other desperados hoped that stores, unhappy with their holiday sales results, would discount even more -- thus, after all, came the ultimate raiding of shopping centers. Fortunately for us, we did not need to participate, hence we were free to retain our health, both mental and physical.

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