This was my first Christmas with snow in two years. Snow mind you, Houston somehow managed to get the cold element down pat thanks to Arctic fronts pushing across the whole nation. Oddly, it didn’t bother me as much as it would now. I think my blood is irreversibly too thin to visit my family in Chicago for longer than a week!
What I do recall was an uncharacteristic feeling of calm and cautious optimism going into the two-week break. My grandparents were coming to our house for the third year in a row. After all the karma I had to use to get out of working Thanksgiving weekend with my part-time job at Farrell’s, I was grateful Mom and Dad cajoled the obstinate elders, otherwise I probably would’ve been fired. It wasn’t out of loyalty or a good work ethic, I just liked earning my own money.
Working was a decent distraction for two weeks too. I made a couple new friends at Bishop Chatard (aka the S***yard) yet I didn’t have anyone to hang out with, thus nothing to distract me from making money ($3.35/hour in 1984, let the good times roll courtesy of the Reagan recovery). Brian didn’t fare any better. He may have friends but he was a freshman…no wheels. Pulling a weekday, daytime shift was pretty cool too. I got to open, start up the dishwasher, bus tables for the lunch hour rush, have lunch at half price and play some videogames at the Aladdin’s Castle next door before walking home in the snow. By then I was a competent busboy/dishwasher as well, how the shifts peacefully transpired. When I started in August, I never thought I’d ever get the hang of it.
In the gift department, I’m confident Brian and I managed to score things to give our family. How I wish I could remember what. I do know I gave Brian a cassette of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s debut album. In exchange, I received Berlin’s Love Life which remains their best album (an easy choice for a band that only made two and a half, Terri Nunn’s current incarnation doesn’t count). Mom and Dad gave me four records I recall clearly: Eliminator by ZZ Top, Sports by Huey Lewis & the News, Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen and No Tellin’ Lies by Zebra. Yeah, the last one is a head-scratching obscurity for most people other than me and my friend Jeff.
I did manage to catch couple movies I wanted see because I read both novels that Spring: 2010 and Dune. The former was almost an entirely different film when compared to Kubrick’s prequel. Clarke’s book was the same though, it lacked any kind of creepiness or enigma beyond the monoliths. The latter was a bigger disappointment. Back in high school, I could go through a paperback a week due to the lack of anything interesting on TV. Dune took me five weeks to complete thanks to Herbert’s clunky writing style and frequent need to check the glossary in the back. David Lynch’s directing didn’t do it any favors either. Dune worked much better as a miniseries.
New Year’s was rather uneventful. I stayed home, probably watched TV and went to bed after midnight. Work the day after was a bust since it was so dead, I got sent home early while the other employees with hangovers had to complete their shifts.
Overall, it was a decent time. Had I known we’d be in for more moving upheaval that would make the previous one seem tame, I could’ve spent more time living it up.