Merry Christmas Part II

Sounds like a bad sequel, but it's actually a continuation of my previous post in which my cheery Christmas weekend continues.

Sunday morning was the worst "Oh shit!" moment of the weekend for me, in fact, the only "Oh shit!" moment.  I woke up at 7:55.  I needed to meet people at 8:45.  I rushed like heck, managed to get ready and still have time to grab a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee and be there at 8:44.  Close timing.  I shouldn't have worried.  One of the other 3 people was 15 minute late.  

Now why in the world am I worried about an early morning time table, you might ask.  Well, if you don't ask, you show a deplorable lack of curiosity.  Since some of you did ask (I hope) I was meeting up with members of the Nashua Flute Choir to go play at a church down in Haverhill MA.  The service was canceled last  Sunday because of that little storm, so they reshceduled for this week, but didn't have enough players, so they asked me to sub in, knowing I'd be up for the weekend.

The NFC has been playing at this church a couple times a year for about 15 years.  This is one of those church's that's been suffering a decline for a very long time.   They used to have a set of Tiffany stained glass windows that was absolutely gorgeous.  We were once told they were insured for a million dollars each.  I think there were 11.  They had to sell them off.  The church looked so... I don't know... different, certainly, but stark, almost lifeless.  It was so depressing.  I suspect this will be the last performance there.  This article talks about it
http://www.news-tribune.net/religion/cnhinsfaith_story_064234413.html

We drove back to Nashua for the flute choir's postponed Christmas concert, also put off by the weather the previous weekend.  I was subbing for them in this too.  It was so wonderful to see all my friends again and perform with such a high caliber group of musicians.  I have to work so much harder when I'm playing with them because so much more is expected.  It's a lot of fun but boy was I mentally exhausted when it was over.  This was probably the best Christmas present I could have asked for.

Then Monique and I drove to Rochester NH for some fine in-law Christmas.  Oh, and a surprise Patriots victory over Miami.  Of course, the only surprise about that is that we only won by 21 points.  ;-)  Go Pats!  We were both exhausted when we got back to the hotel in Nashua late, so we crashed...

...and stayed crashed Monday morning until rather late.  By which I mean 8:00, which is late for me.  Monique slept in until about 9:30.  She'd been complaining about her back hurting her a lot, so I put on some soft, relaxing Classical music and proceeded to give her about an hour's back massage.  She was a very happy camper and her back felt much better after that.

We spent most of Monday shopping in beautiful tax-free NH well away from the horror that is southern Nashua's shopping district.  We might be stupid enough to shop the day before Christmas, but not that stupid.  Then we came back to the hotel to wrap all those presents, which is where my last journal entry picked up.  See?  This is like a bad sequel that starts with a flashback to the past and catches up to where the original began and then leads into its own finish.

So we watched "Bourne Ulitmatum" to pass the time while we waited for our "guests" for last night to arrive.  Chris and Amy were going to stay at Randy's last night.  However, for the last few days my friend ga_the_impaler has been spending the weekend at our house.  She was going to be their alone for Christmas Day, a concept that just wasn't terribly palatable to us, so we arranged for her to spend it with our family.  We got a second hotel room for her and Chris and Amy for last night.  They all came up around 6:30 and we went out for pizza and then sat in the lobby of the hotel drinking and playing board games until about 11:30 last night.  It was loads of fun.

Which brings us to now and packing everything up to go to the brothers' for the day.  So I will sign off and leave you all with this cheery greeting...

Merry Christmas!!!!