Words On Wednesday

To celebrate Thursday Thursday Eve falling on Christmas Day, I wanted to feature a drink that really felt like Christmas in a cup. After some digging, I found the Coquito . A lot of times, when people think of Christmas, they picture that Hallmark movie set with snow everywhere and people bundled up. Problem is, this is South Carolina. Most years, Christmas is sunny with a high of 65. It ain’t cold. It ain’t even really cool. I usually end up wearing shorts and a t-shirt and it’s comfortable. If we lived somewhere cold, spiced buttered rum would be perfect. Instead, I wanted something cold, ideally something I could share with my cousins while we fry the turkey out back. That normally looks like a bottle of some whiskey that we stick in the back of my truck and mix with whatever soda is available. Surely I could find something a little more celebratory. I skimmed through a few lists of Christmas cocktail ideas, but none of them really seemed to fit what I wanted. Either they had a lau...

I really wanted to write up some big post about Christmas, but… I’ll be honest. It’s not going to happen. This whole “Year of the Dates” initiative I took with Words On Wednesday was almost geared specifically toward Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday, and obviously the one that I would speak the most about. Unfortunately, I am just so spent, I can’t even be bothered to write up a discussion of why I like Christmas so much, or talk about our family traditions. So far, this term of school has been just the worst. I realize that it’s only my second term at SNHU, but the stark contrast between my first class and this one is just baffling. At this point, I’m just hanging on until the end of the term. As the adage goes, “C’s get degrees.” If I can pass, whatever. I’ll get my reimbursement check from work and continue onto the next class. Shopping is awful anyway, but the fact that we’ve had to do every bit of shopping for basically entire family for our kids is so frustrating. I don’...

Thanksgiving day is tomorrow, and despite Christmas music on the radio and decorations up all over the place, it is still a celebrated holiday. I understand that Christmas is a lot easier to get excited for than Thanksgiving. For one, it has tons and tons of music. I don’t have any sort of tentative figures on it, but I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of Christmas songs just in English. How many songs have you ever heard about Thanksgiving. In addition to the music, Christmas decorations are as prolific and varied as holidays get. There are trees and ribbons and lights and garland and even flying spaghetti monster tree toppers. With so many decorations available, you can doll up your house and yard however you want. The sky's the limit, often literally with the size of some Christmas trees I’ve seen. Let’s not forget presents. The holiday season brings people out of the woodwork to go shopping, and companies often hold off new releases until late in the year, just...

I do not care about Halloween. There, I said it. Everybody I know seems to love Halloween. Tons of people consider it their favorite holiday of the year (as if something could dethrone Christmas). They go to spook trails and haunted houses nearly every weekend during October. They decorate their houses with elaborate graveyard scenes and the like. These people go all out for Halloween, and I just don’t get it. That isn’t to say that I *dislike* Halloween. Before I had kids, we used to go to a spook trail or two each year. If we could get reliable child care now, we probably still would. We take the kids trick or treating, but I feel like that’s a big fuss about nothing when we usually end up throwing away half or more of the candy anyway. Lots of adults I know throw parties for Halloween, but how does that differ from any other weekend during the year besides donning a costume? You want to have some friends over and get trashed, that’s called a normal Friday night for a lot of peo...