Randomonium Christmas Edition 07

• Christmas eve was a traditional American holiday at our house. We went to the movies. We saw National Treasure 2, which was quite entertaining for the portions of the evening when I was able to suspend my cynicism to allow myself to believe in a world that one could quite easily wander up to the president and initiate a conversation unmolested by the Secret Service. Afterwards we came home with the Loux's to build gingerbread condos.

• A broadcast text message is not a heartfelt holiday greeting, but I still got a half dozen of them. If you sent one, I'm talking about the others, not yours. It gave me warm fuzzies to get yours.

• Remember Legos? When I was a kid, they came in one shape - rectangular. You could build anything your imagination would concoct, but when you were done, it was rectangular. Square cars. Square people. 90 degree angles. Well, it's a new day in LegoLand, and you are not determining what you build anymore. Today's child gets a Lego Set to build a specific robotic dinosaur eating space ship. It has 4,251 pieces and ain't one of them square. In face, ain't two of them alike. Don't bother using your imagination - this stuff fits one way only, and it takes a degree from MIT to assemble these things. The kids don't even do it...They go and play with their brothers' stuff, returning to the table once in a while to proclaim "you're doing GREAT dad!" That Lego set caused me more stress than last year's tax season.

• We bought Zion a real drum set to replace his beaten 3/4 size set. We'd laid out an intricate treasure hunt for him to go from place to place until he found it in his locked room (He slept in the basement last night). Halfway through opening presents, he wanders down the hall to use the john. Next thing we hear, he's hammering a backbeat and firing off rimshots like sniper. Turns out he got into his room and - without so much as yelling - sat down and went to work. He loved it.

• I got a new cd deck for the Montero - one that does not go washeeeek, washeeeek, washeeeek every time it powers up as it tries to barf out the two stuck cd's like the deck already in the dash. The new one is iPod ready, plays mp3s, wavs, does HD and Sirius radio and probably changes the oil too.

• Kelsey got a very nice present. Let it be said that I did well this year. Ha!