Eats, Treats, and Peeps

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy (belated) Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Thank goodness I only have to wear this once a year!

Hope we don't end up on a dinner plate, too!

We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner last night and enjoyed the company of our fellow Amazonians Susan and Rodger.  Dad did a stupendous job frying the calamari and shrimp and grilling our treasured halibut and salmon from our Alaskan trip.  Mom made linguine with mussels and clams in her homemade marinara sauce (something she doesn’t make very often anymore—she usually uses Barilla jar sauce!)  Between the antipasti, fishes, and Mom’s cookies and New York Style homemade cheesecake, I was as stuffed as Templeton the Rat from Charlotte’s Web!

We had a major cold front move in last week, with temps dipping to the teens!  Hard to believe since it is in the 70s this weekend.  For this Rat from the Northeast, there is something inherently wrong with running the air conditioner on Christmas!

My parents finished up their Amazon gig on Tuesday with mandatory overtime.  Yup, can you believe it—the first and only time all season that mandatory overtime was called.  Ironically, there was very little work for ICQA anyway.  Insult upon injury, they only get paid for straight time since they used their 10 hours paid time off on Friday!

We all are relieved the season is over and we survived another peak!  To celebrate the achievement, a bunch of us got together at The Rock.  It was loads of fun, and even my parents’ Manager and Production Assistant joined in the celebration.  The best thing about Amazon is the people you meet, and this year was no exception!

Did I mention that my parents are masochists.  Yup, they already reapplied to Amazon for the 2017 peak season!  Although there is speculation as to whether workampers will be welcomed back to Haslet or whether they will assigned to another location.  We shall see!

To get into the holiday spirit, we did a little shopping in Fort Worth on Friday.  I was disappointed that there were not many pretty store decorations, especially compared to when we would visit New York City to see the Rockefeller Center tree and the uniquely-designed store windows of Macy’s and Sak’s Fifth Avenue.  We then dined at Saltgrass, a steakhouse chain here in Texas.  It wasn’t bad, but it cannot light a candle to Benjamin’s in New York City, where we would visit about four times a year, including at Christmastime.  My mouth waters just thinking about their scrum-delicious porterhouse steak for two!   Yummy!  Sorry, I digressed—I do that often when I speak of food.  Anyway, when I still felt a bit like the Grinch, Mom and Dad took me to Arlington, Texas, to see the Lake Interlochen Homeowners’ Association Festival of Lights.  For 40 years, the residents of this neighborhood decorate and light up the outside of their homes for the holiday season.  Literally thousands of folks visit during the one week event, and we were thrilled to be among those to see the spectacle.  Most people drive through the neighborhood, following the police directions for one-way traffic.  But Big Boomer would have never made it through the maze of narrow streets and cul-de-sacs.  So we parked about a mile away in a shopping center and walked up and down each and every street, which actually offered us better views!  Of course, by the end of the night my paws were killing me—we walked more than 8 miles!  But attending the Festival of Lights was just the cure for getting me into a festive mood!

Well, it is time to start our Christmas feast of roast beast! Happy eating to all, and to all a good night!  God bless us, everyone!