{"id":583,"date":"2004-12-25T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-25T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2004-12-25T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-25T13:04:00","slug":"its-christmas-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"It’s Christmas Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merry Christmas! I woke up this morning around 11:30 – actually barely still in the morning category. I was dead tired after the late night pool antics. <\/p>\n

I got cleaned up and organized, and then decided to open Christmas presents. My family had sent lots of stuff, so I got started tearing stuff open. I received a lot of cool stuff – DVDs from my brother, some new artwork from my parents, the Two Towers DVD from Nancy and Lynn, gloves from Kinsey, and lots of other stuff. <\/p>\n

My parents had sent a light outer shell jacket to replace the one that had been stolen a while back. It was wrapped up in a small box – I was very surprised when I opened it. It’s a nice jacket – lightweight, but big enough to wear layers underneath. It’ll be great once the rainy season hits. The jacket Kuniko got me is great for the cold weather we’re having, so now I can finally stay warm during winter.<\/p>\n

After opening presents I talked to my family on the phone, and we talked about the last couple days and all the great presents I got. Tomorrow they’ll open their presents, so I hope everything I sent made it OK. <\/p>\n

For some reason I got a serious headache, and I was swallowing aspirin like candy trying to fight it off. I think it was caused by my glasses, because they are so old and the frames a slightly warped. Anyway, I struggled through, but I thought for a while that it might be time for a trip to the hospital. Ouch.<\/p>\n

Later on that evening I went over to the yakitori to attend the softball team’s end of year party. There was a good turnout, and we toasted the year’s team and also a wished a very loud “Merry Christmas!” to everyone. <\/p>\n

The master had created quite a spread of fish, meat, and soup. We made two big bowls of nabe, had lots of sashimi, and plenty of beers, sake, and sho-chu. The master also contributed a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. He handed the opener to one of the guys, and it was the Thornton Winery opener that I had given him a while back. Free advertising in Japan!<\/p>\n

We all drank lots, and there were lots of questions about how strong I was at drinking, how I reacted to different foods, and once again they called for me to join the softball team. I declined – that’s the last thing I want to do – throw my back out running around the bases.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Finally we wrapped things up and went our separate ways. They wouldn’t let me pay for anything, which was nice. I’m planning on having a party at my place sometime in January, so everyone is invited to have a Mexican meal. <\/p>\n

It was a different Christmas for me, but a good one. I had a traditional Japanese meal and was able to participate and converse with seven drunk people in a foreign language. I’m sure next year’s Christmas will be just as interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merry Christmas! I woke up this morning around 11:30 – actually barely still in the morning category. I was dead tired after the late night pool antics. I got cleaned up and organized, and then decided to open Christmas presents. My family had sent lots of stuff, so I got started tearing stuff open. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-9p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}