Christmas Day has come and gone so swiftly. Brad and I had a nice quiet little celebration at home. I was ready to hop out of bed and head for the tree first thing, but Brad wanted to prepare a special pancake breakfast first. So, after showering and breakfasting, we opened our packages by the lights of the Christmas tree. We were plumb pleased with all our wonderful gifts and we placed a gold bow around Ginger's neck which he wore all day long, never fussing with it and looking quite handsome and festive. Brad took off for a couple of hours to put in some volunteer work at the office, serving Christmas dinner to the folks who were unfortunate enough to have to work on the holiday. Meanwhile I began preparations for our Christmas feast: roast turkey with bread and mushroom stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, sauerkraut and cranberries. Turns out it was the exact same menu that JoAnn prepared back home, except she forgot the cranberries. Everything turned out great, despite our temperamental oven that provides uneven heat. It was a lot of work for a meal for two people. But, damn, it was worth it. I love a traditional Christmas dinner. So now we can eat leftovers for a coupla days and I won't have to worry about what to make for dinner. While cleaning up the phone calls began. We heard from Vince and Jody first. Then we made the rounds talking to various members of our both our families. The Siersdorfers all wanted to know what the weather was like (mild and overcast) and if we had had any figgy pudding (by then we had had our dessert of traditional Christmas pudding with raisins and currants and sultanas but no figs). The Genoveses wanted to know what was the first thing we ate at Christmas dinner (mashed potatoes). After dessert and most of the phone calls had been made I got involved in a mesmerizing movie, Photographing Fairies about a photographer in the early 20th century whose belief system is shattered by what appears to be an authentic photo of magical beings: fairies.

I was awakened at around 4 a.m. this morning by Ginger, hungry for his breakfast. I was wondering why he was being so persistent as I put his morning meal in his automatic feeder set to go off at 5 a.m. as usual .... then, ohmigod, I sprang right up realizing we had forgotten to feed him his dinner yesterday! Of course, we had given him some treats of roast turkey. I even tried to give him some stuffing but he turned his nose up at that. I can't beleive he never made a fuss about not getting his dinner last night, but our routine was far from usual yesterday, so maybe that threw him off.

Today is Boxing Day, an official holiday that originated in Britain and is celebrated also in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The Brits take this holiday very seriously apparently cause the town shut down nearly completely. We took a walk through town in the morning and found only a handful of stores open. Only one department store was open, Debenhams, with their biggest sale of the year. A few, but by no means all, book stores were open with some half price sales. We browsed but did not buy. Harrogate Theatre was open as they are running their wildly popular pantomime, Aladdin. As far as we could tell only one cafe was open. So we headed back home and have spent a lazy day futzing on the computer and watching old movies. Well, gotta go now and heat up all them yummy leftovers. Mmmmmm...leftovers, my favorite meal.