Christmas in New Jersey, part 1

I have to say that my first three or so days out here have been marvelous.

I left Chicago on Sunday afternoon, and enjoyed my flight more than I ever enjoy flights. Nothing particular special about it, but I had a good seat - the first row behind first class, very spacious - a calm and productive flight (I was writing my last paper), a particularly good plastic airplane cup of diet coke, and a threefold nice landing: we flew over Giants' Stadium while the game was still going on (the aerial view is great!), I could clearly see the NYC skyline as we descended, and I had an incredibly talented pilot who unknowingly gave me the smoothest landing I could ask for.

I finished up my paper during the day on Monday, and then we drove up to Highland Park to visit our friends Jonathan and Gretchen. They are our pinochle buddies. We played one terrible game and one fantastic game, and ate way too many of Gretchen's wonderful Christmas cookies.

Yesterday, we had lunch with Matt's grandparents and then went bowling. I'm a terrible bowler...usually. (You can ask my high school friends. We would go cosmic bowling and literally duke it out for low score. A great game for me is breaking 100.) But for some uncalled for reason, I bowled a 167 my first game (!!!!) and a 121 my second game. It was crazy. After that we hit up the Princeton Record Exchange for cheap CD's and DVD's, and managed to find a bunch of good Christmas presents. Then, after a nice dinner with Matt's parents, we drove back over to Princeton and visited our friends Julie and Jason. It felt so cozy and comfortable to be back at the CRW apartment complex, where we lived last year.

Today has been Christmasy and lazy. We slept in, ate some lunch, and then wrapped all of our Christmas presents for Matt's family. We are going to Lessons and Carols at PTS tonight, and then Jonathan and Gretchen are coming over here to squeeze in one more pinochle evening before they leave for Christmas.

I've been drinking tea like nobody's business, and I keep eating Christmas cookies, and I've started working on Christmas cards, and the family room here is completely focused on a big and beautiful Christmas tree. The holiday spirit is alive and well with me! Yay!

So that's the news from my camp...more posting later!