"Christmas is like pulling teeth."

Well, I have returned from my Christmas holiday. You know, Christmas is least favourite holiday. Really, I much prefer Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day [Editorial Note: The author of Panis Circenses is not currently imbibing alcoholic beverages while he is in seminary]. In the past 11 years I have only had one or two good Christmases. Unfortunately, this year’s Christmas was true to form. The misses and I were planning on flying to Dayton, Ohio to visit her family. Unfortunately, Fort Worth received an sleet and snow and Dayton received two feet of snow. Horrible! We flights on both Wednesday and Thursday. Finally, on Friday, we made it to DFW airport only to be on stand by for half a day. We made our way from gate to gate missing flight to flight and traveling on the airport’s inter-gate train system. It seems the weather in Dayton had caused a massive back-up of stranded passengers. The only way we could get to Dayton was to fly via Chicago … so we flew to Chicago. Unfortunately, all flights to Dayton were full … so we flew to Indianapolis and had a relative drive two hours from Dayton, pick us up, and take us back. So we traveled and waited for 20 straight hours by train, plane and automobile. On Sunday we attempted to go home but that flight was overbooked and we were on stand-by again. We decided to fly to St. Louis in order to get a connecting flight to DFW. Unfortunately, the connecting flight was overbooked and we had to stay the night in St. Louis at a Double Tree hotel. Finally, we woke up at 4 AM and missed three successive flights to DFW only to get two first class seats home.

Yes, this is a typical Christmas for me; I am used to it by now.

But on the positive side, I received a few good Christmas gifts. A cell phone, a portable DVD player, a few coffee paraphernalia items, and (the best bit) the complete DVD series of The Young Ones.

Also, while I was stranded in St. Louis I ran into a high school friend of mine named Ben Marshall. It seemed that he and his wife and kid were flying home to Virginia from visiting her family in St. Louis. It was surreal to see him there. He hadn’t changed a bit! We had traveled to so many airports and seen so many people that I had told my wife on Friday that the odds that I would see someone I knew was increasingly likely. Sure enough I did. Heck, I ran into my friend Whit at a restaurant in Oxford, England. If I can meet a friend overseas at the same restaurant then I can surely meet a friend in the United States.

But now I am home. I have the week off and will be spending my free time working on my Moody project and working on my teeth. Yes, Circenses will be spending much of his free time (not to mention his money, which is not free) in the dentist’s chair. Frankly, I think their must be some sort of ethical violation for a dentist to look in one’s mouth and go “Ka-ching! Ka-ching!”

Alright, I hope everyone else is having a wonderful Christmas … especially those in Wake Forest.