Haven't been blogging much lately. Things have been fairly chaotic around the homestead. Matt and Marge's annual Christmas Eve party was at our house this year. It was fun and noisy. I think our head count came up to 25. This party is THE event for the whole year for Michelle's family, so everyone usually really looks forward to it. And this year I think people were even more enthusiastic - people really seemed to want to rally around Matt and Marge since the fire took their home.

Each Sunday during the Christmas season, we have celebrated Advent by lighting candles on the Advent wreath in our home. So at about 8:30p.m. on Christmas Eve we gathered all of our guests together to light the center candle, representing Christ. For those who were unfamiliar with the Advent season and the symbolism of the wreath, I did a very brief walk through of it, read the passage from Luke 2 that Linus reads in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, and we lit each candle and sat quietly for a few moments. It was pretty cool. Several of the people there do not follow Jesus, and had some curiosities about things.

Other than all of that, life continues to be an adventure. I'm still very much up and down in terms of how I'm handling the living arrangements here. Most of the time lately I've been feeling good about things, but I'm still far too easily frustrated. I've become acutely aware of what an extraordinarily selfish SOB I can be. A lot of the time I just want to get away. Actually, I just want to be at home alone for several uninterrupted hours.

Well, if I can't have that, then seeing friends is not a bad alternative. I'm going to hang out with Jason this morning/afternoon. We're going to go check out some dreams we've been looking into. As a bonus, I'll get to see Eddie, too. He's been out here in SoCal for the holidays, and we're taking him to the airport this morning to go back to Columbus.