Christmas Vacation: Day 1

Before I start writing about Christmas, I want to throw in an intro, a preamble of sorts. The day before Christmas Eve had enough adventure of its own. Half a day at work. A fun CEC holiday party where the bowling got cut off way too soon. Thanks Pinstripes. then again, I had bowled six 9's in nine frames, so I wasn't exactly lighting the alley on fire. Driving through a blizzard to get to the gym. Driving through a blizzard to get to Portillo's for some charbroiled chicken. Driving through a blizzard to get to Matt and Court's place. And driving through a ton of ice to get home so I could work another night for the newspaper.

For Christmas Eve, I woke up around 10 a.m. And it was kind of a lazy morning, but before I could make any plans, we wound up changing our flight plans. Instead of leaving Friday morning, we took off Thursday afternoon around 1 p.m. The bad thing was we had to cancel our service at Willow Creek Church. I was not happy about it, but I kind of understood if it helped us get out of Chicago easier. With so many weather problems around the country, that kind of issue cannot be ignored. So our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:10. We boarded, left the gate, and headed towards the runway. Then all of a sudden, we were not moving. Thanks to a failed heating gauge, we stayed on the plane. Around 3:30, they took us back to the gate and we got off the plane. The thing is the flight was going to JFK, which has a lot of international flights. So unlike us, most people were in serious danger of missing their connecting flights. I would guess about 30 people got off the plane and rebooked. They put us on another plane and that left around 4:40. Now we hadn't eaten all day, so we upgraded to first class. Turned out there was no catering on the new flight. So I loaded up on Coke and hot roasted nuts. Oh, and sitting across from me was R&B singer Keyshia Cole. I found that info out later, as I had no idea who she was. She was just very quiet. Anyway, we arrived in New York around 8 p.m. tired and hungry.

Dad picked us up and we drove to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. We drove down Ocean Avenue past Rollin' Roaster (one of my favorite places in the world) for Randazzo's Clam Bar. This is a classic, little Italian place that serves tons of great seafood and they also serve beer and wine in plastic cups. Dad used to go there with his friends back when he was a kid, I guess through the 1960's and early 70's. We loaded up on baked clams and fried calamari to start. I then enjoyed a delicious dish of linguini with lobster sauce. The lobster was cut into tiny chunks and the tomato sauce had just a hint of spice. A great pasta dish for $18.00. The flavor of Mom's shrimp francese was remarkable though. Dad went with the spice as he ordered the Seafood Fra Diavolo. We left around 9:30 and got in around 10:30. We played one game of Phase 10 and Mom, who had never played the game, naturally whipped Dad and I into submission. Bedtime at 11:45.