It's Christmas Time... in the City.

This year Christmas has once again proved to be more stressful than joyous. The traffic, and the spending of money, and then the congregating is exhausting, and draining, and a myriad of other negative adjectives that I will not exercise here.

And speaking of exercise, I know that I will be spending the better part of January on the treadmill or pounding the pavement to rid myself of the excess pounds put on during the holidays.

The worst part of the holidays for me is the obligation. I feel obligated to visit old friends, buy presents for people that I love even though I can't afford it, and make phone calls to distant friends just to say hello because it is Christmas time.

Why can't the holidays just be a simple Happy Birthday Jesus, a simple party to the one we love, a blessed gathering of friends and family, celebrating the birth of our Lord instead of a megafeast, followed by unwrapping of gifts which are sometimes way off the mark and very disappointing, then a massive amount of clean up?



Christmas for me has become one great big disappointment.

The Last Samurai-

I have the hardest time spelling Samurai- it is not a word I have typed often until recently.

I viewed The Last Samurai last night with my buddies- Dumas and Cody at the too-late-to-be-watching-movies-on-a-work-night-hour of 9:00 PM.

For me the movie started out a bit slow, a little akward, much like the way I am in the mornings after a really intense leg workout, but then after warming up a bit, things started to loosen up and I found myself lost in the way of the Samurai. I think that Americans are fascinated by all things that have to do with Japanese Culture- alphabet, fighting, sushi, just to name a few. For me, this movie was only mildly entertaining up until the point where Cruise is kidnapped.