Making it look like Christmas threw up in my house

There, that's catchy! Raaaalph!! Or should I say Rrruudoooolllfff Christmas all over my house!

Besides that, I really do love the Christmas season. I had a productive day today on my day off getting the house ready for the holidays. It's always ironic though that in my 13 years out here in the valley, I've only decorated and stayed here for Christmas one December 25th. On a side note, I'll never do that again because that year was the last Christmas my grandfather had alive, and I missed spending it with the family.

So, the house will get all decorated up and have nobody here for the holiday as I always go home for a week. I do put up a mean little tree though.

I do have 2 traditions here at my house for decorating. One is that every year I buy one new ornament for the tree that has some kind of meaning.

I think I have 10 years of unique ornaments on this tree this year. This year's ornament is a red, green and silver handpainted glass ornament I got at the Phoenix art museum when my parents and I visited it in October. Most of them have a small story behind them, good or bad.

Secondly, I am unique with my outside lights. All my neighbors have a constant theme, either all icicle lights, all multicolored lights, all white lights, stars, blow-up snowmen, or those damn automated wire reindeer. Me, no...I go for the tackiest house on the block. I got them big old-school, suck the power company and my wallet dry colored bulbs right next to a rouge string of white mini-lights, next to a bunch of flashing blue & white minis, next to solid blue big lights, next to a bunch of oddball placed lights. It's organized chaos.

It looks good. You know why it does? Because its different, yet traditional. Here's how its going to play out. The Smith family is going to be rolling around the town one night looking at light displays in their mini-van with little Jessica and Thomas in the back, and they'll be saying, " There's another house with all icicles...there's another blow up Tigger Santa Jes....WOAH! Hey, there's a different house guys!"

Point for me. Take that you icicle whores!

So yes, productive day, woke up at 10:30, had a cup of coffee and some cinnamon toast then spent the next 7 hours decorating the inside and outside of the house. At 6pm I headed over to Sam's club after a brief phone call to my Godfather to get a bag of Jenny food and a take and bake pizza for me. I had a few slices for dinner, went through the mail, started writing blogs and Christmas cards while keeping the Christmas music channel on til my ears bled red and green.

Funny, I walked into Sam's club and everyone I passed looked at me kinda funny. I thought I had a stain on my shirt or a booger bungee jumping out my nose, but when I checked, the only thing I found was a big smile to give to everyone from having a good day dealing with Christmas stuff.

My day off retiring Old Glory

Sunday was definitely a little better day off than last Thursday. Slept in to a well deserved 1pm, watched heartbreaking losses of Seattle and San Diego on the last full day of Sunday football in a frigid 45 degree day. Made dinner for Chris and Crystal around 8, a healthy and light orange chicken stir-fry with coconut ginger rice. That way it will cancel out the bottle of wine and vodka I drank after. It was freggin cold last night. I mean cold. It got down to 19 degrees here in the morning hours. Unheard of in AZ for a long time. Last time they said it was this cold was 1993. Hopefully it will be that long again before it comes back.

Well, after renting Jackass 2 and Accepted (seen Jackass 2 like 14 times in 2 weeks-more for my guests...Accepted was amusing at best, thankfully I had a jack and coke in me), Andrea came by and joined the party. I blazed up the firepit in the yard to get some warmth going, and to hopefully get rid of the leftover wood pile that I had accumulated for Dec.'s party. We get a good bed of coals going and tossed on some logs that kept up a solid flame.

For some reason, we think of the strangest things when staring into the primordial fire. I could go off on the whole "man make fire!" theory, but lets just say in short we have a pyro-gene in all of us. So I'm staring at the fire thinking, fire reduces all to it's original states. It creates and destroys. I followed this train of thought into some twisted tangent on cremation and remembered that I had something in the garage that I was holding onto for proper disposal.

Flashback-

Back when I lived in Tempe for 5 years, that entire time, I had a US flag mounted outside of the front door. That stalwart trooper bared a lot of hardships- freezing air, 120 degree heat, pelting rain and hail, winds ripping the tattered ends to threads. So, when I moved to Gilbert, I got a new flag to go along with the new house to replace the weathered, faded and beaten one. I wasn't about to toss it in the garbage, as I know the rules for flag disposal. Instead, I kept it on a wall in the garage and let it sit retired for the past 4 years.

Flashfoward-

I figured that the setting was right to say goodbye to my old friend. Added bonus as a recently ordained Reverend on top of that. I went and got my friend from the garage, folded him in a traditional triangle and escorted him outside. In a private setting, in front of friends that understand and respect what his service meant, we thanked him, blessed him and praised him for his service before committing him to the flames. A salute followed and a final thank you.

I figured that it was the right thing to do to warm our hearts on such a cold night.

It's good!!!

Finally, it's all said and done! And successful! The 9th annual holiday party went off without a hitch with a good time had by all. Total guests that appeared was about 40, with 32 attending at the same time. The food came out great, the drinks were flowing well, and no problems at all..well, a small one that was quickly taken care of-it wouldn't be a Demelo party without SOME form of BS drama. It even ended quickly, as opposed to the past parties that have lingered on to 4 in the morning. I was actually half cleaned up and in bed at 1:59-last call!!! believe me I slept like a fucking rock. Not too much leftovers either. Ironically, of the couple hundred dollars in booze I bought for the party, with guests bringing gifts, I ended the party with more booze than I started-bonus!!! I'll have to throw another party to get rid of it all.

Well, all the stress of the week before was well worth it to see smiling faces and full stomachs. Thank you for all of you that attended, because even with all the good food n stuff at the party, its the guests that make it memorable. I do this thing for you guys every year, so thank you for coming.

Thank you to my cousin Tina and hubby Jeff, and good friends Crystal and Chris for helping out in the days before and the day of. You all were lifesavers for my sanity.

Here's to all of you for making this party a memorable one! I wish you all the warmest of the Christmas holiday wishes, good health,wealth, and for all of us to be here next year again for the big number 10!!! 10 years running, you know 2007's bash is gonna be big.

Mahalo to you all!!!!!!

Marc

The killing fields

Chris entering Rye Creek

Sunday morning, half buzzed on vodka and soda water watching Sunday football, I mention to Chris if it's still dove and quail season. He answers with a definitive "yes" and a twinkle in his eye. We go ahead and decide then that we should pack up some gear and try our go at it one last time for the 2006 year on Monday morning. I pre-pack before the Sunday night game is over and try to head to bed at a reasonable time of midnight. Flash-forward to 630am.

I stammer awake while its still dark outside. Jenny gives me a look as she lies on the carpet still. It's a look of "what the fuck are you doing up???" If she only knew. She's anxious enough that there is camping gear laid out in the living room, hinting of me going somewhere. Anyways, I get dressed and motivated, Chris arrives, and we are off. Red bull and half of Chris's QT taquito for breakfast.
It's only an hour drive to Rye, but somehow, the drive seems longer. Usually we're making this drive in the pre-dawn hours on a camping trip, so I suppose daylight makes time slower.

Our choices are to hit either Rye creek or the Verde river flats near Gisela. We opt for Gisela first. A Podunk shithole of a mining town consisting of ranch properties, single and double wides, and about 40 homes spread out over the 2 square miles that make up this "town". We head in and out of town within about 4 blocks, hit the Verde river, turn right and park up on the plateau. Bad signs we shouldn't be here-get out, find that my camelback exploded all over my backpack and gear, my zipper breaks on my hunting vest, its freggin cold, and my knee just about goes out...and we haven't even left the truck yet. Within 20 minutes of humping around, we find nothing. Dee dee mao! Time to leave this place.
We split and head for greener pastures over at Rye Creek. A 10 minute drive up the road from Gisela, we are immediately greeted by flocks of quail crossing the road in front of us and a large, rare, "Labrador" sized coyote bounding along the hillside as we head towards our start point.
Our enthusiasm revived, we park at one spot, scout around for about 15 minutes, get back and head down to some fenced ranch property down in a nearby valley.
There are birds here, but the pickings are slim. We are arriving after a long 4 day holiday weekend and the killing fields are littered with spent shotshell, tufts of feathers and the occasional beer can. Looks like Joe Bob and his family got out of the trailer this weekend for a holiday turkey shoot.
No matter, we hike around for an hour or so, exploring various hillsides, ravines, grass fields, creeks and treelines for our prey. We see a handful. They are fatties. But they are flying fast and high today and are spooked easily from a distance. I think Chris got off 2 shots and I got off one the whole day, all misses. Overall though, it was good to get out and explore in some beautiful country again before it gets too chilly to head out. And I did end up getting a souvenir that I'd been longing for a while. Tucked in up a ravine switchback, at the end of a bone laden carcass trail, I finally found a skull. Took him home (officially named him Scully McGee. He'll join Dead Tony at the house.) along with another lucky old horseshoe, a handful of pictures and a good time...and a well deserved, early evening power nap before work.

Hawaiian Fusion

A theme and a menu plan has been formulated for this year's holiday social in December. It will be a fusion between the typical semi-formal party atmosphere and standard menu with a distinctly Hawaiian flare. The dress will be somewhat different and the menu slightly altered. What a better thing to do in the cold December blues that to be somewhat tropically infused eh? Start shopping for nice Hawaiian shirts and dresses. I think Arizona Mills still has a Hilo Hatties store- even though you could find it cheaper online.

Day long fly-by

(Me in front of the Navy WWII corsair)

Man, what a day on Sunday. No football or drinking though this time.

I get off at work on Saturday at 4am only to come home and take a 45 minute nap. I get up at 6am, meet up with Chris and we head out to Goodyear for the airshow spectacular!! I pound down 2 rockstars and get some energy flowing. We watched the news the night before and saw that the organizers this year made a mess of the event. We took our chances anyways.

We get there, park the jeep in the dirt lot and are amazed of how dusty the parking lot was. We didn't know we'd be sitting in the same stuff. The organizers decided in their infinite wisdom, to move the airshow from the site in Glendale (which was large, completely paved and had a good parking area) to the old Naval base in Goodyear ( a Naval base in AZ?? yes...). The airport was significantly larger, but unpaved. You walked on dirt the whole time. To add to it, the parking area was a mile away and they tried to use shuttles to bring the people in. 10 school busses and 4 private vehicles to shuttle 30,000 people. Um, yeah...

So, we get to the main concourse, find a spot on the flight line fence and then go wandering off to explore. There was a larger number of planes at this years show. A lot of really, really cool WWII planes. Most of which you could actually come up, touch, stick your head under the bomb bays, etc. We explored from 8-10am, then pulled up in our seats for the show. The show starts and we turn around to see that the crowd has grown from the 1000 when we arrived to about the 20,000+ that surrounded us now.

That's when some problems arose. 20,000+ peeps on a hot dirt lot = a permanent dust cloud for 8 hours. I must have ingested 5 lbs of dust. It covered everything. Well, my sunblock, allergies, bright sunshine and dust mixed in my right eye, which then proceeded to swell shut for he rest of the day. But, the show I saw through my one eye was phenominal. I took some awesome pics and vids on my camera, which I'll post shortly on shutterfly and my sites soon.

We ended the show with watching the Blue Angels perform. These guys are adrenaline crazed crackheads with a death wish. The pucker-factor of some of the stunts they pulled made my shorts get sucked up in my ass. Strictly awesome.

We left, or at least tried to. 20,000+ leaving through one exit on limited shuttles. Niiice. We wait in line for our shuttle for 25 minutes and moved 20 ft. The past two days at the show, they refused to let people walk off due to being at a secure area, but this time they said fuck it. So we hoofed it the mile and a half to the jeep. Looking back to see that throng of people it reminded me of a herd of freggin buffalo (which there was some heffers there that day) or of Moses leading his people out of Egypt.

We get to the jeep, drive home, hit Native for wings and a beer, then I head home to wash off the dust and pass out by 1030. All in all, a great day, from the one eye I could see out of. I'd do it all again though in a heartbeat.