almost pasko

Pasko is Filipino for Christmas, and although there's no snow and I have yet to see a live Christmas tree, the holiday is pretty similar. There is certainly as much commercialized, Santa Claus-ed hullabaloo as there is in the USA. You may be surprised to know The Christmas Season starts even earlier here, since there's no holiday after after All Saints Day to keep it from spilling over into the prior parts of year. The evening news, for example, kicked off their X Days Until Christmas at 50 --well after the seasonal tunes had become ubiquitous.

Anyway our solid three days of work-related Christmas parties are over and I managed to make it to a friend's place in a different part of the country. I have to laugh about traveling here because otherwise I want to kill things, but I did eventually manage to get to where I was going. Now that I'm here it's good to sleep in and not have much to do for a while, other than cook and chat. The plan is for gumbo on Christmas eve.

I probably won't post again before Christmas, so everybody have a good one, especially those of you who I would otherwise be spending the day with. Love you all!