Christmas Day turned out to be pretty good. I've come to the conclusion that Christmas is easier to take if you are actually doing something instead of sitting at home.

In our case, we started the day at my place, waking up and opening gifts. Mom seemed to like her gifts, and she gave me a few things-- scarf, jewelry, Neil Patrick Harris's autobiography. But really, she got me a dang TV and DVD player, Which we mostly got set up--well, the TV part isn't getting channels yet, but I got the Netflix hooked up. Anyway, that took most of the day, so we never got back to watching the movie or doing much besides having breakfast. We ended up leaving around 1:30 and driving our own cars back to the olde hometowne. Then eventually we got into her car to go to San Francisco for dinner. Mom was flipped that we were leaving late-- the GPS claimed it'd take an hour and fifteen minutes and we were supposed to be there at five and we were leaving at 3:50. We made it just in time, thanks.

I remember the previous time we were in San Francisco on this day, it was pretty empty--but then again, the weather was awful then. Today it was actually sunny and nice, so everyone was roaming the streets and half the businesses were open. The restaurant we went to was McCormick and Kuletos, the restaurant we went to for Thanksgiving one year. Hoo boy, was it crowded. But we got in pretty quickly and were eating by 5:30. Mom had short ribs and I had ravioli and clam chowder. The clam chowder was my favorite because it totally tasted like bacon. The ice cream sundae was also quite delicious. Mom made friends with the guy sitting behind her, who was visiting from Missouri.

After leaving, we wandered around Ghiradelli Square for a bit, then eventually drove back home and went looking around at Christmas lights, trying to track down the old favorites. We managed to find some, though a few of them were in distress. The house with fifty billion inflatables had had most of them deflated, presumably accidentally. We drove around for a long time trying to find this one freaky house from last year where And one corner house known for its bling only had half the usual bling up--Mom says they're moving and this is their last year. Wah. And we spent a lot of time trying to find this one house that had some kind of animated setup where it looked like Santa was entering the house and waving to you and stuff like that--I got home and looked for it and it looks like the place got sold this year. Darn it.

On the other hand, we did manage to find what I call the "Boozeberhood," four houses on corners that all have a giant booze-related lighted thing. One martini glass, one beer mug, and two champagne glasses--and somebody nearby a bit over had a their own Coors can. Hah. We also found some new ones! A house that had an inflatable snowman as frat boy wearing a "Just Chillin" shirt and a hat with ear flaps. He's accompanied by two penguins, one of which appears to be drinking and the other is BLOWING A HAIR DRYER AT THE SNOWMAN, WITH A MELTED TRICKLE LIGHTUP IN THERE. We re-found the house that has Hawaiian Santa, and we found several inflatable freezing snowmen.

And finally we found a house where they have their own radio station and light show, so we caught that just before closing. And while looking online just now, I found ANOTHER house that does a 15-minute radio show on the other side of town that we'll have to check out, along with the usual show at the Deacon's. So all in all, it was a pretty good night of light-hunting.

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