Manlio Rules

the first piece of advice i will offer you guys out there is to take 93 to 95 from Logan to get to Lexington. if you take 90, it will result in a $100 cab ride, even with no traffic. and so began my xmas vacation, very early last saturday.

First stop was dad’s house, where the 60 degree temperature made it seem a little less like the holiday season. and since we had no christmas tree, and i didn’t feel like getting one, setting it up, and then taking it down the day after christmas, we went with the holiday pointsetta, which was pretty cool.

i’m not saying that the traditional xmas gets a little eroded at dad’s house, but this is what we used for “to/from” cards:

I managed to see Janine for a few hours on saturday night, first time in i can’t remember how long. she’s about to become a full fledged architect

as usual the haul was pretty good. i receieved no less than 6 “nice” shirts, so i can “start dressing like an adult”. clearly dad’s never seen the place where i work, and i also find it funny that a few of the shirts were denim, which is only work clothes for cowboys. and last i checked, i was not a cowboy, though i still think that I would have made a great Doc Holliday in the stage adaptation of tombstone that maggie wouldn’t let me propose in college for fear it would be the awesomest play ever.

xmas dinner can be summed up in 2 words, and 1 photo:

squid salad

the next morning we went down to mom’s house, where our quiet dignified xmas turned into the Jackson Phelps show. and here’s Jackson now!

that’s my giant hershey kiss that she’s eating, mostly because i didn’t have the heart to take candy from a baby, and her parents seemed uninterested in stopping her. hopefully she enjoyed it more than i would have, given my junk food guilt complex. unhealthy!!

after 24 hours of the noise that is jackson phelps and her family, we escaped back up to boston. liana and I went to see the good shepherd, which was pretty decent, though it’s hard for me to buy matt Damon with a 20 year old son. i guess i need to suspend disbelief a little better. then i did my requisite hangin with PT,

and we saw the departed, which i liked, except for the end, which was laughably awful. and with that last little taste of boston, i hit the amtrak and headed for New York City

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