Since Ali won't stop bugging me about this

Fine, ok, I'll actually post a blog ....

I'm leaving tomorrow morning to spend a few days with some family. The Italian side of my family has a tradition of getting together before Christmas, making homemade ravioli, spaghetti, polenta, bolognese, all sorts of pasta goodness. The tradition continues by eating every bit of the aforementioned pasta until you lapse into a coma. The coma is actually a little harder to slip into than you would imagine because we are a loud bunch that likes to talk, at the same time, louder than the people next to us .....

So, those of you who know me understand that I really dislike Christmas. The carols are annoying, the crowds are crushing, the mall Santas are disconcerting and the commercialization is nauseating. However, at some point, you learn to ignore all that and focus only on the traditions. Don't even focus on the family, because after all, family gatherings are a party where you don't get to control the invitation list. Everyone has family that annoys them. Of course all of mine are wonderful people and I love them dearly and they never annoy me and angels wipe their bottoms every night because they are that freakin' perfect (just in case they decide to read this blog.

Some families gather around a ham, and all the sides in a lovely family home in the kitchen and eat around a big table while they try to ignore Norman Rockwell sitting in the corner painting their likeness. Other families might gather around a deer carcass and carve out their own slab of meat in a single-wide trailer while drinking their weight in wild turkey and bud light ... all of that's ok.

Unfortunately, some families don't gather, they don't know each other, and some of them might be huddled around a trash barrel under the overpass waiting for the rat to freeze to death so they can eat something that night. And hey, at least you aren't that loser!

Go, enjoy the food, eat until you are comatose, tolerate your family and then talk about them the next day, fill up on wine or beer or moonshine or apple cider, whatever. And whatever you do, don't throw the dead rat you find in your cabinet away! Throw it at the homeless guy, its fun for you and food for him!!!

That's all for now - tune in next week when we discuss the proper way store jars of moonshine ...

Required reading .... no seriously, read this

So on the first posting I should let you good people know my plan for this blog, my mission, my literary vision. Well, see …. what had happened was …. I don’t have any of those. My friend Shannon started a blog a couple years ago about her experiences in the Peace Corps, being a foreigner in a foreign land and it put the bug in my brain.

Now I don’t pretend my writing is as capricious or entertaining as the oft-adored Senoni, but I too am in a new, strange, undiscovered country. Of course there are differences (her suitcase was full of bikinis, my shopping spree was for long johns) but the premise remains.

So join me as I discover all the new fascinating trials and triumphs as I strike out on my own here in the frozen tundra of Indianapolis. I promise all my postings won’t be about the weather. But expect this sun-worshipping Southerner to have a thing or two to say about the ungodly cold up here!

See, I’m used to basketball scores for temperatures. Here it went very quickly from basketball, down to football, slipping to hockey and then plunging to golf scores! Here would be a good place to insert a joke about Tiger Woods and being out in the cold, but I digress…

I will try to keep at this regularly. If you find you are somehow feeling deprived of my rants and ramblings, send me a message to that point, but include some chocolate or seafood to ensure my compliance.

I’m ending this post now, because the Army/Navy game needs my attention. And the neighbors need to hear me screaming for Navy. Y’all have a good’ern …

and GO NAVY!!!!