What Christmas Doesn't Have To Mean

A few weeks ago, Fiancee came home and there it was, a mess of broken colored glass and scattered needles. The tree skirt hung limp off of the stand, two feet in the air. Sometime during our weekend in New York City, the seven-foot-tall Fraser Fir we bought the week before had come crashing down. The sappy water spilled onto the parquet floor. It was still wet. The toppling was so fierce, one ornament had wedged itself firmly in the nook between the wall and a speaker five feet away.

You Can Find Me In The Club

I grew up in a town in Ohio with a population of 6,000. For fun, we used to hit tennis balls with broomsticks, just to see how far they would go.

Saturday night in New York City, we went to a club for fun-- a bona fide club, with bouncers in suits and guys with clipboards. It was in the penthouse of a new Chelsea hotel. We walked through the lobby, which was dressed in some sort of Arctic theme. There were stuffed polar bears leaping forth from the walls.

Four of us went to the back and encountered The Gatekeeper. He stood behind a counter and looked generally unimpressed by anything. He asked some questions. Were we hotel guests? No? Did we have a reservation for a table? No?

“We just want to get some cocktails,” one of us said.

“You’ll need to spend $200 on alcohol,” he replied before looking back down at some paperwork.