The first thing I want to give you for Christmas is a warning. DO NOT BUY THE GODZILLA ADVENT CALENDAR. And why not? Because it’s a rip-off. Cheesy plastic doo-dads that vaguely resemble poorly painted Shrinky-Dinks and badly extruded figurines of various kaiju that I can’t even make out. I bought one for myself for the Advent season, and have regretted it. BUT I have a dinosaur Advent calendar on the way and I’m looking forward to that one very much.

In other news, for Thanksgiving my wife and I went to her sister’s house up north and saw all kinds of family members. It was grand fun despite the fact that it was cold. On Thursday we filled ourselves silly with turkey, stuffing, and other delectables. On Saturday we visited Vashoe Park and said “Hello” to Oscar the Bird King:

As you can tell and possibly infer, this artwork was beautiful and very, very cool. The writer in me finds it inspirational as well, and Oscar (or someone like him) will probably be featured in my work-in-progress.

On Saturday, we went to see Wicked: Part One, a movie I’ve been looking forward to since I heard that it was coming several years ago. I’d seen the musical over a decade ago, and really enjoyed it. And while I was looking forward to the movie, I was also a bit nervous: would it do proper homage to the play? Would it bring back memories of the book which I’d read about twenty-five years ago? Would it be fun? I am not the biggest fan of Ariana Grande, so I was skeptical of her casting as Glinda the Good Witch.

BUT! This film was astounding! Ariana Grande freakin’ DISAPPEARED into her role, as did all of the other actors in the movie. The special effects were amazing. But mostly I was enchanted by the musical numbers, which were all done so well I found myself at times laughing, at times crying, but mostly awestruck. This is a good movie. Go and see it ASAP. It’s been getting a ton of good reviews, and there’s even been some scuttlebutt that there are Oscar noms in the future for it (I don’t take those rumors seriously, nor do I take the Oscars very seriously).

And Saturday night we flew home.

The cats were thrilled, in their own cat way, to see us again, and Jennifer was swarmed as she tried to get to sleep our first night home.

Other stuff happened, but that’s pretty much the highlights of our trip up north. Sunday, other stuff happened, but I will blog about them tomorrow. Tomorrow there will also be dinosaurs.

Happy Holidailies!