Merry Christmas, baby!

I'm in North Carolina again! With trees! And barbecue!

My flight went fine. I slept as much as I could and I read the script for Passengers, another black list entry. I was not impressed, but it passed the time until I was ready for my uncomfortable nap.

Last night I went to British Grandmother's house where most of our tiny family was there and we all had a fabulous time. We are a hilarious bunch of people. Dinner with my family is a bit like a Stoppard play, especially when Stepdad decided dinner and coffee was the time to tell the story about his days in Nicaragua and the boy he met there whose intestines fell out through his rectum because of worms.

Yay, rectal bleeding story! How Christmasy!

But British Grandmother and Stepdad conspired to give me this brand new Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop in midnight blue. British Grandmother always gets me $100 so I don't have much cash on me because I knew that money was coming. But not this year. She switched things up. She has no idea what this computer does - I had to hook her new DVD player up and show her how to use it last night - but she knew I needed it. She's completely mystified at the fact that the entire machine fits in this little box. With the fifteen inch screen and four USB ports and the DVD control on the front. And the silicone cover I almost tested by nearly dropping the laptop directly from the box to the floor last night because I was surprised at how heavy it is. It's a thing of beauty.

Stepdad even managed to find a place that would put Windows XP on it so I don't have to deal with all the Vista bugs.

I think I'll take this over the cash.

I promised to thank her when I win my Oscar for the screenplay I'm going to write on it. I also gave her lots of British foods including spotted dick. She flipped because she hasn't had that in over a decade. But it's fun to say, isn't it?

What did you give your grandmother? Oh, I gave her a spotted dick! She put it right in her mouth!

Now I must change for lunch, where I will show my British grandmother the beautiful gift she bought me that she has no idea how to use. Then we will all hear stories about the time my Bachelor Uncle blew up all the mailboxes in the neighborhood or the day my Hyper Uncle tied younger Bachelor Uncle to his bike and made him chase him around the block.

We've put a moratorium on rectal bleeding stories at the dinner table.

Yay Christmas!