The holidays are always packed with events, and this year was no different. Last week, we spent almost every night out – the Chandler conference dinner which I helped organize, dinner with the meeting speaker, Melody’s department holiday potluck, and my neuro-op professor’s holiday party. Coincidentally, the last two took place on the same evening, just two doors down from each other on the same street in Newton. With their tight budget and upcoming salary cuts, it was no wonder that BMC had to resort to a potluck of home-cooked dishes, which contrasted sharply with the catered holiday feast with waiters and cocktails at my boss’ home. Despite the exhaustive string of shindigs, we both had Christmas weekend off. Rather than going to visit our families, we decided instead to stay home and veg out – which turned out to be our best decision yet, as the first noreaster of the season blanketed Boston with more than a foot of snow. As a new tradition, I cooked up a steaming pot of hearty bun rieu noodles while Melody baked several batches of different cookies – including a new recipe for mouse cookies courtesy of Serious Eats. Happy holidays to all!

This holiday season was more about receiving than giving. We spent Thanksgiving mooching off a friend’s family. Their lavish traditional dinner of turkey, gizzard stuffing, sour cream mashed potatoes, squash souffle, pumpkin soup, and a variety of homemade pies was accompanied by a large helping of Trivial Pursuit. Not having played this game since elementary school, the experience rekindled my fear of openly revealing my ignorance – like brain-storming the location of the “Haversian Canals” on the world map, only to realize that they were in the human body. My parents also came up to Boston to spend the rest of the weekend with us. We celebrated my dad’s birthday at B&G Oysters, caught up on a few episodes of Life, and did some holiday shopping at Wrentham. Our main holiday purchases this year, however, were a bunch of computer components to revamp our two desktop computer systems at home. Suddenly, the base of our Christmas tree became populated by processor, motherboard, RAM, and hard drives. I’ll be looking forward to some hardcore hardware handling while Melody heads to the West coast to visit her family next week. Add to that a huge carton of my favorite chocolates courtesy of my favorite deal site, and it’ll truly begin to look a lot like Christmas!