Happy Holidays!  Time to spend quality time with your family, and to count your blessings.

It's a good policy for any time of the year, really.   I am sitting here right now looking at a half decorated tree and procrastinating a little.  Tonight was lovely, messaging back and forth with people who may not know me very well, but I share more and more varied thoughts with than I do some members of my family.  I am awfully grateful for the Internet.  It has abated a lifetime of loneliness for me.

So, just briefly, in praise of the Web, I'm going to observe that my most cherished and valuable relationships outside of my family are web-based.  I don't go to bars to meet people.  There are certainly people who would say I am a sad little freak, because I have a very few "real" friends; my buddies are mostly online.  I actually kicked a real life person to the curb some years ago, because he refused to acknowledge that my online relationships had value.  Admittedly, this is a concept that you either get or you don't.  And the trip to the curb was imminent for that person anyway, for many brutal reasons that aren't going to come up today.  I am in too good of a mood for that.

For my kids, there is no distinction; the internet interaction is seamless with their local friends.  They Skype each other nightly.  They have no concept of a world without the Web.  I don't have any old fart style judgment to pass on this; I pretty much envy them.  I would like to think I have enough sense to appreciate the miracle genned up by ARPA that has gave me so many more friends, enlarged my family and broadened my horizons.

Tonight, I laughed myself silly over holiday Kpop videos, dinoporn, channelers and Sasquatch drawings.  My son is across the room playing a game with his best friend over Skype.  The cat sleeps warm at my feet; she blinks at us sleepy whenever we share a joke.  I made extra chunky chocolate chip cookie dough brownies earlier.  Next project: pecan fudge.  The lights I have managed to drape on the tree shine orange, red, marigold, emerald and deep vivid blue.  I may not finish trimming the tree until the other cat finishes climbing it.

Is this not the essence of comfort and joy?  The rest, the commercial crush, the shopping frenzy, the consumerism...keep it.  The only thing lacking is some really good homemade eggnog and we're working on that.  I love you all; have a wonderful holiday season.  Feliz Navidad.