Every now and again I come across a piece of commentary that really hits home and connects with me 100%. At those times, I get so excited that I just want to find the first person I can and share this new piece of information that I have just ingested. It is usually a topic that is extremely important to me or does an exceptional job of articulating my personal feelings on a topic that I could never quite communicate clearly on my own. Today, I came across one of those topics.
Roland Martin, is a nationally syndicated columnist, and is often seen on CNN. He had some very interesting thoughts during the election that also got me thinking. He is a great commentator even if you don't 100% agree with his stance. His most recent article "
Commentary: Don't Be My Valentine" covers the topic of the over commercialization of Valentine's Day and all the expectations that come with the holiday. He discusses how the retail industry has blown the holiday into a commercial affair just to fill the space between Christmas and Easter. He points out how the social pressure to spend loads of money on this holiday has gotten out of control. It is now expected that expensive flowers, jewelry, fancy dinners, and
spicy romance are all now required on this day. He also points out that men have become pawns in this commercial
initiative and that we are lead to feel that if we don't
fulfill all these expectations for gifts and romance then we do not care about our significant others. Or if a woman doesn't have as many flowers on her desk at work as another woman in the same office then something must be wrong with her relationship. Nothing like keeping up with the Jones on yet another "holiday."
The point he makes is something I have agreed with for years. People seem to get all caught up in spending tons of money to profess our love on this one day of the year, but what about the rest of the year? Wouldn't it be better if we could shower our loved one with affection 365 days out of the year, rather than just 1? And who says it has to be expensive gifts or a specific type of flower or repeated expensive dinners? Or that it always has to be the guy? Personally, I think we can thank De Beers for putting a price tag on love, but that is a commentary for another time. I will admit that I sometimes don't show my love and appreciation enough throughout the year and it can be easy to get caught in the trap of buying shiny gifts to make up for that and I need to be better about expressing my feelings of love more often. It could be as simple as helping do some of your significant other's work when they seem overloaded, just giving them a back rub out of the blue (without being asked), or leaving them a nice note as surprise. But as Roland says if we just wait and do all this on one day of the year then we should all (men and women) be ashamed that we don't do more to make our relationships stronger and more loving every day of the year. I am guilty and I agree with him!
The other problem is, how do you overcome the expectations that come around every February 14? Do you want your significant other to feel like they are the only one not getting a bunch of flowers or gifts on Valentine's Day when
everyone around them is? I guess the reality is that if you are doing things to show your love through out the year, whether it's gifts, kind actions, quality time together, etc, then how much that person gets on
VDay will be irrelevant, because deep down they will already know that you love them and show it everyday, and you can look at those other people and realize that they may not get this same attention 99.99% of the rest of the year, which is kind of sad!
I love you Kelly!
Labels: Holidays
New Year's Eve
Ok, so back to the catch up. After spending Christmas with my family and snowboarding at Alpine Valley, we got a call from one of my grad school buddies (Brian) asking if we would like to join him and his girlfriend (Camelia) for New Year's Eve with some other folks. This was great timing, because due to the Illini making the Rose Bowl, a lot of our friends were out in California for New Year's and we hadn't finalized any plans yet.
So at about 4 PM on New Years Eve we stepped out of our apartment into what turned out was the beginning of a small blizzard and drove the Jeep (with new tires) down to the neighborhood of
Wicker Park to meet up with the gang. After waiting for another friend of ours and his fiance we all jumped on the Blue Line train and headed down toward the
Loop to have dinner at the
Italian Village. We were given our own private booth which was nice because like all Italian restaurants it was noisy with people visiting with each other. We all enjoyed some good food and wine and then grabbed a cab to the
Chicago Theater where we met up with even more friends to catch the Cirque de Jungle show on its last night in town. It was very similar to a
Cirque de Soliel show if you have ever seen one but on a smaller scale. After the show we caught the Blue Line back out to Wicker Park and spent the rest of the evening ringing in the New Year at Brian and Camelia's and playing "Catch Phrase" until 3:30 AM. After that I dug my Jeep out of the snow and Kelly and I made our way back to Evanston for some much needed sleep! All in all it was a great New Year with loved ones, new friends, a show and dinner. Good Times!
Labels: Chicago, entertainment, Holidays
Christmas Holidays
Well, I have been very bad again and find myself way behind on my blog posts. So the next few posts are going to be catch-ups starting with Christmas through this week.
So for Christmas, Kelly and I decided to have our own "mini" celebration before heading out of town and we spent the Saturday before opening presents from each other. As you may already know, I had already received my
big gift on my birthday, but Kelly didn't want me to have nothing to open for Christmas, so she found some other cool gifts for me, including a coffee table, picture book from the "
Planet Earth" series. It has some breath taking pictures. I also got the Charlie Brown Christmas CD, plus some Snowboarding apparel. The rest of that day we spent making cookies and candies for Christmas.
On Sunday we woke up to a wind storm. My parents were a little worried about us driving the 3 hours across the country-side in the storm because the snow was blowing around making visibility tough. We decided to brave it and it really wasn't too bad if you don't count the stop we made at the
Dekalb, IL oasis where I had to fill the Jeep up in hurricane force winds. We really didn't have any trouble until we got off the interstate about 10 minutes from my parents house. The country highways were pretty slick and my Jeep fish tailed on me a couple of times. After the second time I decided to put it in 4
WD and that seemed to do the trick.
For Christmas Eve we spent the evening at my Grandma's house across the road, with my aunt (dad's sister) and uncle and their kids. Luke and Clay couldn't make it because they were with their significant other's families. We had a nice time enjoying a ham dinner, opening presents, catching up and enjoying some homemade deserts.
Christmas morning at the Port's is usually reserved for opening presents with the immediate family, but due to schedules Clay and Luke couldn't make it until closer to noon. So Kelly and I spent the morning visiting with my Dad and helping my Mom get ready for the dinner she was preparing for her side of the family that afternoon. Once Luke,
Rebecca, Clay and Danielle arrived we commenced with the gift exchanging. We usually let each person open one gift at a time so everyone can see, but by the end of the process, my mom's sisters began arriving so we had to quick open the rest all at once. Everyone had a good time and got some great gifts. My parents got me a new zoom
lens for the camera that Kelly got me and Clay got me some cool stuff for my
PSP and Luke got me a gift card to Best Buy among other things.
Later that afternoon we settled in and had a turkey dinner with my mom's sisters, their significant others and some of my cousins. After dinner we had a "white elephant" grab bag gift exchange that was fun and then had a regular gift exchange. My cousin
Audra got me a gift certificate to Best Buy. After that Luke, Clay, Kelly and I played a game called "Landslide" where you try and accumulate votes and states to win a presidential
election. It was a pretty interesting game that isn't made anymore. After that we joined the rest of the family in the living room for a few rounds of "
Catch Phrase" that got pretty competitive but was so much fun that Kelly and I decided to go out and buy it ourselves. From there we spent the rest of our stay at the Port farm relaxing, playing some Halo 3 on my Dad's new 50" plasma and catching up with family. It was a really nice Christmas and I was really happy Kelly could experience it too! Hope everyone else had a great Christmas too!
Labels: Christmas, Family, Holidays
A Lovely Thanksgiving Holiday
So, I have been pretty much terrible keeping posts on this blog up-to-date and I apologize for that and hope to keep at least a couple of new posts on here each week. Let's call it my
pre-New Year's resolution.
Now to get to the subject of this post's title. Last week I took some much needed vacation time from work and took Monday - Wednesday off. Unfortunately, I spent Sunday and part of Monday laying around sick, but I did manage to get some chores done around the apartment. I didn't get to shop like I wanted to but I should be able to make up for it in December because I need to take approximately 9 days off or I will lose those vacation days. This must be what it's like to be a teacher, without the thankless work, punk kids and nagging parents. :)
On Wednesday Kelly and I headed for Michigan to spend the holiday with her family. We got to her sister's house in the early evening in time to see her niece before she went to bed. Later that night we took a car load of clothes, dishes and
miscellaneous items to the Goodwill drop off. We have been trying to go through our stuff and clear out anything we don't use or wear anymore. Allot of it is good stuff and I am glad someone will be able to get some use out of it rather than it sitting around our apartment collecting dust. After that we spent some time visiting with Mindy and Ron (Kelly's sister and brother-in-law) and then hit the hay. The next morning we got up and lounged around before heading to Kelly's parents' house for a Thanksgiving lunch. The food was great and I wanted to take a nap. Instead we rested for a bit and headed to Grandpa and Grandma
Hiddema's (Kelly's Mom's parents). There we participated in the long standing tradition of family Bingo. I had the honor of having the first bingo of the night and won a nice set of screwdrivers. I also past the time attempting to shoot the bingo chips across the table into Mindy's coffee. After Bingo and snacks we headed back to Mindy and Ron's and visited for a while longer and then went to bed.
The next day, Ron and I went to a store that sold ingredients for beer brewing and we (more Ron than me) brewed a batch of Christmas beer. Since it needs a couple of weeks to ferment I won't know how it turns out for a while. We added Cranberry extract and wintergreen leaves while it brewed. Later that afternoon Mindy, Ron and Lucy (Kelly's niece) had to head to Kalamazoo to visit family so Kelly and I went to see her parents and grab dinner.
On Saturday, Kelly and I packed up and made our way over to her parents' house where we met up with Carla (Kelly's mom) and then we made our way to a local Christmas tree farm. After some wandering around in the cold we finally found our tree. Carla took some pictures of us which I will post once I have them uploaded to my Picasa gallery. From there we made our way back to
Evanston where we set up the tree and settled in. I will also include pictures of our tree decorated once I have them uploaded. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Labels: Holidays, Thanksgiving, Travel
