No, not from the chlamydia, silly. I got that all cleared up shortly after I returned from Shanghai. My pants are on fire because I'm a liar. I promised to post my review of CDP's book 19 Phrases to Keep You Out Of Jail, or whatever it's called.

I'm not posting it yet because I'm still editing it, trying to make it as interesting and well-thought out as the actual book. Instead of half-assing it, I'll just post it another time, but I promise it will be by Friday (for those of you still waiting on the video tour of my house as narrated by Burt Reynolds, well, take this one with a grain of salt also.)

Instead, I offer: bizarre Christmas moments from my house.

I should start off by explaining that Melissa and I made the decision to spend the night at my parents' house on Christmas Eve. My dad's side of the family tends to drink a fair amount of booze during our Christmas Eve dinner, and we decided to play it safe and stay put, especially since we had to be back at their house by 10 AM Christmas day.

Melissa was a touch worried about this, being unsure of what my parents would think of us sleeping in the same bed as an unmarried, sinful couple. I assure her it would be fine, that they wouldn't even think twice about it. She was also worried because my sister and Melissa don't always get along.

By some Christmas miracle, my sister and Melissa got along just fine, most likely because everyone was drinking a concoction my sister made called "Allie's Christmas Concoction." We're not the most original family. It consisted of a liberal dosage of vodka, a splash of cranberry juice, and a bit of grenadine. Entirely too sweet for my tastes, and I stuck to beer.

My crazy uncle finally proposed to his girlfriend of twelve years, my dad's blessing of the food took less than five minutes, he didn't bless the Russians like he so famously did one year, and none of the food was under- or over-cooked. We all stumbled the short distance back from my Aunt's place to my parents' house and began wrapping presents.

My mom really like all of the gifts under the tree to match and look pretty. I learned long, long ago that if I start doing a poor job of wrapping something in front of her, and have a garish, clashing bow all set to slap on top, she will take it away from me, fix it, and then wrap all of my remaining presents in fear of what I could do to her fashionably matching Christmas tree. Check and mate. No more wrapping for ol' JT.

When all of this was done, it was time to start what has become a quarterly tradition: my sister hands me her laptop, along with a list of problems it is now having, blames it profusely on a friend of mine who worked on it once (and he's a genius by the way, I know these problems were not caused by him,) then she heads out the door to go to a party. I spent the better part of the next three hours updating, uninstalling, reinstalling, restarting, downloading, debugging, defragging, and cleaning up useless files. I don't know what my sister does to electronics, but she has been through more phones (both cellular and landline,) digital cameras, and computers than anyone I know. She proclaims innocence, but I firmly believe she keeps them all in a room with magnetic wallpaper, an industrial-grade humidifier, and heat lamps of the highest wattage.

While I was doing this, my dad sat on my right, frowning, nodding, and making occasional affirmative grunting noises as if he approved of every step I was taking. He wasn't fooling anyone. Email attachments, text messaging, and the oh-so-simple call waiting still baffle him entirely. On my left was my sweet, drunken Melissa. She was just bored, as everyone else had gone to bed.

At one point she decided to steady herself in her chair by placing her hand on my leg. However, she missed my leg. She firmly planted her hand directly on my junk. She didn't notice, however, and left her hand there. Now, I know that my mom and dad strongly suspect that Melissa ans I are doing the nasty, bumping uglies if you will. Hell, they may have even found the sex tape we have floating around on the internet. However, I see no point in rubbing their noses in it. I'm not sure who would have been more embarrased had my dad noticed, but I'm just glad he didn't. Of course, if he reads this, he just found out way more than he wants to know.

We finally finished up and headed upstairs to bed. My old bedroom has been completely redone, eliminating any trace that I once lived there. This confused me greatly when I woke up in the middle of the night. There was a Christmas tree blocking my view of one of the windows, so all I saw was one window in an unfamiliar location, an unusually soft set of sheets, a satiny comforter, and no headboard behind my head. It took me several minutes of freaking out to figure out where I was. Right about the time I settled down and started to close my eyes again, Melissa sat up and started moving around. I assumed she was getting up to use the restroom, and stayed quiet.

Instead, she stood up, turned around, and laid down with her head at the foot of the bed and her feet by my head. Not wanting to disturb her, I decided to just let her sleep...until she started kicking me in the face. After the third or fourth kick, I grabbed her legs and pinned them down. Here is the ensuing conversation:

M: Ouch! That hurts, asshole!
JT: So did it when you kicked me in the face!
M: What are you talking about?
JT: You're sleeping upside down.
M: Oh. Why?

Than she moved back into a normal sleeping position and we went back to sleep.

Christmas Day itself was uneventful. We all enjoyed each others company, I ate 3 solid plates of lunch and one of dessert, and then came home, watched Smokin' Aces and passed out in a ham-induced stupor.

Best Christmas in years, in my opinion!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday...

JT out.