Another road trip, to Florida for Christmas. Here’s my top ten, in reverse chronological order. This is a blog, after all.
1) Strolling through an open air craft market in Tampa’s historic “Ybor City”:http://www.ybor.org with my daughter “Meg”:http://www.mintchaos.com/meg/. We went there to get a “cuban sandwich”:http://www.vikingrange.com/recipes/cuban_sandwiches.html while waiting for her plane.
2) Florida, generally. Nautical stuff especially. 
2)Dinner on Christmas day, at my sister Toy’s new house.
3)Pilgrim’s Christmas hair-do: spikes with colors, dyes a gift from Meg.
3) New holiday tradition: opening British style holiday “crackers”:http://www.britshoppe.com/britchris.html on Christmas eve.
4)Riding around looking at Christmas lights on Christmas eve.
5) Going to the beach on Christmas eve. A white Christmas. Katie napped on Christian and Ann’s new beach mat while the rest of us looked for sharke’s teeth at the Blind Pass park on “Manasota Key”:http://www.drelocation.com/florida/charlotteco/manasotakey.htm.
6) Watching the kids enjoy their own apartment at “Buchan’s Landing”:http://www.buchans.com next to mom’s house. Video games, movies, all night do what you want.
7) Sunsets daily, no charge. 
8) Seeing Katie, who had already been here a week taking care of mom.
9) Bar-b-que, at “Woody’s”:http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m3190/42_36/93318937/p1/article.jhtml, south of Atlanta. It’s tradition.
10) An evening alone in Chattanooga on the way down while our friends the Hargraves took Michael, Pilgrim and Tina to a midnight showing of the final Lord of the Rings release.
the daysman 