Rebirth

I mentioned earlier that I turned 40. This has a different effect on people online than it does in the real world. While there are pictures of me on this blog, there's no way for people who meet me exclusively in this realm to really see me, how I dress, talk, behave (or misbehave) so there's no surprise factor. When I say I'm 40, you have no reason to think otherwise. In the real world, however, people are utterly amazed when I tell them. Many of them don't believe me. They think it's some kind of joke. Thirty seems to them the more logical scenario. This has always been kind of fun. It's why I don't mind telling people. The fact that I didn't get married until I was 27 and my kids are all very young reinforces the whole thing. It's all made turning 40 a tad more bearable but I'm waiting for the big switch to my appearance like when I turned 30. Around six months after my birthday I noticed I was 50 lbs heavier. I'd been 135-140 lbs all my life but six months after turning thirty and ever since, I've hovered between 190 and 195. And then there's my hairline. Every day the top of my head is just a little more visible. It looks like the stubbly field in back of my parents' house where I grew up. This concerns me because I swore that my full head of hair would not suffer the same fate as my dad's which, except for a long combover, was completely gone from the top of his head by his late twenties. I have no plans for a combover myself, nor to repeat his disastrous attempt to hide the barren scalp with a wig which was such a drastic change for him that those who recognized him just laughed in disbelief. (Mom, if you're reading this, there's no need to let him know what I've written.)

So I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't know what getting older is until you experience it yourself, and I suppose if I asked my parents or someone in the twilight years, I still don't know. As I said before, 40 hit me broadside but I recovered quickly with the help of an author friend of mind. I was feeling like 40 was the end of the line because I hadn't realized my goal of writing a novel before then. I told her this and she had some very encouraging words to say. For one thing, she told me she was going to check up on me periodically to see if I've been writing everyday. And she gave me a book, Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamont. After reading that and writing nearly everyday for the last few weeks, I feel reborn. 40 is the beginning. And I'm learning more about writing by writing everyday than I ever did in school or from all those books and magazines that I bought. In the trenches is where it's learned. You read other books and other writers' advice but you don't learn it until you write for yourself. It took me 40 years to learn that.

A Doodle for my Birthday

I've been getting some nice feed back about my drawing on YouTube so I thought I'd draw another one on camera to show a little of the process. You can see it here. This one's a lot more involved than the last one I did. Click on the drawing to see it on a much larger scale. I have a writer friend who thinks I should illustrate childrens' books in this style. It's an interesting idea.

I let my 40th birthday slip by back on May 14th without posting anything about it here. It was a rough day: The day I could no longer deny that I'm old. My body won't let me deny it either. A couple of days ago my car died and I walked the 8 1/2 miles home from work. When I got home 2 hours later, my knees and my left ankle were killing me. I used to do 20 miles in the mountains in a day!
On the up side, I still look young. I was editing for a client a couple of weeks ago and she asked how I could work so fast. (I think I was using photoshop at the time). I said I'd been doing this a loooong time, to which she replied, "How long can you have been doing it? What are you, all of 25?" So at least I can pretend I'm not old when I'm out of the house. My 3-year-old daughter won't let me forget it, though.

Back from the Dead

Last night: The clients are talking amongst themselves so I go in the other room to watch the DVD burner do its stuff. The video is 52 minutes long so the copies are going to take awhile but maybe if I watch it it'll go faster. OK, I don't believe that, but it's something to do. It's midnight and so much can go wrong still. I've already been up for three days straight to make the deadline and it absolutely has to be done tonight because I'm leaving for Idaho and my brother's wedding. We checked and re-checked the DVD project but when you change segments created in other programs and then re-import them into DVD Studio Pro, there's no telling what problems you can miss. This is week 3 of my work on the project and I don't want anything to be amiss.

Every day I've gotten up at 5 am and worked on it until it's time to go to work and every night I've stayed up late working on it. Then I pull the two all-nighters in a row. But it's still not as bad as last year. There were four all-nighters. I figured I was up for 102 hours straight with two 15-minute catnaps in all that time. It was interesting to see how my body reacted to it. Throughout that period my mind was clouded with a light haze, like looking through a dirty window. Most of the time I handled it just fine. I went to work and then came home and worked through the night until it was time to go to work again. There were times when my judgement was impaired, as if I'd downed a six pack in ten minutes, but most of the time I was able to function pretty well. My wife drove me everywhere because we never knew when my mind would shut down. It was like having epilepsy and waiting for the seisures to come. The problem with working like that is that there are invariably mistakes being made. I think I gave them four different disks before all the problems were finally resolved and I gave them the perfect one. That was delivered at a 7-ll at 1:30 am in the rain. It must have looked just like a drug deal. They were showing to the video to the parents, players, and coaches of the 15 teams in the club at 10am that morning. I waited all day for them to call me and tell me it was a disaster. But they never did. I finally called them and was told it was a raging success--be sure to send the invoice.

This year I was determined to get it done in two weeks with no all-nighters.

Whatever.

A large portion of the program is a collection of videos produced by each team. They are all of questionable quality and all on different formats. This year most of them were on DVD and that was great. But one was on High 8 and one guy even sent me a powerpoint presentation. In those cases all I can do is scramble to find away to convert it to what I need.

So I got the thing finished yesterday and gave them the disk, crossing my fingers that it would be perfect the first time but knowing down deep in my gut that it wouldn't be.

Sure enough I got a call with a bunch of changes. This time they wanted to be there with me. I'm all for that because we can get it right the first time. So we meticulously examined each segment after we waited for 45 minutes for one of them to render. Then, satisfied that all the changes were good, I opened the DVD menu project and examined them in there. They all looked good so we burned the disk and then made copies. That was another hour.

When it was done, we didn't even watch the disks. We were that confident.

I went home to crash. I wasn't going to get up for hours.

At 6am the phone rang. Two of the segments (which just happened to be the ones we changed) cut off at the end and would I please get down there right now and fix them.

I worked through my own personal fog and found the problem: The changes made the segments longer but DVD Studio Pro doesn't automatically adjust running time of the segments. You have to do that manually. I think I knew that but when you're drunk on no sleep the synapses just don't connect properly.

Well, the corrected DVD is in their hands and I'm in Idaho right now and the presentation is tomorrow.

I'll send the invoice on Monday and then I'll have peace until next March when it starts all over again. Only this time it'll be double: I have an almost identical project that I'll be doing for the University at the same time. I'm not sure how I'm going to swing that. But, hey, the money's good.

Vans

Not the shoes.

Ok, so you heard me crying a few weeks back about somebody throwing a fire extinguisher through the window of my car. I had plans for that car. We were going to go places. (Sorry about that. Puns just happen sometimes.) Well, we bought a new--to us--van that the six of us can all ride comfortably in without having to strap one of the boys to the roof. (No matter how much they beg me to, I'm not gonna. Imagine what the neighbors would think when they flashed their winning bug-toothed smiles!) It's a silver Ford Windstar and we're all thrilled with it. I guess the neighbors aren't, though. The other day I came out to put the new license plates on only to be greeted by "Go Emo Kidz" and "bitch" written on the back door in black sharpie ink.
Now, I'm a peace-loving individual and I outwardly restrained myself. But I'm 99.3% sure who did it and in the recesses of my mind, I was taking my Louisville Slugger to their braided heads. I was able to get it off with some effort.

As for the Mustang, we're getting rid of it. We're keeping our other van, a green monstrosity that sucks gas but is useful for hauling video production equipment. The fact is, I'm too lazy to get a new window for a car that is drawing it's last few breaths anyway.

The green van has another useful feature: Ever since we took it to Jiffy Lube this last time, it stalls while idling. But it doesn't stall just any old time. It's only when the light you're waiting for is about to turn green. So you always know when it's time to put it in park, start it off, and get going. Of course, the people honking and swearing at you for not going soon enough are a great help, too.

Going Back and Back and Back and...

I've decided one of the reasons I don't write very often here is because whenever I get an idea for a post, a thread of thought, a glimmer of something I could begin to be passionate about, I think that with all the blogs out there, it's probably already been covered--and much better than I could.
In the 70's when I was making my way through childhood, the fishbowl didn't seem so full. There were voices everywhere, but it didn't seem so hard to be heard if you wanted to. I know now that there were still plenty of sets of vocal chords out there, all trying to make their particular points of view known to the world but all I really have to go on is my perception then and it's as if the aquarium has suddenly become so crowded that not only can I make my little cry audible to the world, I can barely hear it myself. Some days I think I have no opinion or thought to begin with.
Then I begin to think about why many writers write--because the enjoy the process, or, if they don't enjoy it, they find that they have to just to feel alive. About ten years ago I set out to get an English degree because I thought it would make me a writer. Since I was in grade school I wanted to write and when I had to decide what to study in college it just felt natural to study English. People who know me might find that strange and say, "What about music? That's all you ever talk about!" I'd have to agree with them because there are a lot of things I'm passionate about and I've tried over and over again to get away from this insane dream of becoming a writer. But I always come back to it--not, actually, to the act of writing, but to the subject of writing and my becoming a writer. I know this doesn't make sense, but this is my blog and it doesn't have to.
The point is that I always come back and one day, I think, I will actually do it.

The Trolley Square Incident

As you've probably heard a pretty horrifying event took place here on Monday. I sat down to watch TV and instead of Heros, a local news special report was on. I instantly recognized Trolley Square, a mall downtown here in Salt Lake, from the helicopter shot on the screen. There were several SWAT officers hunkered down with their weapons as herds of people were escorted past the mall. I soon learned that, as I watched, someone was walking through the mall shooting people.
My first thought was that I was glad my family and I weren't there. We don't go downtown very often but we've gone to the movie theater at that mall and we've spent time nearby. I just can't imagine trying to protect my children from a gunman or seeing one of them shot.
My next thought, like a lot of others here in Utah, apparently, was, "I should go get my concealed weapons permit." Of course I won't, but I thought about it. Like I said, others are thinking about it, too: There's been a surge in the last couple of days in requests for the permits. I'm not an advocate for gun control, but I decided a long time ago that I'd never own a gun myself. For one thing, I get so mad in traffic that I'm sure I would pull it out and shoot someone on the road for cutting me off or not letting me in to traffic. My 29-year-old brother has his permit and he almost always carries his 9mm around with him. I guess it gives him some comfort but I couldn't do it. Then there are the kids. I would never forgive myself if they shot themselves or someone else because I had a gun around.

I don't like talking about gun control and I didn't want this to be about that but I heard another point from a gun control advocate that got me thinking: If there are several people there with guns out, who do you shoot? When I first heard the report that interrupted my TV show, they were saying there were two shooters. We found out later that one of them was an off-duty police officer. So that comment makes a lot of sense to me. One of these times someone's going to shoot the wrong person.

When I heard that the shooter was Bosnian, my mind began to race. I hoped it wasn't someone I knew. A few years ago, when we were managing apartments, I became friends with a Bosnian boy who'd be around the age of the shooter now. He was a very nice kid who liked to help around the complex. He even tried to teach me his native language. I got to know his family, too. They were ostracized from the other people in the complex who hailed from that area because of their ethnicity. I remember thinking how sad it was that those people were missing the chance to get to know this family. So I listened intently for the name of the shooter, hoping it wasn't Slobodon. It wasn't. I was relieved.

My heart goes out to the victims' families and to the family of the shooter. It's awful that these things happen.

Worst Case Scenario: Goolies

A friend of mine from work, Joe Borgenicht, has put together a very informative video that should help millions of people who suffer from being hit in the Goolies.
Watch it here.

A nice Suprise

At 4am I was having some kind of adventure dream--you know, where you're Indiana Jones or somebody like that and you're on the track of some hidden treasure and you're in your underwear...you don't have that kind of dream, do you? Well, anyway, in my dream this alarm sounded. I figured it signaled some kind of trap and I pressed on in my pursuit. Then the alarm became the ringing of a phone and I woke up. It was my neighbor calling to tell me he saw somebody drive by our houses half an hour earlier and vandalize our cars as they passed. His car hadn't been damaged but the window in mine was shattered. I asked him if he'd call the police and then I went back to bed. Strangely enough, I wasn't angry or even disappointed; just tired. Soon our bedroom was filled with flashing blue and red lights. I put on some clothes and went out to see three Sherriff's Cars in front of my house. I walked over to see the damage and found a fire extinguisher sitting comfortably in the front seat, covered with glass. The deputy took it to see if he could trace it but I don't have any hope of that turning up any results. So I don't even have a fire extinguisher that I could sell on Ebay or something.
It was pretty heavy duty, the kind you find in businesses, so it was probably stolen.
I still wasn't angry at all today about it, not like I was when my stereo was stolen. But when I began cleaning it up a while ago and cut my hands on the glass, that's when I started getting pissed. I keep thinking I'm going to get some kind of motion-sensing camera for surveilance but I never do. I can't even say I hope they enjoy whatever it is they took because they didn't take anything. Completely senseless.

A Quick One

Are you getting sick of these yet? I did this one really quick and videotaped the process.
You can see the video here.

Temple Hill Videos

My friend, Dennis Lyman, has produced four historical documentaries on Utah and some of the Mormon Temples. I edited and directed three of them. Click here to learn more.

Another Meeting, Another Doodle

This is the result of a six-hour meeting on Saturday. Someone there tried to steal it from me, but I'm lightning fast, baby. I scanned it larger than the others so if you click on it you'll see it in more detail.

Just a few of the things I can see in it:
a cabin; Mario(a friend of mine swears it's the bat signal); a mummy; a girl leaning against a tree looking down; a rose, an alien skeleton, a bus, a woman in a skirt taking off her jacket (this one's very subtle); a drawing compass wearing gym shorts; an old haunted house with a lot of junk in front of it; a jeep; a low rider; an upside-down mountain lion; a nose-diving goose; a star; upside-down hearts; an amtrak train; a barn; the dog/reindeer from the Grinch; an olive branch; a scale; a harp; a bust of some guy; a pot of gold; two safety pins; a stratocaster; and lots of other things.

A Couple of Doodles

This is what I do during meetings when they think I'm taking notes:


What images do you see? I see different things every time I look and I drew them.

Ready to Rock

Here's the new band. As you can see, we have a new Drummer. We're rehearsing, gearing up for the new world tour. There are a few hitches, though. We're not sure when we're going to start because one of us isn't potty-trained yet. I'll let you decide which one. Our booking agent is up in arms and some of the venues are threatening to pull out if we don't give them a solid commitment. The way I see it, our fans won't let that happen. We discussed it as a band and their mom, I mean our manager, has agreed that we just can't risk an accident on stage. So we'll keep practicing and we'll let everyone know when we're ready to get on the road.
Oh, by the way, if anyone can think of a good name for us, we're all ears!

A couple more of my drawings. The brown one is Saint somebody and the boy is one of my sons.

I Don't Think So, Al

This photo has been sitting here in my editbay for a while and I figured I ought to preserve it here with the others I've put up.
That was the day Richard Karn finished shooting an infomercial. He is a great guy. Very funny and very un-Al-like. I never ask for these photos. I always leave that up to my buddies who are in the picture with me and Richard. The only time I asked to have a photo with someone was Tears for Fears which you can read about somewhere in this blog.
A few weeks after this I was in Vegas at the airport looking through a magazine and I saw a full-page ad for the company he did the infomercial for. It was a shot of the whole cast and crew on our stage. It's funny how excited I get about these things.

I'm Listening to Music Again!

I started this post a while ago and then I started to realize how much it rambles. I'm not sure anyone wants to know what I think about music, especially when my thoughts go on like this. But this experience I had rediscovering U2 has taken a lot of space in my grey matter and it even made me physically ill. Something that profound ought to be preserved for myself if for no one else. So here I go:

If there is one thing that's on my mind more frequently or more intensely than anything else, I would say it has to be music. I'm not sure I like what that says about me. I'd rather have it be my family, or God, something noble like that, but it's not. It's music. I might talk about how lost I've been feeling that last few years in another post but I've been thinking that this overwhelming disorientation in my life lately has at least some roots in the way I've been feeling about the state of music in the world.

Back in the 80's when I was in my late teens and early 20's, I was driven. I pursued my job in television with an exlusionary furvor. I pursued my art and writing, if not with the same intensity, at least much more than I do now. Music had really sparked me. While officially I was a goth/punker, I was into any kind of music that had what I considered were edgy, punk rock ideals. Many might agree with my definition but in addition to the obvious choices like The Sex Pistols, The Cramps, The Circle Jerks, 7 Seconds, The Pogues, I included Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doors, and (I know, I know) Prince and the Revolution. They were all--or they all had been at one time--pushing the limits and doing things that were outside the mundane crap that had been going on. I loved listening to that but I had two fall backs that I always listened to: Depeche Mode and The Cure. Anybody familiar with these two groups in the early eighties will agree that they are not the same bands they used to be.
Then, in 1985, a punker I knew gave me a cassette he'd recorded from LP. Actually it was from two LP's. One side was TSOL, which was just a little too thrashy for me and I couldn't connect. But the other side of the cassette changed me in ways I can't describe. It was "Under a Blood Red Sky" by U2. I was absolutely blown away by it. I wore the tape out listening to it. I had heard some of the songs much earlier on the radio, "Electric Co.," "New Year's Day," and "I will Follow" among them. I had thought they were cool but when I heard them, my relationship with music was much more cursory. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. But this, the live, kind of ratty, unpolished, but huge sound grabbed me and threw me to the ground. I immediatly bought it on cassette along with all of their studio albums up to that time. I was disappointed. First of all, the cassette didn't have Bono's long ramble in the middle of "Electric Co." It was edited out. I vaguely remember it being something about clowns. The other disappointment was that the studio versions on Boy, October, and War, did not nearly capture the vibrance and spontaneity of the concert. I had come at these songs in one way and from the studio they seemed wimpy and dispassionate. I've gotten over that, though, and I wouldn't miss the chance to hear the other songs that didn't make it in the concert.
I was completely under U2's spell for years afterward. Unforgetable fire was a thrill because they'd finally done in the studio what they captured at Red Rocks. the Joshua Tree pierced me with its anthems. When the film "Rattle and Hum" came out, I was a cameraman for the local news in Idaho. Between the 6pm and 10pm newscasts, I went across the street to the theaters there and bought a ticket. I sat there by myself shivering from being immersed in the stunning live footage. Phil Joanu is incredible. I know that album wasn't a critical success but I loved it. U2 could do no wrong, except that Bono's God complex started to become apparent. I didn't really think about it at the time but, looking back, I realize that something didn't sit well with me. He had a message and he was forcing it down everybody's throat. And the message wasn't just political. It was about American music and values and it was a little pushy for an Irishman who hated the blues.
Then there was a break. I went on a mission for my church before "Achtung Baby" came out. Mormon missionaries live a somewhat cloistered life in that they don't listen to popular music or watch movies or, in some cases, read the news. All this is so that they can focus on their two years of work. It's actually a good thing and I wouldn't trade my experience for anything.

Of course I couldn't miss hearing the ubiquitous sounds of the band of Dubliners. But I couldn't immerse myself in it and I lost touch. The next thing I remember is seeing videos from "Pop" years later on M2 and if the door wasn't shut before then it was now...and locked. "Pop" sucked and the concert that came here to Salt Lake sucked according to my friend who went to it. So that was it. I didn't need to pay attention anymore. I didn't even know they had come out with "All That You Can't Leave Behind" until last week. I totally missed that one. When I saw their Ipod commercial featuring "Vertigo" my interest piqued, but not enough to get them back on my radar.

But it wasn't just U2 I lost touch with. Music in general was going down the tubes. Aside from the few standouts--Coldplay, John Mayer, and The Killers--music had lost its soul. I was dependant on old stuff to get me by: Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and a few others. I even started exploring genres I'd avoided, going for Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, and the old delta bluesmen. But for the most part, I avoided music. When I got an IPod, I loaded it up with audiobooks. People would think I was rocking out when I was really sinking into a great book.

Then it happened. A couple of weeks ago I was in the library looking for another audiobook and I saw U2 by U2 among the new arrivals. It was a hefty book and I figured I'd do what I always do with books of that type. I've done it with the best: I thumb through it, looking at the pictures and reading a few pages but inevitably losing interest and returning the book. I've done it with Pink Floyd's book, Mick Fleetwood's, and many others. Still, I thought I'd give it a shot. I read until 3 or 4 in the morning every night for a week until I'd finished it. I'm just getting over a 3-day migraine as a result. But I've also rediscovered my favorite band as well as discovering a few other things along the way.

One of the reasons I fell out with U2 is I don't like liking bands that everyone else likes. If it's the lowest common denominator there must be something wrong with it, right? When I was first into them, hardly anyone else I knew was into them. Now it seems everybody on the planet knows who they are. Also, Bono seems to have this arrogance that I can't abide. That came through in the book, as well. His paragraphs were always 3 or 4 times as long as the rest of the band's. And he had the last word! But the rational side of me thinks that that is what it takes to become what he's become. Not necessarily arrogance but confidance, which he has in abundance.

A few more threads of thought formed inside my little old brain as I read. The band talks about the song, "One," how people play it at their weddings and how the band, having written the song would never have it played in such a setting. It's about breaking up, they say, not getting together. That got me thinking. It's not just the poet who writes the poem. It's the reader as well. They bring their own experiences to the work and make it their own. It doesn't matter who owns the copyright, no one owns the work itself. It's a living thing that starts breathing as soon as someone lays eyes or ears on it.

Ok. That's enough of that. Suffice it to say, my IPod's loaded with U2's music. And I have quite an advantage over the rest of the planet: This stuff is all new to me!

On a Winter's Day

This is what it looks like outside my window right now. That's our half-dead plumb tree that drops purple bombs all over the sidewalk in the summertime, exploding their sticky mess in the path of passersby.

This is our half-dead willow tree that is a beautiful sight when it's showing off its green plumage except for a great gap in the very top which, at its worst, looks like a cancer-caused cavity, and at its best, an old bald man who can only manage to grow hair on the sides of his head.

The snow seems, oddly, to be a new thing at our house. There's a lot of excitement among the kids and grumbling among the adults. There's talk of Snowmen and Snow Forts and how our neighbor came and "mowed" the snow in our driveway, according to my youngest son. Little girl is bugging me to go out with her but she can't find her boots. This is the first real snowfall of the season but other than that, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. We've spent a lot of time in the white stuff. I could ski almost before I could walk and in Idaho where I grew up, we could walk close to the tops of the power poles on the drifts. I guess it is a lot milder here but you wouldn't know that by watching the traffic. People around here get really stupid in the snow when they're driving. They think their monstertruck four-wheel drives will stop them on a dime on a sheet of inch-thick ice. They never learn.

My Fifteen Minutes Aren't Up Yet...If I Can Help It

I've got a friend who's a movie reviewer with a nationally syndicated show. He's the one interviewing Robin and Dustin in those videos of mine. I put together the graphics for his show when I feel like it. I don't get paid for it so it's not something I'm really motivated to do. He's been bugging me for a new look for the new year and I've been putting a little effort into it here and there but that hasn't really helped me much because he's still nagging. If I'd just get the thing done, he'd get off my back for a while. So I found the kick in the butt I needed:
The concept is several of the stars he's interviewed flying by in slick looking boxes that assemble themselves into the "T" (the first letter of the title of the show) when you pull back wide. It's a mundane process because you need a lot of shots to make it work. While I was thus engaged, I noticed my camera in the corner and had a crazy thought. What if I took a shot of myself as if I were one of the stars and slipped my picture in there? So I set up the camera here in my edit bay and rolled on 40 seconds of myself talking to the wall. My shot won't be prominent. It'll come up in the distance but it will be clear enough for someone to recognize me if they're looking for it.

Don't tell my friend.

So THIS is Why We Lie

This will go down in the annuls (not anals) of history as the best Christmas ever. This is not because I was swimming in presents--I wasn't. It's not even because I gave my wife the gift that made her jaw drop and brought tears to her I eyes--I didn't. It was because I got to live Christmas through my three-year-old daughter.

3:45 am Christmas Morning: I'm jolted awake by the sound of my Wife's voice shouting, "Get out of there. Go back to bed until 7:00!" The culprits? Dinky Jr. and his 8-year-old brother rummaging through the presents. As far as I know they went back to bed.

7:00 am: I'm awakened again. This time it's the sound of little boys whispering, "Can we go in there now?" I got up and tried to rouse Little Girl. As always, she wouldn't have any of it. She's a late sleeper. I pulled out the big guns. "Do you think Santa came?" She was up like a shot and heading toward the living room. Her body was up but her brain was still asleep and I had to steer her to keep her from bumping into the walls. She went into the room, looked around, and went right past her presents to the window. "What are you looking for?" I asked. "I don't see Santa," she said. I pointed to her presents and we explained that Santa had been there after all.

All morning long we took turns opening presents. Even before she had the wrapping off of most of them she would exclaim with joy about the wonderful suprise inside, and then she would say, "What is it?"

All week she walked around saying, "It's a wonderful Christmas!" until New Year's Day when her mantra changed to, "Is it Christmas?"