Sophie's Story

  This is a story about an usual gift I received......      The church Christmas program was last Sunday. C and I had been asked to participate. We decided that we were going to play a guitar and harp arrangement of "Angels We have Heard on High." I'd been practicing the song as much as I could for about a month. The arrangement I was using was a little too advanced for me so while I practiced it I simplified it.   C and I started practicing together a couple of weeks before the program. If you think that this is really not enough time, you're right. The challenge is that C and I work opposite schedules and in addition both of us had to work extra hours this month. Fortunately, we've played together before. It wasn't as bad as I thought. It didn't take long for us to come up with a good arrangement.    The morning of the program, we loaded our instruments into the car and went to church early. It was cold and the instruments literally needed to warm

   I'm getting a little tired of people asking me if I'm ready for Christmas. I'm not ready. I'm not ready because I refuse to start preparing until after Thanksgiving. Since I work full time plus, this leaves little time for preparation.    I've given up on the idea of having things wrapped and ready. I've given up putting a lot of decorations up. I've even for the most part given up shopping. Most of the people in my life only want money anyway.   The few presents I have bought are not wrapped yet (although I do have gift bags for them.) I haven't had time to send a single Christmas card. C and I have practiced our piece for tomorrow's Christmas program roughly one hour (spread over one week.)   I'm clearly not ready. I'm not even close to ready. The way things are looking, there's no way that I'll be ready in time for Christmas.   What am I going do? Well, they always say when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Now,

   C took a day off work so we could spend some time together. During December we try to go to downtown Minneapolis to walk around. A department store has a yearly seasonal display on one of the upper floors. C likes to look at it.    It was a hectic morning. We had to buy a Christmas tree and get other errands done. We left for the city a little later than we wanted to. I was worried about traffic and about parking. It was Christmas and people were going to shop. I was hoping that places would not be too busy.    C is great to ride with as he seldom gets lost.He also knows a lot of different routes to get to places. It didn't take us too long before we were downtown. We found a good parking ramp close to everyplace we wanted to go.    We wandered through the skyways until we got to the department store. We wound around the different departments,taking mental notes of things we may want to look at later. We walked through the display.     Neither of us were hungry yet, so we

   Why does it seem at times that the person you most want to be around isn't? You drive down the highway. Someone passes you at about 100 miles per hour, yet there is no one around to cite them for speeding. You have what seems to be a dozen salespeople asking if you need help when you are just looking, but no one around when you need to get into a dressing room. When there's children running heedlessly, bereft of adult supervision.    I have been thinking of ways that I can get the incessant Christmas music,which is driving me and several of my coworkers nuts, turned off. Most of the ways included some plan for destroying the Muzak receiver with my trusty Louisville Slugger. The problem is that wondering the store with a baseball bat in winter is a bit conspicuous.    Then it hit me. I need someone, preferably several someones,to step up and complain. I need a group of well meaning, but easily offended people to make comments on how they find the Muzak offerings offensiv

   One of the ways I deal with the barrage of Christmas music I'm forced to listen to every day while I'm at work is to focus on the lyrics. Doing this prevents the tune from being stuck in my head, which would drive me crazy in a hurry. It's not hard to do, there are only so many songs and they repeat quite often. Some of the lyrics don't make sense to me. Today I'd like to share with you some of the lyrics that don't make sense. Maybe you can help me figure them out.   The first one is "It's a Marshmallow World". The lyric writer must have been thinking about lunch or maybe dessert with all the food references. "When the snow comes to cover the ground, It's a time for play, it's a whipped cream day, I wait for it all year round." Obviously, whoever wrote this does not live where there is actually snow. Unless you are a child, there is no playing when snow comes around. It's hard work shovelling,plowing or driving through t

   It's December, when Muzak turns completely to Christmas music for the month.People who work in retail are forced to listen to this for the entire shift. In order to keep from going crazy, you have to resort to several techniques. One of them is to tune the songs out. That's a good one, especially when the volume is low. Another one that I like to use is to analyze the lyrics.    I was listening to the song 'Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer' for the fourteenth time. A thought came into my head. Rudolph was a victim of bullying. I thought about how the story would go if it were written today. I'd like to present to you a version of the story of Rudolph if it happened today.   Rudolph was born with a rare condition called Altered Nasal Pigmentation. After several months of studies and visits to veterinarians who specialize in these types of conditions it was determined that there was nothing that could be done about it. Rudolph's nose would remain shiny.