Ho! Ho! Hope your mortgage payments are current!

Those who know me know I'm not the biggest fan of the holidays, mostly because I can't stand the commercialization and pressure to spend with no thought to where we're actually going to come up with the money.

So instead of gifts this year, I spent my time feeding homeless and displaced families a holiday meal. This is the sixth year Rock Bottom (my former employer) has put on this event. Families sit down to a nice meal with linen tablecloths, kids get to hang out with Santa, and everyone gets shoes, jackets and toiletries. They also have a professional photo taken together.

Here is a link to some footage from that day:

http://gannett.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/gannett-kare-3323-pub01-live/current/launch.html?maven_playerId=articleplayer&maven_referralPlaylistId=playlist&maven_referralObject=976387878

It's a nice time. I did it for Easter this year as well. I encourage everyone to do something like this around the holidays. It's the best kind of gift.

The next day I had to return to work. While our corporate office got the day after Christmas off, we had to come in. We had some of our busiest days on Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. What do I do for a living? I process mortgage foreclosures in Hennepin County. I suddenly understand the phrase There is no rest for the wicked.

I've always maintained that corporate responsibility is an oxymoron, but the juxtaposition between these two days was enough to show me that there is a lesser evil in the corporate world. And while I don't doubt that my employer has some charitable organization set up, I'm all about immediate gratification! I mean, c'mon! I'm an American, and it's Christmas after all!

Maybe Jesus drove a tow truck

I've been called a Scrooge on more occasions than I care to admit. I don't participate in the Secret Santa/Snowflake whatever-ness at work. I've never been into decorating trees. And I certainly don't condone the atmosphere of consumer spending and greed that accompanies the holidays.

This year things have changed. I have a Christmas station on my Pandora. I made lefse. The words "I love the holidays!" have actually come out of my mouth. There are a lot of reasons, but the one I would like to share seems to be the most unlikely: I celebrated the Solstice at the impound lot after a snow emergency.

A friend's out-of-town guest left his car on a snow emergency street and it was towed. My friend had no experience with this, but apparently the thought If anyone has had her car towed in this city, it would be Rebecca ran through her head. I agreed to go with them, and I knew what I was in for -- but hey! The City Pages said that it was the best people watching in town, and that's one of my favorite pastimes.

We spent three hours in line jumping up and down,

dancing and chatting with our fellow towees.

When it's -10 F, this is how you keep warm:

One dude kept his car running and we each took turns hanging out in it. It was a party.

Some other girls swapped boots every now and then to keep their feet warm.

This lady shared her towel with a dude without a hat.

(Apparently all of this was very newsworthy; my friend saw me dancing on the news.)

The thing that struck me most was how everyone there was in such a good mood! Not only were we all standing outside in the bitter cold to pay $140 to get our cars out of the lot, but we were standing outside in the bitter cold for THREE hours!

Our feeling of camaraderie was so strong that I was almost sad to say goodbye when it came time to get our cars. And that, my friends, is why I love the holidays! The most unlikely situations seem to be blessed.

Pardon our dust--this area of your world is closed for remodeling

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the San Diego Zoo. My favorite animals were the elephants, the black panther, and of course the hippopotamus. There were some cute baby bears there, which inevitably brought out the awww-how-cute in me.

(I'm not even going to try to tangent on zoos...let's just say it all depends on the personality of the animal. Hey, look at reality TV! I don't fit in, but there are several humans that do.)

Seeing these animals born in captivity made me wonder what natural habitat actually means. After a few generations of grizzly bears, will they even know that they might not belong there? The zoo keepers are doing their best to mimic their natural surroundings. Except for that weird stirring of instinct, what's to tell them that it's not their home?

Coincidentally I finished The City of Ember during that same week. It's a young adult novel, and the premise is this: A city was built underground to last 200 years in preparation for some disaster. During that time the instructions (given to the mayor to be passed down to each successor) were lost. Because of this, the people forgot where they came from while supplies dwindled from their limited storage. I won't spoil the ending.

What if the world we live in isn't really where we belong? What if we're living in a zoo? I wonder what would happen if we woke up tomorrow and things had drastically changed: the trees had purple leaves, the sky was green, and oil and water mixed (which I heard has happened). Would people even notice?

My friend once said that if a bomb went off in the street by our office most people would just keep working. I don't know if that's true, but the conversation took place on a day that a port-a-pottie was swinging from a crane about three stories above the ground. No one looked at it twice.

I don't know when we all stopped paying attention, but I'm guessing it's about the same time we started paying $1 for a bottle of tap water. We're all text messaging and listening to podcasts on our iPods while driving 65 mph down the freeway. (I cringe when I say I'm guilty of this -- except I was doing about 80.)

What gives me hope is that I'm running into more and more people who are aware of their surroundings. And this encourages me to do the same. Often I say I want to be around anyone who will make me a better person. They fall under this category. I guess I just want to do the same for others. So let's all keep our eyes open together: maybe pigs really can fly.

What kind of movie do you want to star in?

Moving sucks. Helping someone move sucks too, but it's the only way they'll help you move when you inevitably will have to endure the unfortunate adventure. But on this particular day, it wasn't such a mundane experience. A friend and I were driving in a giant moving truck down 35W at night when we saw lights flashing on the side of the road. She started to move over and slow down, when bam! We hit a couch in the middle of the road.

My friend's reaction was pretty natural..."I did the right thing right?!?" But really? A couch in the middle of the highway? Who saw that coming?

Later on in the evening we were driving down 94W to return me home and in the distance we saw a semi in front of us with its doors swinging wide open and no cargo in the back. And it was still barreling down the road at 55 mph. We were about to drive past the driver and flag him down when I noticed the bio hazard diamond on the side of the truck. Do I need to repeat that there was no cargo?

This all happened October 1. But it wasn't until I played Halo this weekend (I know - I played video games?) that these events came back to the front of my consciousness. Doesn't this remind you of something you would see in Resident Evil? I think so. And I'm sure these sort of things happen a lot more often than just once in a while. I just haven't been looking for them.

Many things are like that: hidden until you look for them. Life is what you make of it, after all.