A Keira Knightley Kind of Christmas:

Merry Christmas to one and all! I hope your holiday festivities are proceeding nicely. It's been interesting so far for me. Bucking tradition, my family and my uncle's family went to a Chinese buffet for dinner last night. There's nothing like watching adults jousting each other with tongs while trying to grab the best crab legs to put you in the holiday mood.

Today started out pretty normally. We opened the few presents that were under the tree. My cousins gave my brothers the same sweaters that I had bought for them. After lunch, my mom offered to treat us to a movie, so we took the money and headed to the theatre. Twenty minutes in "Big Fish", the picture suddenly turned upside-down and played backwards. Given that this is an unusual kind of film, the audience thought that either this was part of the movie or someone in the booth would fix it eventually. After about five minutes, people went out to get the manager, and it turns out that yes, some yahoo had loaded the reel upside-down and backwards. They wouldn't be able to fix it for this showing, but it would be ready at the next showing at 4pm. In the meantime, everyone in the theatre would receive two free tickets to any movie they wanted. So we postponed "Big Fish" for tomorrow and went straight to the video store and rented "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Bend It Like Beckham". Not too shabby for one day.

And now, a great excerpt from our car conversation:

Steve: "So nothing's open today?"
Me: "Nope."
Steve: "Not even the 24-hour drug stores?"
Me: "Well, maybe a couple of them, but I don't know which ones."
Steve (in a high whiney voice): "But what if I need condoms and penicillin?"
Me: "I don't think you'll likely be fighting an infection while having sex anytime soon." (I start laughing)
Steve: "Hey...it's not funny when it happens."

"Feelin' hot hot hot!"