Saturday, December 28, 2019
Happy Holidays 2019!
2019 will forever be known as the year the Schleppenbach brand went global. Well, to be fair, it will probably be known as the year Billy Ray Cyrus built a comeback off a song I have literally never heard but my friends tell me is super hot with their toddlers. But I did travel a lot this year. Work sent me to Shenzhen, China, where I enjoyed fantastic local traditions like eating chopped up meat with bones still in it (or as I call it, “choking surprise”) and talking shit about Americans in front of them without realizing they’ve learned enough Mandarin to safely detect shade. The same trip took me to Hong Kong before the protests started, such that my primary concern at the time was grabbing a minute to purchase new socks and underwear, since the Mandarin Oriental charges like $20 per sock for laundry service. I spent a good chunk of the summer at a trial in Sherman, Texas, which I understand is technically not another country, but does have its own flag and national anthem (Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” naturally). And then in October we actually took a vacation to Italy, where we thrilled at the Renaissance masterworks while suffering with the tragic realization that, due to our massive consumption of heavy cream sauces, we were unlikely to ever have that sexy Sistine Chapel body type. My primary takeaway from these trips was, of course, that people everywhere are really the same, except that the people other places hate us because we forget to use our indoor voices and constantly ask if things can be prepared gluten free.
I have it on good authority (by which I mean an article I wrote for my middle school newspaper), though, that people do celebrate Christmas all over the world. Some of them, to be fair, may call it Hanukkah or forego the traditional watching of the Hallmark Channel, but the basics of the celebration are pretty widespread. People get together with their family and friends to feast on amazing foods and secretly judge one another’s eating habits and choice of small talk. They decorate their homes like Chip and Joanna Gaines on a mescaline trip. And they share memories, like that time Peter surprised everyone by coming home for Christmas early one morning and making Folgers, only he had the wrong house and ended up narrowly missing the business end of a double barreled shotgun, or the one year when a five-year-old Tammy came downstairs wearing nothing but two Peanuts-themed Christmas stockings, and my God, dad, can’t you ever let me live that down, do we have to humiliate me in front of Stephen each and every Christmas? And the Millers? Dad, they don’t even have Amazon Prime.
So yeah, the holidays can be a stressful time. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t spent a Christmas or two banging away on some summary judgment motion that could mean the crucial difference between a company reporting $653 million or $654 million in annual profits, but I’ve also spent them lazing by a fire drinking hot cocoa with my mom and googling celebrity nip slips. I’m not sure which end of the spectrum we’ll hit this year, since I’ve just followed my boss to a different law firm, Dechert LLP, but frankly chances are I will enjoy it either way. I take pleasure in crossing things off of to-do lists the way some people like napping in the sunshine or masturbating to old episodes of Law & Order: SVU from back when Olivia had that terrible short haircut. But mostly, I just feel lucky to have great people like yourselves (except for you, Linda, you joy-sucking harpy) in my life for another warm and wonderful holiday season. Happy holidays and best wishes for a great 2020!
2019 will forever be known as the year the Schleppenbach brand went global. Well, to be fair, it will probably be known as the year Billy Ray Cyrus built a comeback off a song I have literally never heard but my friends tell me is super hot with their toddlers. But I did travel a lot this year. Work sent me to Shenzhen, China, where I enjoyed fantastic local traditions like eating chopped up meat with bones still in it (or as I call it, “choking surprise”) and talking shit about Americans in front of them without realizing they’ve learned enough Mandarin to safely detect shade. The same trip took me to Hong Kong before the protests started, such that my primary concern at the time was grabbing a minute to purchase new socks and underwear, since the Mandarin Oriental charges like $20 per sock for laundry service. I spent a good chunk of the summer at a trial in Sherman, Texas, which I understand is technically not another country, but does have its own flag and national anthem (Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” naturally). And then in October we actually took a vacation to Italy, where we thrilled at the Renaissance masterworks while suffering with the tragic realization that, due to our massive consumption of heavy cream sauces, we were unlikely to ever have that sexy Sistine Chapel body type. My primary takeaway from these trips was, of course, that people everywhere are really the same, except that the people other places hate us because we forget to use our indoor voices and constantly ask if things can be prepared gluten free.
I have it on good authority (by which I mean an article I wrote for my middle school newspaper), though, that people do celebrate Christmas all over the world. Some of them, to be fair, may call it Hanukkah or forego the traditional watching of the Hallmark Channel, but the basics of the celebration are pretty widespread. People get together with their family and friends to feast on amazing foods and secretly judge one another’s eating habits and choice of small talk. They decorate their homes like Chip and Joanna Gaines on a mescaline trip. And they share memories, like that time Peter surprised everyone by coming home for Christmas early one morning and making Folgers, only he had the wrong house and ended up narrowly missing the business end of a double barreled shotgun, or the one year when a five-year-old Tammy came downstairs wearing nothing but two Peanuts-themed Christmas stockings, and my God, dad, can’t you ever let me live that down, do we have to humiliate me in front of Stephen each and every Christmas? And the Millers? Dad, they don’t even have Amazon Prime.
So yeah, the holidays can be a stressful time. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t spent a Christmas or two banging away on some summary judgment motion that could mean the crucial difference between a company reporting $653 million or $654 million in annual profits, but I’ve also spent them lazing by a fire drinking hot cocoa with my mom and googling celebrity nip slips. I’m not sure which end of the spectrum we’ll hit this year, since I’ve just followed my boss to a different law firm, Dechert LLP, but frankly chances are I will enjoy it either way. I take pleasure in crossing things off of to-do lists the way some people like napping in the sunshine or masturbating to old episodes of Law & Order: SVU from back when Olivia had that terrible short haircut. But mostly, I just feel lucky to have great people like yourselves (except for you, Linda, you joy-sucking harpy) in my life for another warm and wonderful holiday season. Happy holidays and best wishes for a great 2020!
Sunday, December 22, 2019
A Christmas Miracle
So I've forgotten to post for a while, meaning that I will now basically cut straight from Thanksgiving to Christmas, just like a hit NBC sitcom from the '90s. I'll still be less exclusively white, though.
Last night we had our family Christmas before Ian and my sister's family hit the road. It's interesting how the holidays have morphed for me from an occasion where I desperately hope someone will buy me a Generra Hypercolor shirt to a time when I just kind of hope no one gets me anything so I don't feel bad about my own basic inability to reciprocate gestures of affection. But last night was good on that front -- mainly we watched the children open presents in sequence while discouraging them from actually playing with them so that we could get through everything in under six hours. Ian did get me a small present, but I responded in my classic style of retroactively designating a prior gift as his Christmas present. (Viva la Italy.) So as nights go, it was fairly silent and holy.
For actual Christmas, it will probably just be me, my mom, and the two dogs, who may well team up to try to murder us. But here's hoping they don't, as we have lots of television we plan to binge. I mean, three hundred plus episodes of Murder, She Wrote aren't going to watch themselves.
So I've forgotten to post for a while, meaning that I will now basically cut straight from Thanksgiving to Christmas, just like a hit NBC sitcom from the '90s. I'll still be less exclusively white, though.
Last night we had our family Christmas before Ian and my sister's family hit the road. It's interesting how the holidays have morphed for me from an occasion where I desperately hope someone will buy me a Generra Hypercolor shirt to a time when I just kind of hope no one gets me anything so I don't feel bad about my own basic inability to reciprocate gestures of affection. But last night was good on that front -- mainly we watched the children open presents in sequence while discouraging them from actually playing with them so that we could get through everything in under six hours. Ian did get me a small present, but I responded in my classic style of retroactively designating a prior gift as his Christmas present. (Viva la Italy.) So as nights go, it was fairly silent and holy.
For actual Christmas, it will probably just be me, my mom, and the two dogs, who may well team up to try to murder us. But here's hoping they don't, as we have lots of television we plan to binge. I mean, three hundred plus episodes of Murder, She Wrote aren't going to watch themselves.
