This morning's trip to the polls was a break from the caravan tradition my father and I kept for three years. I've moved to a new ward, so instead of the quiet little Baptist church my polling center was an elementary school across town. Entering buildings intended for children is always a jarring experience if you're never around them. As I approached, I tried to match the school façade before me to the one I'd seen in the distance from the road for so many years; the latter, of course, was very much larger. I followed election signs into a room that, for a kid, would have stretched from wall to wall like a ballroom, only now it was slightly larger than a luxury phone booth. Cramped, two tables. I trolled on up to the table bearing my ward and precinct.

"Last name?" asked one of five dear ladies at the table.

"Ubaldi." I worked to get it out right, as my speech in early morning can be adenoidal, complete with glottal stops.

"Ubaldi..." she said knowingly, nodding. Did I recognize her? Not completely. I recognized that I should have recognized her. I think she recognized me.

"Democrat or Republican?" asked dear lady number two.

"Republican." That one came loud and clear. A certain silence fell on the room. My first expectation, upon entering any public education facility, is that the Grand Old Party is not an association to which the righteous belong. But then, these were dear ladies, not teachers. For all I know, they might have been exhaling in relief that one more youth decided that he didn't need to dedicate his life to fighting the 'grups.

A third dear lady handed me my ballot, and a-punching I went. I hit 'em all, even the judges running unopposed, knocking down a couple of frivolous county levies in the process. Finished, I removed the ballot from the punch sleeve to double-check for accuracy and loose chads - something I've done since my first non-absentee vote on November 7, 2000, before it became incumbent upon Broward County, Florida to do the thinking for voters. Inside the privacy slip went the ballot, which I handed off to a fourth dear lady, who dropped it down through the slot of a locked bin. Mutual thank-yous.

Nearly out the door, I stopped, turned, dodged a few voters, remembering something. I looked at the second table, closer to the door and closer to me. From the door, I tried to catch the attention of a young poll worker turned to adjust a booth, no older than high school age. Timid, she did a double-take, then gave me a curious look, then blushed, then looked at the floor. Then she sat down. No luck. I moved close to the table and turned to the oldest dear lady.

"Excuse me - this is going to sound a little silly, but would you happen to have any of those 'I Voted Today!' stickers?" A little silly?

"Oh, " she laughed, "no! No. We don't happen to have any of those. I'm sorry."

"That's a shame," I smiled. "That's the best part." Of course, the adhesive never holds on those damned things. By lunchtime, you've picked yours up off from somewhere on the floor at least ten times. But that's part of the fun of wearing civic advocacy on your sleeve - fun not to be had today. I turned and walked to the door, thanking her over my shoulder, and stepped out.

I had only a few seconds to regard my failed public appeal for voting stickers before an older man walked out of the room just behind me and called my name. He must have been working the polls, too - and I must have missed him. He's one of our boys, a local Republican. We had a brief chat about his post on the AFL-CIO board, how it's all a matter of learning to get along down there. Good man. As is the case with more members than I'd care to admit, his duties legitimately keep him away from meetings and greater involvement with us. But he pays his dues, and he followed me out to shake hands and say hello. It was a fine end note for the poll visit.

So with the anecdotes in memory, I wait. Will Ed Herman win the right to challenge Dennis Kucinich for Ohio's 10th Congressional District? Will the Bush campaign finally have a Democrat to knock about? We'll know soon enough. With or without a sticker.

A high of fifty-five degrees may have some of you reaching for overcoats, but in the middle of an Ohio February, it's literally manna from heaven. As is the circumstance for any deposite of warm air during winter, today's weather is the tip of a cold front swinging down from north. By tomorrow, temperatures will plummet to and remain in the low to mid-thirties, and Cleveland will be blanketed once again in bank after bank of snow. But as I said - these days are rare treats, and even the pensive romantics can learn to live in the moment for a few hours. No sooner did I step into the office this morning than our second-command send me to Starbucks.

We're a coffee-swilling bunch, we band of half-brothers, enough to consider dedicating an office wall to line after regimented line of inkstamped coffee machines - the same conquest accounting you'd find on a fighter-bomber's nose. We buy $40 Mister Coffee machines and run them straight into the ground; twelve cups in the morning, at least six at the stroke of three o'clock, more if we're on a roll or expecting visitors. Remember that scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett's Mammy whips the workhorse into collapse? Imagine that, minus a razed Tara. (Alright, minus several other things - but the principle is right.) I've witnessed a succession of three machines in as many years. Their deaths are slow and not without appeals to pathos; brewing a full pot takes nearly half an hour, overflows are common. Funny noises start to accompany the act, too, as if the poor appliance were pleading to be put out of its misery.

The third expiration had finally become undeniable this week. We unplugged the weakened beast yesterday; burial with full honors were this morning. The boss wants to look into the professional grade for a replacement; to the O'Hara analogy, a Clydesdale instead of our usual show pony. We ordered from a catalog. All this time, of course, no coffee was being brewed for our insatiable, collective appetite for caffeination. Nobody had the shakes - honestly, I can go days without the stuff - but to put it politely, I've never actually been ordered to hit the 'Bucks for a deal.

Back out into the beautiful day, leaving my fall-and-winter coat inside and stepping out into mild sunshine with my blue suit, white button-down and appropriate flower blossom tie. I dropped the windows a couple of inches as we've barely broken fifty - but the double-whammy of an unseasonable thaw and a cafe Americano after relatively long periods without either put a spring into my step that ought to last for days.

To top it all off, our Number Two surprised us all with two newly purchased company digital cameras. They're cheap little things, a pair of Kodak EasyShare CX6200s: two megapixels, modest picture quality. But they're the Brownie of digitals: handy, tiny, you-can-literally-only-do-three-things simple and unbelievably fun to use. I've been debating on whether to invest in a digital unit; convenience was a major factor and having experienced it firsthand, I'm ready to start setting aside the money. My snapshots here have been pushed, burned and dodged in Photoshop, but the process took less than five minutes.

I've typed up what pass for movie reviews in this space before; though the movies have been playing regularly, it's been awhile since my last film footnote. This weekend was cold but beautiful - sunny, blue skies - and three days long. How did I spend a good chunk of it? Trying to complete a computer upgrade four times. Why four times, you ask? Well, each successive attempt was different, quicker and more comically agonizing than the last. Three very colorful disasters. Number Four is a charm, it seems; it's holding up.

How did this all happen, you insist? Did I ever tell you about the time I walked into my college dormitory lobby late one Friday night just as a drunk began to shake 20-ounce, glass juice bottles out of a vending machine? A crowd gathered as he rocked the unit back and forth, then rushed the half-broken pile of swag in the kind of snatch-and-scatter bread line mania that nobody talks about afterward. I gingerly picked up Cran-Raspberry - sticky outside and room-temperature inside, but good at one in the morning. The next day, I passed through the lobby again and decided to make a proper transaction.

In went my dollar twenty-five. Out came nothing. I backed away, taking the hint.

I don't believe in karmic retribution, but early on God relayed to me the fact that whenever I cut corners a bit, he extracts his pound of flesh and we're even again. And then this weekend's adventure in computer twiddlings that go awry in ways so unlikely that even a compulsive gambler wouldn't touch the odds. Do the math.

I rented two movies. Shrek was the first. Funny, in a comfortingly mild way; but ever so happy. Lighthearted beginning; happy ending. The DVD included a three-minute musical with all the characters trying their hand at karaoke - even the bad guys who are, of course, just animated actors. Three minutes. It was not unlike mainlining good times and great laughs. Nearly too much happiness at once. But for Pete's sake, one damned happy sitting. That was Saturday.

Tonight I watched Seabiscuit, a movie one enjoys for exactly the same reasons as Star Wars: it's heroic fiction following the exploits of a delightfully stock cast, steeped in its own airtight mythology. Even the leads are close parallels, an obscure prodigy played by Toby Maguire and his eccentric mentor - in this case split into Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper. There's the "thing" they do, around which three-quarters of the dialogue is wrapped: swinging lightsabers for Star Wars, racing horses for Seabiscuit. Technique, focus, discipline, and faith are what Maguire is taught. Quite the Zen appeal, especially when he's made to run a lap in pitch darkness. What's that, Mr. Cooper? He's supposed to "trust his feelings"?

Before the defining match race, our hero Maguire is incapacitated and a fellow jockey steps in to ride the horse. But as Maguire coaches his surrogate from a hospital bed, it's obvious that victory has nothing to do with whose behind is planted in the saddle. The ending is full of happiness and redemption, and considering the movie's Great Depression backdrop, we rise from our seats having been shown that America's deliverance came from Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Seabiscuit. May the horse be with you.

Happy and heartfelt works. I keep passing Ran in the video store but I've seen it before, and it's artful precisely in its bleakness. Noir and cynicism is for warmer weather. What will my next encounter from happy cinema entail? Provided I can find it: The Tuskegee Airmen.

Tim Blair and commenters have been exposed - hopefully not fatally - to the auto-adulatory, terminally ironic world of Postmodernism. I survived extended periods of contact during my fine art undergraduate years by refusing, senior year, to do reading assignments, including an entire book. One professor gave up and let me stew through class while another - my favorite instructor, in fact - kindly referred to me as "theory-free." He coined this phrase in an introduction to the painting faculty as they stood before my work one afternoon. I was not close to any of the other professors, nor they to me; but I can't shake the impression that when "theory-free" settled in, the looks on their faces resembled those of priests whose soon-to-graduate acolyte has just announced that he doesn't really care for all that talk of holy men and transubstantiation.

I enjoyed painting, don't misunderstand: it was the insipid motivations for and meanings of painting ("Yes, it's a pretty picture. But why?") being foisted on me that drew out the rebellion. That favorite professor of mine knew theory, but his focus - and preference - was of Modernist theory. Paint. Line. Form. He never critiqued a single one of my canvases on account of what it meant, but on what the picture was doing. I loved that.

Nonsensical one-upmanship continues at its own peril. Want smudge marks on the bounds of absurdity? John Derbyshire responded in kind to the 2000 Turner Award-winning, Blue Ribbon farce, Martin Creed's Lights Going on and Off:

What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

But of course, Derbyshire's no Postmodernist: what he wrote took time and talent.

Heaven has an Avon lady and she delivered tonight: during my biweekly evening walk the snow fell as if from a celestial powder-puff. Angels have formals too, you know (cue empyrean soft jazz).

Not a soul outside, cars trundling slowly through blanketed streets. Cold - teens cold - driven by light gusts of wind. This is the January I know.

Nearly two years ago I was charged with the safekeeping of the North Olmsted Republican Organization's two scrapbooks. It's a fairly consistent and rich documentation of events from 1966, major and minor; evidence ranging from newspaper clippings to campaign literature, press prints to programs and fliers.

I'll be honest with you: photographs, especially older ones, fascinate me. If I'm a guest at someone's home, I can guarantee that by the time the evening has passed, I will have thoroughly examined family prints in the living room at least once or twice. The passage of time is always at strange odds with someone's physical identity in a given photograph: Did they really look like that way back when? Were their clothes and hairstyle just for the occasion? Had they been caught at an odd angle?

And, for the people you don't know, the timeless: Just who in the hell was that guy? When I first received the scrapbooks I was relatively unfamiliar with the club's members - let alone North Olmsted's movers and shakers. And trust me, they've been moving and shaking for decades. But I'm the first in my family to manifestly enter politics, so until my return from college, the city's political scene remained an entirely different world. Some photographs found their way into the group's monthly newsletter; I haven't looked at it much since it came into my possession. But after three years in the party - and having branched out into the city community - I recognized quite a few more faces when I paged through it last night. One particularly startling realization was that a woman I noted during my first scrapbook investigation, no more than thirty in a couple of photographs from 1973, serves with me on the Civil Service Commission. Small world.

And, of course, the national political scene two years ago was not exactly what it is today. I didn't pass by two very interesting snapshots this time around. Recognize anyone?

That's right: standing in the middle was Ohio 10th District Congressman, presidential candidate and tinfoil hatter, Dennis Kucinich. They didn't call him the "Boy Mayor" a few years later for nothing. Here he stood with a gaggle of local Democrats and the former Mrs. Kucinich:

I don't know what's more dumbfounding: that Dennis was present for a Republican event nowhere near his district - the now-defunct, biennial Inaugural Ball - or that the ball drew nearly 600 in attendance. As newly elected president of the North Olmsted Republicans, I have faith in the city and the club to generate dedication and support anew, as younger generations gradually settle in. But one year from next month, I don't know if we'll see six hundred - or Dennis Kucinich - at one of our events.

Last but not least:

Priceless. When was the last time any newspaper had enough brass to call it "gladhanding"? Journalists, take note.

Have I any New Year's resolutions? Few - I resolve to do better all through the year, and look down on plying self-improvement by the date. One resolution that I do try to keep is to enjoy every holiday, special occasion and summer without worrying if each will top the last one. Care of my parents, I hold tradition in high esteem; but I entrust foresight to optimism, too. Something is never "the best," to me; it's just "the best yet."

Sometimes it's a difficult resolution to honor - though not so much with the duds. My pair of rose-colored glasses works perfectly for hindsight. It's the truly special times that wreck the curve. Especially a Christmas like this one.

Since late November I'd been following Cleveland's forecast for weeks, day by day, cheering on cold weather and snow, waving my hands to bid warm weather get the hell out of Northeast Ohio. On Christmas Eve Eve, forecasters were tepid on the prospects for a truly wintry 25th. Rain was coming down in sheets, and all I could think of was what sort of snowy wonderland that precipitation would have made had it come down just a little colder. But by seven-thirty that night, as I roamed the town with my buddy Ed, just in from Albany, the rain changed. Flakes were gigantic, wet and brought a lot of friends with them. That first wave remained steady until midnight.

Late afternoon Christmas Eve, heavy clouds returned with such a tireless deluge that they made the night before look like a thirty-second promo spot. My father and I stood outside for a few minutes while we waited for Mom. We were wearing our Sunday best, about to embark on another night of a fifteen-year tradition: Dinner at The Olive Garden at five o'clock, followed by a "Lessons and Carols" service at my Baptist church. Return home close to nine-thirty; settle in for eggnog, sweets and George C. Scott's 1984 masterful television production of A Christmas Carol. Quietly distribute gifts underneath the tree, trying not to glance at everyone else's handiwork. Then off to bed for sleep and requisite dancing sugar-plums.

In that moment where my father and I admired the white world around us, as fine clouds of snow blew from rooftops and fell in wet waves to gild trees, I was tempted to wrap my arms around this Christmas Eve - surely the most beautiful I could remember - and set it up in judgment of all those succeeding it. I remembered the resolution. That didn't make the moment any less precious (or fleeting). But it helped, and I shook off any wist as we all must, by looking forward - in this case, Christmas Day.

I've never been party to one of those "biggie" gifts. As most of us have, I started shopping in the first grade with Kiddie's Christmas Corner, an in-school bazaar with all manner of quaint presents children buy their parents and siblings. Scented candles, paperweights; yeah, you've been there before. Little things. Soon enough I had graduated to referencing lists my mother, father and sister made. My selections seemed to mature in college; Christmas of 1998, when I was working at the Nature Company, stands out. I don't think took one step beyond the store shopping for my family, but it worked well: I saved money with an employee discount and took advantage of the store's varied stock. Besides, I only worked there one year - by the time the novelty of votive candles, oil lamps and elongated rabbit pillows wore off, I was buying presents for the next year's Christmas somewhere else. I've been getting better - more relevant, more thoughtful, more memorable - each year. I hope.

If not, this year's gift would make up for it.

A couple of years ago, I cast off an old computer of mine to my parents. Like they all are, this one - a Gateway 300 - was a good looker in its day. These days, it could barely get out of its own way. My mother tolerates computers; my father enjoys them but doesn't obsess, and would not think of himself as a hobbyist. Neither one is a spendthrift nor eager to shell out any amount of money with two or more digits. In other words, the clunky, clumsy, out-of-date jalopy sputtering its way through the simplest of modern processes managed to keep justifying its existence, and would probably have stayed on their upstairs office desk for several more months if not for my intervention.

Now, the three of us had been working on buying a new computer. With the intention of building one ourselves, my father and I had tallied up several prospective hardware lists. We tallied and considered, tallied and considered, and would always end the consideration of tallyings with a tabling of the business. This went on for several months. When the question of buying Christmas gifts for my father finally came, I came up with a brilliant scheme: I'd split the cost with my mother through her separate checking account, purchase and assemble the hardware myself, then surprise the socks off of Dad on Christmas morning. The act of surprise, I'd need to fine-tune. Building a rig, on the other hand, would be a cinch.

Until recently my knowledge of computers was limited to what I saw on the monitor. I couldn't tell you what all the shiny little boxes and widgets inside a computer were, what they did or where they came from. Miraculously, my ignorance was dashed like Saul knocked off from his horse in the spring of 2001 when my new boss instructed me to take three computers - ponderous 166MHz dinosaurs - and replace their innards with a trio of shiny-new Pentium III, 900MHz rocket engines. It was a standard construction project: nothing went exactly as planned. I struggled, I yelled, I cursed: I succeeded, eventually. I've since become the resident technology sage for our small business, skimming the computing headlines, learning a trick or two; both saving the office's skin and screwing up royally more than once. I've put together about ten complete computers from scratch since, many more modifications for existing rigs. I use wholesalers NewEgg for everything I can. (They beat the daylights out of Global and TigerDirect in both price and service - I highly recommend them.)

Alongside my regular tech research, I'll occasionally check hardware price points by assembling a computer with NewEgg's catalog. Finding a performance sweet spot is a bit of a game, and after ten computers, actually throwing one together carries a certain kitchen-counter pride. I've got it down pretty well:

Homemade Desktop Computer

(Specific ingredients may vary)

1 Maxtop Mid-Tower Case
1 Epox EP-8K9AI motherboard
1 AMD Athlon XP 2600+ chip
1 KDS 15" LCD monitor
1 512MB stick 333-MHz DDRAM
2 Zalman 8mm case fans
1 Zalman CPU heat sink
1 Zalman 300W power supply
Assorted drives; Plextor CD-RW, Maxtor IDE, Mitsumi 3 1/2" Floppy
Microsoft Keyboard, Mouse and operating system

Pour glass of wine or, for nondrinkers, cup of coffee; sip throughout process.

On a static-free surface, remove motherboard from wrapping and fit with processor. Liberally apply thermal grease to processor; attach sink to processor. Shove RAM stick inside slot on motherboard. Set aside.

Pull monitor, mouse and keyboard out of respective boxes. Spend twenty-five minutes carefully peeling off tenacious sticker on top-front frame of monitor, ten more using Goo-Gone to remove residue. Set aside.

Set oven temperature to 425 degrees.

On plush carpet floor, open case. Fasten case fans in strategic locations; install power supply. Secure motherboard inside case. Punch out one 5 1/4" bay cover; slide CD-RW in cavity. Slide floppy drive in 3 1/2" cavity. Attach hard drive to interior 5 1/4" bay. Connect male ends of power supply's cable snake to female plugs of hardware pieces; connect IDE ribbons. With much care, deliberation and frustration, slowly connect case's LED and USB wires to motherboard. Double and triple-check USB wires, so as not to discover what sort of "damage" is caused to motherboard by incorrect circuit.

Think better of oven use; turn oven off.

Close case, tightly securing panels. Connect mouse, keyboard and monitor to case. Attach AC cords to case and monitor; plug cords into electrical socket.

Activate computer, install software. Marvel at affordability, ease of construction and aesthetic triumph of computer components. Season to taste with printer, scanner, webcam, palm pilot dock, joystick, speakers, system tools, multimedia programs, games, geneology applications, thousands of inbound e-mail messages, desktop themes, screen savers, funny programs from son-in-law. Serves as many as can crowd around in small, upstairs office.

Betty Crocker recipe-purchase division, I've reserved for you a special place on my answering machine. I won't even hold my breath.

I finished building the computer by the second week of December. Delivery to my parent's house and presentation under the tree were the real challenges; we're traditionalists, my family and I, and presents are kept secret until they're unwrapped. Even though my father and I had spent months writing up consists for a new computer, finding it bow-bedecked on Christmas morning was farthest from his mind.

Sneaking the computer into the spare room where I'd be staying turned out to be easy. I drove over on the afternoon of Christmas Eve with luggage and wrapped boxes in tow; all I needed to do was, with the help of my mother, make a silly fuss about running presents upstairs. Dad was back in the kitchen baking cinnamon rolls when I arrived, so he just smiled and shook his head when I closed the kitchen off from the living room behind louvered doors and made four trips - in the front door, up the stairs, down the hall, back down the stairs, out the door. I pushed the case, the monitor and a bag holding smaller accessories behind the spare room bed. My mother had left a pile of blankets for me on an endtable, so I draped one over the whole lot. They'd stay invisible until six o'clock the next morning.

The Olive Garden became our Christmas Eve dinner fare of choice more out of convenience and adequacy than attraction. Now that I've had opportunities over the last few years to really investigate some of the finer grills in the region, I can doubly attest that the Olive Garden is not where Italians go for a taste of home. The food is decent; not remarkable. Since I had the benefit of eating scallops to die for in October and mouth-watering sushi over Thanksgiving, the seafood portafino on Christmas Eve scored smack-dab in the middle of "Eh."

You want to show class to Italians? Know how to pour wine. When my grandfather was still alive, he gave some unlucky low-end restaurant waiter a sit-down primer on how to bloody well pour wine, thank you very much. I noted to my parents how the waitress poured their wine like you glub-glub out a plastic bottle of 50/50. Did she show the host the bottle, make and year of the wine he was about to drink? No. Did she uncork the bottle predicated only by his approval? No. Upon selection, did she "pour the cork" for the host and allow him to taste it? No. After his approval of its taste, did she proceed to serve wine to ladies first, then men, and then the host? No. To be fair to the girl, as I observed after the wine glub-glub-glubbing, management for this level of restaurant never knows how many dining guests would not only stare in wonderment at a waiter engaging in this strange ritual, but might protest that he "Just get on with it!" Thus, in Olive Garden, one is glub-glubbed a glass of fine wine.

And yet we go to the Olive Garden every year. Why not? We may know better about the trade, but we're not snobs. It's close, the price is right, and the food fills you up. This time, too, we could sing along with Christmas songs piped over the PA, glance outside at the tiny blizzard and sigh before gobbling another forkful.

The service at church went well. "Lessons and Carols" is another long-standing tradition, an alternation between scripture readings and carols sung by the choir, occasionally joined by the congregation. It ends on a soft singing of "Silent Night," when lights have been dimmed and candles are lit. The effect, to put it mildly, is humbling. Service ended, we said our hellos and our goodbyes, and returned home. A Christmas Carol was as powerful as it always is; Scott is a man to remember for being the American who played Scrooge better than any Englishman ever could. And soon the night had ended.

Before I had fully fallen asleep, both cats had settling at the foot of the bed. I love them dearly, but between me and the two of them, that single-size mattress didn't have much real estate to offer. They probably slept better than I did, twisted like a banana in a grade school lunchbag stuffed with a sandwich, chips, juicebox and napkins.

I shook myself awake at an early hour. I didn't check the clock, but it was close enough to six o'clock. The house was silent, and that's what mattered. I made enough of a creaking on the hallway floorboards that my parents stirred - fully prepared with an alibi, I whispered back my intention to "feed the cats." It was true enough. Those rascals might spent most of a night comatose, but at any time past four in the morning, movement towards the basement - where their food is - will rouse them. Before I was even at the foot of the basement stairs, each cat had one of my flanks. They ate their food, and I tiptoed back upstairs. In three trips, I gathered the computer's separate pieces. I set the case on the floor, the monitor and keyboard on a chair - not exactly ergonomic, but it was a fine presentation. I stuck a few adhesive bows on the monitor, keyboard and case; then stepped back.

The computer was on the far side of the tree from the stairway, so my father would need to actually move into the living room to find it. I chose that corner of the living room not only for the tactical position but for the significance; that was the spot he used when he bought me and my sister a computer in 1986, when we were so dazzled by mountains of resplendent boxes that he actually had to point it out to us. The final touch was another nod to history. Christmas morning seventeen years ago, Dad had coded a message from Santa in a simple, auto-executing batch file to play for us as the computer wound itself up. I took the gesture one step further. When my father finally laid his laugh-lined eyes on his Christmas present, the picture below is what was on the monitor:

Get my old man and his selflessness: his show of appreciation for the desktop background was to remark what a shame it'd be when the season ended, forcing a change of the desktop. Of course, I'm the kid whose eyes welled up with tears when his father told him Santa Claus wasn't real - not because the seven-year-old was hurt, but because his folks "wouldn't have anyone to pretend for any more." Ah, well then, just load it back on come mid-November. Love you, Dad.

What's really amazing about the screen I put together is that every graphic, save for the letter, came from the internet. "Desktop items," "Miracle on 34th Street," "Christmas Card," "Holly Christmas." A little sifting; voila. This would not have been possible even couple of years ago, before high-resolution graphics became more common. They're not even common today - though how long can that last? I could get used to making Google collages, you know.

I skipped a Christmas list for this year. I'd like to consider myself a simple man, and my one expensive hobby of audio recording and editing is physically complete - it won't get another dime. So these days I'd just like to see my bills and debts paid. I mentioned two things: a shoe-shine kit and a wicker basket for dirty towels. My folks were kind enough to get both, and gave me an assortment of inexpensive home items; a book on Tolkien's linguistics, a couple shirts. The prize was a gift I hadn't expected (isn't it always that way?). The label read "TO: MIKE / FROM: GRANDPA." My grandfather died in 2001, and I've already received a good number of his possessions from my grandmother. I tore the wrapping off and found myself looking at a turquoise binder, bearing this photograph and the title Giacomo Ubaldi: His Words. Inside, ringbound, were ninety-three photocopied pages'-worth of my grandfather's life.

I'd forgotten: my mother and father had driven down to New York City to visit my grandmother in her Astoria home earlier this year. Looking over some of grandpa's old things, she drew my father's attention to a stack of typewritten, loose-leaf papers. "It's your father's autobiography," she said. My father was immediately struck by a memory, decades ago, of catching Grandpa scratching notes on a memo pad.

"What are you doing, Dad?"

My grandfather smirked, leaned forward and curled his hand over the paper. He turned, straightened up, still smiling, and replied in his famous Just a Little Angel voice, "writing my memoirs."

Grandpa put out a book of his professional expertise with Elizabeth Crossman - but the story of his life, toiled on in spare moments and then stashed away?

Jack Ubaldi's story began in the 1910s with his childhood and emigration in 1918 and ended in 1976, two years after the family's favorite son - Jack's nephew, the Father Renato Piazza - died suddenly of a heart attack at 42. Renato was the sort of priest that the Catholic church needs - has always needed. Bright, effusive, musical, down-to-earth: Legend has it, a host once cordially asked Renato what he thought of a Monsignor's homily. "Oh, it was so much bullshit," he laughed. It's no wonder that Renato touched more than his share of souls.

The memoirs are a fascinating read; my grandfather was intelligent, and his insight and vocabulary go far beyond his eighth-grade education. Grandpa once told my father that as a butcher in Greenwich Village, he enjoyed a predominantly intellectual clientele; he made it a point to resist feeling resentment for their greater education and livelihood. Instead, he kept his ears open and learned everything he could from them. That decision shows in his writing.

Missing, unfortunately, are the last twenty-five years of Grandpa's life. Nonetheless, his work doesn't deserve the shelf life it led for a quarter-century. My father and I have decided to take the memoirs, edit for grammar and, because Dad has come to be the epic chronicler of the Ubaldi family, add italicized asides to stories where my father knows of perspectives from other members of the family and additional details from Grandpa himself, who for whatever reason didn't include them on paper. It will be some work, but the least a loving family can do.

My sister moved to Maryland two years ago and was wed in August of 2002, so I suppose a purist would consider Ubaldi household traditions in slight departure from the norm. Any of you out there? Well, go ahead and gloat: we're just as happy to have begun adding to our holiday routine. My sister's mother-in-law lives in Aliquippa, just outside of Pittsburgh; Pittsburgh as a reasonable - if downright asymmetrical - halfway point. It's to our advantage: only two hours, versus at least six for my sister and her husband. A two-hour trip is nice and two hour trip is short, especially you've made more journeys on the road exceeding five or six hours than not in your lifetime.

We left late Sunday morning and soon arrived, to the barking of dogs and the hugging of family, in Aliquippa. We had a nice cold lunch - punctuated by some piping-hot turkey - before retiring to the family room and beginning what may be known in future years as Christmas II.

Ever the natural accountant, my sister played Santa and duly distributed presents.

It was one of those gift exchanges where everybody makes out pretty good; I was given more than a few things I need for the apartment, as well as a few things to simply enjoy. My brother-in-law might have heard through the grapevine that my home improvement collection was hodge-podge where it wasn't left over from Christmas 1988, when my father gave me a clutch of pee-wee tools. The prize went to my sister, the Bargain Hunter - Boba Cheap? - who managed to find a decent microwave oven at Kohl's for twenty dollars. Twenty bucks, and now I can defrost, reheat, radiate and explode marshmallows with the best.

The most memorable gift, however, came before the exchange; it was spoken, unintentional, and over in ten seconds. A week before, my sister had flown to Chicago with a group of music instructor colleagues for The Midwest Clinic band and orchestra conference. At some point during the event, she explained to me, she bumped into Dr. John Laverty, Director of Bands at both mine and my sister's alma mater, Syracuse University. Laverty told her that a gaggle of Syracuse alumni was in for the conference and had planned to go out to lunch; my sister was with her own group and knew nothing of time and place. Though she ended up not going, Laverty had this bit of trivia to offer: the alumni in Chicago were a few years younger than her and he noted that they "didn't remember you, but rather your brother."

Remembered me? See, at Syracuse, I majored in fine art - not music. I was lucky enough, however, to take twenty-one credits of music courses during my junior and senior years. For most of the time, I remained a competitive - but quiet - outsider. The Setnor School of Music is totally self-contained inside Crouse College, a magnificent Romanesque building set on the head of a cliff; with brick walls, stained-glass windows and copper rooftops; filled with a small troupe of goofy, admirably single-minded musicians. The kids might be considered cliquish if they weren't so awkward.

It's an interesting lot. I never really fit in at the art school - headquartered in the Shaffer Art Building - nor really wanted to once I'd scoped the people out. Guys seemed either too stuffy (remember, my hair had begun a trek down my back in those days) or too wild for my sensibilities (I've always been straight-laced and dry). Most of the art-scoundrels were harmless, cheerful rogues like my roommate, Devin Clark. But, as with Devin, I had little in common with them or the bohemian scene on nights and weekends. Girls in the school were a peculiar slice of the university's population. Not many were much to look at. Of the few that were, I honestly can't remember one in any given art class that wasn't either taken, or unreadable, or strange, or all three. Like much of life on campus, everybody seemed to wear a game face.

Not quite so with the music students. In what can only be understood as cosmic irony, three-quarters of the girls in the halls of Crouse were attractive, and half of those were heart-poundingly beautiful for any reason imaginable. Most of the guys, in turn, looked like rejects from auditions for Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor. Nebbish and dorky with funny sweaters, too-short pants with white socks and boat shoes, they kept a certain charm. A good deal of them saw their bookishness pay off: well, come on, they were talented musicians. Others, spending nights and Saturdays in the immensely popular marching band, socialized their way through undergrad years to become respectable, eccentric dudes. You know, like academic musicians and band directors.

I was lucky enough to take several classes with underclassmen; I was the upperclass art guy, the fashionable mystery man with spiky hair that changed colors, earrings and a chain wallet. I suppose I'm an adequate saxophonist at the undergraduate level but, luckily, didn't do much of that, instead taking classes that required a good ear and a head for facts and reasoning - both of which are strengths. I distinguished myself musically, I'm proud to say, and as far as I know am the only non-music major in the school to have ever jumped from the first semester of diatonic sight-singing to the fourth and final semester of atonal sight-singing. Lord knows I had shoes to fill - and coattails to ride. My sister, humble, dear and hard-working, had won the hearts of Crouse's faculty when she began here, five years before anyone knew who in world I was. Nowhere else in college did I hear "Oh, you must be her brother" so many times.

But according to Laverty, I was remembered. Back in school, I did become aware of some quiet admiration in the ranks of the freshman girls. People who know me will probably protest to the contrary, but I sometimes figure that even if I were fish-eyed, bow-legged, hair-lipped, horned, fanged, stuttering and three-armed - but yet a confident senior - I'd still hear a rumor about a bunch of girls telling the one who sat next to me in History of Music II how lucky she was.

So I was remembered. To think I'd called my sister before she left for Chicago, giving her instructions to pop one of those Crouse girls - a daffy tease with a heart of bronze - in the nose if she bumped into her.

Remembered. In the cap slides the feather. Move on, left foot first.

By the time we finished unwrapping gifts, my sister's and her husband's dogs - a stout, male black lab and a spindly, female yellow lab puppy - settled down before finally sprawling on the floor for a nap. They matched each other, dead to the world, there, contorted like synchronized swimmers caught in midstroke. My cats from childhood pull those stunts all the time. Really, there must be some qualifying course in Potential Cute Pet School - Look Darling More than Half of the Time 401 or something. Special credit goes to students who choreograph said cuteness with the closest available animal, preferably one of the same species and opposite gender, to end up looking like bookends. How many boy-and-girl or brother-and-sister pet duos do you suspect have been given the respective names of Fred and Ginger?

The wonderful afternoon, tearing open presents and stuffing ourselves with goodies, came to an end. As my folks and I drove down the city's main road to the interstate, I caught something I'd missed before: Aliquippa is a shining example of the settler beating nature. I looked out my window across the valley that held the town, and for the few seconds that I took in the view nearly every building seemed to be a square, smallish house with cream-colored siding and russet shingles; they were packed into the valley, and then dotted the ascending side of the next hill. It was torn off the corrugated cardboard backdrop of an Italian villa somebody had painted for a performance of Much Ado About Nothing many summers ago. Pennsylvania, hilly land of wine and romance. Beautiful. I wondered for a moment why this was the first sighting in three or four visits - then I understood. Traveling towards the house each time, I had sat in the front passenger seat, opposite the valley; from, it was always nighttime. Or maybe I was too busy watching overhanging signs for the patchwork of businesses lining the main street. Smiley's Tire Repair. Aliquippa Croatian Club. Wine and romance.

We returned to Cleveland by five-thirty. While I packed, my folks scraped together dinner from the afternoon lunch's leftovers. I skipped - and believe you me, it'll take more than one light meal and after-dinner walk to lighten the impact of this holiday's cheery gluttony. Then we unwrapped my sister's gift of The Sound of Music and dropped the disc in the DVD player.

Odd, but the very night before ABC broadcast the film, no cuts (how's that for class?). We stopped about three-fifths of the way through, right before the dinner scene, because my folks were scheduled to play guitar mass at their parish early the next morning - just an hour before departure time for Pittsburgh. Maybe next year. And then Meg went and gave Mom a restored-score, crystal-clear, colors-as-bright-as-day-one DVD. It's one of those instances where God is peeking over the clouds, when he elbows J.C., grinning. "Hot damn!" Then he leans over a bit and puts his hand to the side of his mouth, yelling. "Okay, Holy Ghost, let 'er rip!" Holy Ghost shouts back, "You got it, Mac!" and wonderful things happen.

Did I say that 1776 is the only musical I enjoy? I lied. When I was a kid, I understood The Sound of Music to be classic, catchy and well-performed; but I always had better things to do/toys to play with if the Christmas staple was on. Not my scene. Until I was about twelve, I'd always quietly wish that every Twentieth Century Fox opening sequence would be followed by a Lucasfilm Production plate. Cue stars and all-caps, receding adventure intro in yellow font. It wasn't until the May after my first year of college that I finally found myself sucked into the genius of Rogers and Hammerstein, attending opening night for my high school friends' production. The play was finally personalized.

One friend, Ed, directed lighting, and one worked under him. One friend played Elsa Schraeder while her brother, the lucky understudy who came forward when the lead bailed, played Captain von Trapp, and promptly became unluckily compromised when it came time for their characters to lock lips. Ever see two actors giggle nervously, along with half the audience, before they furtively peck the others' cheek? A rare gift. Another friend, none other than OX, was a foreman for the stage crew. His major contribution to the project was to coerce his willing subordinates, during dress rehearsal, into activating an inexplicably light-trimmed evergreen standup tree that sat in the background of the climactic abbey cemetary scene.

Goes the legend: "Does the extension cord reach the outlet?" he asks, slyly. Yes, squeals a minion. He pauses, smiles. "Plug it in."

Another friend, Nicole, then in her Cute Little Punk Rock Girl phase, played Frau Schmidt. Short and elfin, she's always been weirdly matronly - perfect fit. Rolf Gruber was picture-perfect pre-pubescent, with a correctly unconvincing "Sieg Heil!" Of course, that awful phrase is best uttered unconvincingly. The nuns were all played by a buxom bunch of girls who, powerful voices notwithstanding, probably didn't belong anywhere near habits. But looking back, it worked. So did Maria - nice girl, pretty voice. Kids were bused in for the von Trapp family and the school orchestra, which normally sounded quite like a warped 45-RPM record played at 33, did a bang-up job. Wonderful fun, and I ended the evening by crashing a joyous, clean-cut cast party.

Wherever those memories didn't exactly translate into my appreciation for the musical, my music credits taken in college split the difference. And what an experience today! If "Climb Every Mountain" doesn't make you at least consider dissolving into tears, either you've spent quality time on a morgue drawer or you wouldn't know good cinema if it hit you like an Oscar dropped twelve stories. And then there's Julie Andrews; gorgeous, pug-nosed, fire-haired Julie Andrews. Just put SOB out of your mind and she's forever an angel.

The holiday finished as I would have liked it to, and the way every one should - poetically. Once in my apartment's parking lot, I took three trips from the car to schlep the first batch of loot. As I walked outside for the second one, I took a look at the sky: fairly clear, stars out.

Two nights ago, at about one o'clock in the morning when I returned from a night with Ed, Paul and OX, I glanced upward before slipping inside. The air was cold, almost a bitter cold; in two months this was easily the crispest all season. It made a difference above the horizon: I haven't seen a sharper, darker, more star-strewn sky in years. The constellations didn't twinkle. They sang with light. No squinting required to discern spectral type (you know, star class, "Oh, Be a Fine Girl, Kiss Me"), colors that night as solid and varied as Christmas lights. All that was missing was a levitating, green-on-yellow GE label. Well - maybe not quite. But to the naked eye Betelgeuse was red and Pollux was orangish; Rigel was blue.

On Sunday night humidity had crept into the air, blurring the heavens, but the sight was nearly as stunning. Besides, the moment had something extra: as I reached the car, the long-long-short-long horn blasts of an east-west freight train some five miles south were sounding. Underneath it, the oddly soothing rumble of the interstate. Not a bad epilogue to chase a holiday. Living days like these, I've always wondered how some people manage not to become romantics. And finally, those familiar words of mine: This was the best Christmas ever - until next year.

Christmas came; presents were under the tree, family gathered, fun was had. Looney Tunes, by way of said presents, were watched. Blogging was, perhaps wisely, skipped. Four inches of snow had fallen on Christmas Eve - it's still on the ground, cars, the trees and houses, and just as beautiful. I'll tell more later.

I'm the last one in the office - as usual? - but soon to make my own exit. I'll stop by the 'Bucks for some office coffee, circle back to drop it off; and then it's on to beginning the Christmas traditions. Dinner with family, followed by a possible gathering of friends tonight; snow is back in the forecast, so a white Christmas is, to my delight, near certain. Consider this my first suggestion that all of you have one heck of a merry one!

Cleveland's forecast for a white Christmas has been fluctuating between admirable snowfall and rainy, close-but-not-quite-there weather. Monday prospects were grim; yesterday, December 25th was set back on track; today, low forties and rain are looking to herald the holiday. My city, while geographically a part of Northeast Ohio, doesn't usually benefit from lake-effect snows - winds tend to push southeast rather than due south (though Christmas of 1998 or 1999 was a white one exactly because of those latter winds aloft).

I've seen more green Christmases than white. Memory has always served as a nice pair of rose-colored glasses, especially for holidays, and so my recollection of those warmer years tends to exclude the lack of snow. One Christmas morning about eighteen or nineteen years ago where my sister and I bounded into my folks' bedroom, only to be told to peek out their front window. We went, and while I do remember looking down and seeing ground as green and dry as a March morning, I looked up and saw two lights hanging in the sky. One was green and one was red - probably jets moving in quickly on Cleveland Hopkins' Runway 10, but in that moment while they lazily sidled across the blackness, my sister and I just knew that we had caught sight of Santa's sleigh. (Where he was going, east no less, is beyond me. Remember, this is the generously overweight man who slips down millions of chimneys, not to mention flies by benefit of airborne cervidae. Magic, I tell you!)

I'm easy to please during this season; a combination of happy memories and holiday spirit have always filled in the empty (or green) spots. But not needing to imagine tufts of snow on the ground, blowing from house to house, as seen from inside, behind a twinkling Christmas tree - this is what I prefer. For next year's Christmas list, I should just go ahead and scratch that one in at the top.

The powers that be may oblige, too. Behind me, today's snows have begun. More's the better.