Category Archives: Christmas Letters

We were getting settled at the historic Hotel Denver, when Carli has an announcement. She reads from her phone. “This hotel is haunted. Ghosts have frequented rooms on the third floor.” We’re on the third floor. Naturally. Carli begins freaking out. Rose is not taking the situation seriously. She’s eggs on the spirit world. Now I’ve seen enough episodes of Ghost Adventures to know that you do not do that. You do not invite spirits, especially demons, into your realm. You simply do not do that. Continue reading →

A young man came to the house selling doorknob cameras. He said he’d been selling them to all my neighbors. ‘Have you ever heard of a doorknob camera,’ he asks. ‘No.’ ‘Oh great. I have a vid’ … he grabs his iPad. I cut him off. ‘I don’t need to see a video. I’m right in the middle of dinner,’ which wasn’t true, but he hasn’t sold anything to my neighbors, so we’re even. Continue reading →

This actually happened to me. I’m in a cab on my way to the Mirage on the strip. I see this big sign that says, “Book Tours Here.” And I think, “Oh cool. They’ve got a tour about books. I wonder what that’s all about. Man, Vegas has everything.” The car pulls forward and I see another sign … “Grand Canyon Helicopter Tours.” Oh. Continue reading →

Sam likes videos and filmmaking, so this year he joined KRAM, which is a student-run video production group that makes weekly newscasts. They also made a spoof of the TV cartoon, Scooby-Doo. Sam played the villain. He wore a mask that looks like a basketball; his character was called, Slam Dunk. At the end of the video, the school’s security officer ad-libbed the line, “Come on Slam Dunk, I’m taking you to the slammer.” Continue reading →

She looks down at the gas gauge. “Charlie, your gas light is on!?!” Ordinarily, running nearly empty is no big deal. You just get off at the next exit and gas up, but we were in the middle of 76, a highway that traverses a grand expanse of nothingness. There are civilized towns at the beginning and end and nothing in the middle. We were in the middle. We were going to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere.
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