I’m spending the Christmas holiday with Lisa and her family in NYC.

My parents are finishing 2021 in Africa, with “Doctors Without Borders.” “Step” (my step father) is a heart surgeon and my mom is an anesthesiologist, so they’re a traveling, self contained, double-dutch, operating theater. Yep, now that they’ve shuffled-off the dead weight of their children - they can finally have some FUN.

Here, in NYC we’re back in restrictive spaces as we face-down Omicron this holiday - but I still feel free. Our course work’s been dumb, but now we’ve escaped the strangling, slavery of tedious days - forget hours of reading, fact-sheets, writing essays, and solving chemistry equations - we’ve got 25 days of Christmas vacation!

Lisa’s having a sleepover tonight, friends Will and Karen are coming up (Lisa lives on the 50th floor, they live on the 46th) and we have every distraction known to man.

Tonight was supposed to be the building (220) Christmas party - a formal wear Christmas ball - with a live orchestra - but now (thanks Omicron) it’s an elevator party - we’ll go up to the 70th floor, pick up goodie bags and dinners then return yo-yo like, to Lisa’s.

We can escape our interior habitat to a large balcony where it’s windy and 34 degrees. The sky is a clear black, like an inverted cup of coffee and the stars look French. The city lights dazzle like a billion stars surrounding the black hole of Central Park.

Lisa’s dad is explaining to Karen (10), in some detail, how his shiny,  deluxe, outdoor barbeque - with it’s lid open like a radar dish, can detect reindeer and send updates to his phone in real-time - but Karen looks skeptical.

I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, Christmas and that the reindeer find you wherever you are.