3rd Week of Advent 2011

Watching the troops return home from Iraq is the most wonderful sight this year for Advent! Only a few thousand left and then we are done. My darling has helped bring this about as peacefully as possible. Blessed are the peacekeepers!

Here at home getting ready for Christmas is a slower time this year. The excitement isn't in the decorating but that he may appear at my door any day! I do finally have my tree decorated...in the new LED lights and the windows, too. All my cards are sent or delivered. Food preparations are beginning for the Christmas feast. I have selected a dark chocolate cake this year. No Buche de Noel just a bundt cake but with colored sprinkles. It is honoring the celebration of a baby's birth long ago.

On a more somber note which is what the true Advent season is about because it is a time to think about here and a time to think about then in the Holy Land over 2,000 years ago. Tense times and poverty and overcrowdedness.  Yes that is here even in Silicon Valley. The food banks are running short because the unemployment numbers of people has lasted so long the families are using the food pantries for regular meals not supplemental. Even if people are giving it is hard to keep the stocks replenished. I believe in this country everyone should have a good meal and every child should have a toy at Christmas. People around me are being nice, I am not hearing angry words anywhere.

Because of the housing crash it is next to impossible to get a home loan, like everywhere. Here there are tech sector jobs but those people who have found work can't buy a home so the rental market is overflowing and the competition has gone through the ceiling! A 1-bedroom apartment can cost $2,000 a month!

California is one of the 2 worst states for unemployment still. Even though the national figure has gone down to 8+% and Silicon Valley's tech sector has provided employment, the rest of the state is at 12+%. It is another grim Christmas here in the golden state.

My sweetheart has been sent to Afghanistan he says for a couple of weeks and should be home for Christmas. I asked him if that means our Christmas of the Western church or the Julian or Gregorian calendar of the Orthodox Churches, or is it Epiphany when he will show up at my door, like one of the Wise Men from the East? Job done in Iraq, happily. Yes welcome home brave souls of the Iraq War and Merry Christmas!