Posts tagged ‘holidays’

1 January 2018 – Not Dead Yet

1 January, 2018 | | No Comment

Happy New Year.

I managed all of 4 posts last year, which is about what 2015 looked like as well.  As I mentioned on the occasion of this blog turning 10, back in 2016, I find myself at the confluence of the rivers of Time, Inspiration, and Energy with decreasing frequency these days.  And by days, clearly, I meant years.

Here’s hoping those days are behind us.  There’s no shortage of Inspiration, surely, and this year, I plan to work on the Energy part.

That leaves Time, and what is time but that wibbly-wobbly bit in between waking up and falling down again?  I’ll find it somewhere.  Probably behind the couch.

So with that out of the way, I’ve asked several people what their biggest wishes for 2018 might be.  The answers have ranged from health to wealth, from continued employment to new employment, and from impeachment to imprisonment.  Probably the best answer, though, came from the Reigning Queen of Pink herself.  “My wish is that all of my friends and people I know don’t die horribly.  I mean, I know people are going to die, that’s just life.  I just wish that they don’t die horribly.”

That’s right – it’s OK to die.  Just not, you know, horribly.

So I figure, as long as we’re not dead, we ought to be doing things.  Saying hello to people.  Telling them we love them.  Fighting for reasonable gun laws.  Updating our blogs.  That sort of thing.  I’m not sure how far we’re going to get, but the Tao reminds us that the journey begins with a step.  I propose we take that step!

… Lest we die, horribly.

So, as I type this under the light of the first supermoon of 2018, I wish you all the Time, Inspiration, and Energy you need to make it through 2018.  Put last year behind us, and let’s see what we can make of this one, while we still aten’t dead.

Happy New Year!

 

 

A Choice of Saints

30 April, 2017 | | 1 Comment

It seems sainthood is the question of the hour for me – so I’m running with it.  There we were, just a pair of innocents driving down the street, when we saw a license plate that said “StBndct.”  Sometimes you really have to try to parse a vanity plate.  In this case, one can tell right away that it’s an invocation to St. Benedict.  But why?   What’s he the patron Saint of, anyway, and why should he in particular be looking out for the welfare of this Toyota?

A little research turned up the fact that Good Old St. Ben is actually the Patron Saint of a lot of stuff:  Agricultural workers, civil engineers, coppersmiths, dying people, Europe, farmers, fever, gall stones, heraldry, inflammatory diseases, Italian architects, kidney disease, monks, nettle rash, servants who have broken their master’s belongings, spelunkers, and temptations.

Whoa.  I mean, that’s a lot of shit to be the Patron Saint of.   Patron Saint of temptations?  Pro or con?  Did Otis Williams know this?  The Patron Saint of dying people?  Isn’t that pretty much everyone, eventually?  That’s a pretty big gig.  Plus having to look after all of Europe.  And why civil engineers and Italian architects in particular?

And you know, it’s got to be a bit of a bummer to have to be the Patron Saint of kidney and inflammatory diseases, plus the gall stones.  Who decides this?  And I still don’t know why the Toyota was claiming him – a European model car would have made more sense.  Maybe the driver was a coppersmith, or a particularly clumsy butler.

Some further discussion lead to the topic of the patronage of saints in general.  It turns out, and some of you may know this, but there are more than 800 saints of something or other.  I knew that St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers, but Bona of Pisa has them also, covering not just travelers in general but flight attendants in particular.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason:  Augustine of Hippo covers printers and brewers, Bernard of Clairvaux looks after bee keepers and overpaid Madison Avenue advertising executives.  St. Christopher also covers bookbinders, gardeners, and pilots.  I knew St. Jude was for lost causes, but it turns out that undertakers have their own saint (Dismas), as do coffee house owners (Drogo), locksmiths (Dunstan), and lawyers and lumberjacks (Genesius and Gummarus, respectively).

Nurses and shepherds seem to have a lot of patron saints.  St. Malo covers pig-keepers, while St. Roch drew surgeons and gravediggers – two sides of one coin, I suppose.  St. Veronica was famous for her veil, which became the Shroud of Turin; seems kinda mean to make her the patron saint of laundry workers, but there you go.

I have to wonder, is there a beautific game of cards going on somewhere, where the saints swap these patronages around when someone is newly canonized?  Poor St. Agatha got stuck being patron saint of breast cancer, while St. Christina the Astonishing is the saint against insanity and mental disorders.  I suppose she was astonished to get picked for that.  And it really seems mean-spirited that the patron of the blind and the lame is Saint Abel.  Seems pretty ableist to me.

I can see them sitting around a heavenly table playing cards, halos slung over their chairs, bitching about their lot.

St. Damien of Molokai:  “Oh man,  leprosy?  Really?  That’s just gross.”
St. Edmund the Martyr of East Anglia:  “Just one disease?  Quit your bitching, I drew pandemics.  Besides, hardly anyone even gets leprosy any more.”
St. Fiacre:  “I’ll trade you there, Ed.  I’d rather have a nice quick pandemic than my divine plate full of venereal diseases and hemorrhoids!  Hey, Vitus, wake up!  What’d you get?”
St. Vitus:  “Heh, sorry, yeah, that sucks.  I got oversleeping.”
St. Edmund the Martyr of East Anglia:  “Oversleeping?  We need a damn saint for oversleeping?  Pansy.  Gummy, what the hell are you singing?”
St. Gummarus:  “Oh, I’ve got lumberjacks and I’m OK….”
St. Fiacre: “Shut it, you.  Someone shuffle the cards again, huh?  Come on guys, I hate hemorrhoids.”

In light of the fact that it seems like you can self-select your own patron saint and the poor sod of a saint just has to live with it, I think bloggers need their own.  I know Saint Isidore is the patron for the Internet in general, but I’m declaring St. Arnold of Soissons to be the Patron Saint of Bloggers.  He was probably bored, just covering beer and those who pick hops – he should have plenty of time to watch after the bloggers!

Besides, now I can have a beer and pretend I’m working.

 

A Homestead Weekend

31 July, 2016 | | No Comment

So there we were, once again on the open road, driving into a cloudbank from hell. The rains that we drove through that Thursday in June killed 20 people, destroying homes and families alike. The weather is capricious – many people were devastated, while the biggest impact to us was a cleaner car, proving that there is no justice to be found in this world.    It also resulted in a more full hotel, but we would only find that out later.

We were driving into the Homestead, which bills itself as the oldest resort in the country and has the provenance – and sense of antiquity – to back it up.  view2Celebrating 250 years in business this year, it boasts 15,000 acres of fields and forests, with activities ranging from wading and swimming pools to hot springs and warm springs where Thomas Jefferson used to “take the waters” for his health and welfare, from horseback riding and falconry to archery and skeet, from hiking the gorge to just sitting back on the veranda and watching the world go by.  Sitting, typing this from the veranda, I present my view.

I can easily imagine my friend Mark Twain sitting on this same veranda. Mind you, this particular building wasn’t completed until the 1920s, so he certainly didn’t, but he would have enjoyed it.

Thursday dinner was at their Casino restaurant, with a table that couldn’t stop moving.  While the table was loose from the base, and the base was not stable on the floor, we still knew it was actually the Reigning Queen of Pink causing our dinners to bounce – the table was rocking in rhythm. Any of the rest of us and it would have been rocking asymmetrically; with her at the helm, our dinners were executing a perfect sine wave.  The restaurant at the Casino (which turns out of be a word used in its original meaning, which has to do with indoor sports and has nothing, to my regret, to do with gambling) had a small army of staff milling about, which was odd because none of them seemed to be able to find our table.  I mean, the movement might have been throwing them off, but still.

fireworksAs the Homestead is celebrating 250 in business this year, they are setting off fireworks each Friday in the summer.  To further commemorate this 250th anniversary, they’re serving a different cake every day of the year, in the lobby with tea from 3-4pm.  Friday’s was lemon blueberry – most excellent! I can’t imagine more than about 100 ways to do cake; hats off to their chef.

Prom_King_and_QueenSpeaking of Anniversaries: allow me to digress a moment on the reason for the trip. My parents this June celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The same month saw my mother turn 70 a few days later.  They are amazing!  (For those of you doing the math at home, yes, my father plays up the fact that she was a teen-aged bride.)

My father, having been a math major, added 50 with 70 and declared it a 120 celebration – and celebrate we did, with them and the Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael. We are, at least on my side, new to the “resort” scene. In this case, certainly, I could get used to this in a hurry.

Friday we were joined by the aforementioned Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael; dinner was at Jefferson’s.  There any number of amazing restaurants at the Homestead, plus four bars.  In point of fact, dinner was preceded by drinks with Kipling, who went out of his way to ensure that we had excellent seating and an excellent time.  Jefferson’s was a great dinner; I enjoyed braised lamb to die for with gnocchi and sage.  One of the funniest bits was actually a few hours before dinner; I got a call from the restaurant confirming our dinner reservations – they had meant to reach my father.  I decided that I might not be “the” Lang, but I was “a” Lang, and I was qualified to confirm our reservation.  The RQOP, who’s first name starts begins the alphabet, stepped out of the shadows and announced that no, SHE was “A. Lang,” by god.  I stood corrected, but I confirmed the reservations anyway.

nomsFollowing dinner and the fireworks, we retired to the Very Clever Grandparent’s room.  We had all been carefully instructed: “no presents.”  We decided that “no presents” didn’t count if the presents were consumable and stood a good chance of not leaving the grounds.

During the course of the trip, I posted a postcard or two – and found a wonder. I have always wanted to drop a letter into one of those old-fashioned “mail your letters here in this box on the wall” boxes; the old Cutler Mailing System letterboxes.   mailboxAs a former letter carrier, those things were cool – a blend of art and function, usually with old art-deco styling to them.  I doublechecked first, since many times you see them and they’re no longer being serviced or checked on, but the Homestead confirmed that theirs is still in use, and if you’re on the upper floor, you can still drop your letter in the upper box and it will slide into this one.

This town is small enough that the post office closes before noon on Saturday, and the Homestead doesn’t bother – so any mail that misses on Friday will go out Monday.  I am perhaps irrationally excited to have mailed things from a Cutler box.

The next day dawning bright and clear, we hiked the Cascades Gorge. That sounds simple, but it isn’t.  The reason it isn’t is named Brian La Fountain, who is the funniest, most well informed, most energetic, most passionate tour guide I have ever encountered. Number One Son, who does NOT want to go outside much, not only expounded on his appreciation for the hike, but gave Brian a hug – a rare compliment from a 16-yr-old boy.

falls2The hike itself was amazing. I shall include only a sample of the views, because if I posted all the pictures I took, this post would take more time to load than we took hiking the gorge.

Brian explained a dozen things in a dozen ways, and did so while keeping up a running patter of puns and jokes that jollied even my jaded children into enjoying themselves. He is a terrific guide; making sure people can hear him, making sure we understood the rules and their reasons. falls1I also noticed his quiet attention to the details that he didn’t talk about – he was very careful about counting the group, making sure that everyone was keeping up and doing OK with climbing over the wet bridges and steeper rocks, without making it at all obvious that he was doing so: The mark of a great guide is that you don’t see the attention he’s paying. He’s a great guide. He also has a gift for stand-up comedy to rival Leno.  He told us only one lie: He said he was 50 years old.  No one with his exuberance, good looks, and joy de vivre could be so old.

treeballsThe interesting views of nature are not limited to the gorge, however.  Right outside our door was a tree.  Well, a few dozen trees, really, but one of them stood out – most trees, growing as they do straight up and tall, have a somewhat phallic look to them anyway.  Very few have the balls to show for it, though.  (The Human Tape Recorder decided this one much be named Johnny One-Nut.)  The most embarrassing bit is that I took the picture, then sent it in a text to a good friend, female type.

BUMD:  Tree balls – bigger than I thought they’d be!
Her:  Wow that’s an interesting tree.  That protrusion looks quite phallic.
BUMD: Oh my god, I’m sending you deciduous dick pics. I’m so busted!

So, I’ve joined the ranks of the Bros who send dick pics.  I feel so basic!

indoor_poolIn addition to the amazing nature scenes, there are outdoor pools and spas and springs, plus there’s an indoor pool – in case it’s raining, or you’re just feeling indoorsy.  And when I say indoor pool, I mean This Is What I Want My Basement To Look Like.   Is that too much to ask?  This pool is larger than my house and would have made the Romans proud.  One of the best parts of swimming was seeing Her Michael’s tattoo: It says “#FFFFFF TRASH” – which is funny on a lot of levels, not least that it’s only supported by Netscape 5.0 these days.

We had a terrific time all around.  SOBUMD and I were instructed on our golf swings, the girls went horseback riding with FOBUMD, and the ladies took in the wonders of the Spa.  We all wound up in the outdoor pool (of course it has a bar, why do you ask?) at one point or another, complete with its massive water slides.  Canoeing, however, was cancelled due to the torrential rains that we’d driven through – a good call on the part of the Homestead.  There was a delightful dinner at a grill named after Sam Snead, who is famous in the golf world and called this town home.  linda_remingtonOn top of all that, I was very lucky and, with 5 minutes to spare, had the  chance to satisfy a life-long interest in falconry with Remington, the Harris Hawk.

Falconry is fascinating.  It turns out that while much falconry is in fact accomplished with falcons, much more is done with hawks here in the United States.  The Homestead has many birds and trainers; I was introduced to Linda – and Remington.  You need 2 and half years of training apprenticeship to receive a falconry license in the US.  Linda names some of her birds, such as Remington, after guns – because as far as the US fish and wildlife department is concerned, in her hands, that’s a lethal hunting weapon.  remington1This is somewhat incongruous considering that you need practically nothing to own an actual Remington.

Wearing the gauntlet, I had Remington land on my hand and then, with a slight flick of the wrist, sent her aloft again, on her way to the nearby roof.  Despite a wingspan of close to 3 feet, she weighs only slightly more than 2 pounds – and can fly through any opening wider than her chestplate.  Linda had her demonstrate this by standing us increasing close together and convincing her to fly between us – impressively nearly knocking my phone from my hand in the process.  I was wing-whacked a few times – it was an experience I’ve thought about for more than 40 years, and I was thrilled.

boyThat evening was the last, and as fitting of a final dinner at such a place and to commemorate such a 120 celebration, dinner was in the formal dining room.  If you’re picturing something from Downton Abby, you’re not too far wrong.  We dressed, we all dressed.  Even those of us who do not, as a rule, dress for dinner, dressed.

That’s right – the kids cleaned up.  Even Number One Son, who looks slightly like Kramer from Seinfeld in this picture.  Glamour seems to come more naturally to the girls.  girls I tend to wear business attire pretty much every weekday, so the whole business of getting dressed up wasn’t as traumatic for me as it was for Number One Son – he dressed for the ages, for one of the most formal events of his young life.  I dressed for a Tuesday.  Hardly seems fair, really.  Also, the Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael were not exempt from this!  While the caption over their heads states “Birds of North America,” they are from Baltimore, and so technically I think this is a picture of Orioles.jani_michael

The dinner was sumptuous, with live music, yummy wine, appetizers, and dancing – until SOBUMD took her first bite of her dinner and had an anaphylactic reaction to something in the sauce. She’s highly allergic to cinnamon, and while the staff didn’t think there was any in the dish, there must have been something close enough to it.  She had been looking forward to that plate since before we’d arrived, so not being able to eat it was killing her – unfortunately very nearly literally; it took me 20 minutes to get her back to the room, along with several hits from her emergency inhaler and enough Benadryl to stop a horse.  (She decided against the epi-pen only because that would have involved an ambulance ride to the nearest ER, and the Benadryl and inhalers were starting to kick in – along with not wanting to further complicate the evening.)   The rest of the crew was able to finish dinner (although the prime rib evidently got the better of Number One Son), and we all made it to our respective beds.  Luckily, we all woke in the morning as well.

backdoorI woke early and took a few pre-dawn pictures of the place for posterity, to compliment the pictures of the previous evenings.  The building is too large for any one picture; these only just begin to provide a sense of scale.  There are nearly 500 rooms, all of which were full while we were there – largely because The Greenbriar, firepitwhich is only a few dozen miles away, had flooded in the recent rains and sent a lot of its overflow to The Homestead.  Our building itself had taken some water, but nothing compared to the devastation around us.  The wet grounds provided morning fog for the sun to burn through, the kind that armature photographers love.

Eventually the sunrise did what it always does to such times, and it was time be under way, back to the open road, and home.  We returned to our lives feeling like Muggles, bereft of the magic words that had sustained us for the past days:  “Please charge this to room 7155.”   It turns out that doesn’t work at my local grocery store at all.  We also missed the whole concept of having cocktails served before going through for dinner.  mistysunriseThis is an inherently civilized thing to do.  If I could have brought the redoubtable Kipling home with us, I would have.

The after action report on the 120 celebration and the Homestead Weekend was best summed up in an email exchange between FOBUMD, who organized and funded the entire trip, and the rest of us.  A few days after we arrived home and became reacquainted with our more usual standard of living, he sent the entire party a note thanking us for celebrating with them.

For a change, I was speechless.  The English language doesn’t have a lot of good words to convey the sense of appreciation we felt, but I was reminded of FOBUMD’s description of an evening he spent, years ago, with his brother George. “A brother is someone who picks you up in the rain with little notice, takes you home, stays up past 2 am while you talk and finish all his Scotch, then drives you back to the airport in the morning and says ‘Great to see you’ – and means it!”

2dad_julesA father, to continue this example, is someone who celebrates a set of anniversaries and birthdays by taking the whole family to an amazing resort, coordinates specific activities for specific people, makes sure the logistics are so seamless as to be invisible, pays for it all, and then thanks US for coming – and means it.

He concluded that we have the best family in the world, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.  We’re looking forward to the 100th anniversary!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas: Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!

24 December, 2015 | | 2 Comments

Well, the year got away from me.  I know, it’s been a while, and I’m hoping to be a little more present and active in 2016.  In the mean time, I know that you haven’t forgotten me, since many of you ping me about not posting, and rest assured that I never forget you, dear friend and gentle reader.

In the spirit of the holiday season, and in honor of the many friends who are sharing, with me, the 72-degree Christmas weather here on the East Coast, I give to you a NEW holiday song, a new Christmas Carol, with which to brighten your snowy Yuletide evenings.  (And yes, I’m shamelessly cross-posting from Free Range Poetry!)

It’s called, of course, Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!

The holidays are jolly, hanging wreathes and hoisting holly
with the reindeer and the snowmen standing guard
The Christmas season’s calling as the mercury is falling
From Baltimore to Boston’s Harvard Yard

T’is the season to be freezin’ while we shovel ’round our hovels
And we’ll celebrate the Winter, young and old
But the temperature’s not dropping, while we’re out here Christmas shopping
‘Cause this Winter doesn’t seem to like the cold!

Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk! I’ll toss your coat back into the trunk.
Autumn’s riding shotgun, cause Springtime has the keys
Winter’s in the backseat with its head between its knees
Summer’s gonna hold your hair / while you toss snowballs everywhere
Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!

Frosty’s sipping boat drinks, singing songs about the ice rinks
and I guess the weather’s really lost its head
The elves are all in short sleeves and the snowman’s having dry heaves
Won’t someone put this Wintertime to bed?

This Christmas is so green it’s blue, cause Winter’s got the Irish flu
and the snowplows and the road crew’s out of work
The Solstice and it’s 82 / degrees, and I am telling you
Twelve beers has made this Wintertime a jerk!

Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk! I’ll toss your coat back into the trunk.
Autumn’s riding shotgun, cause Springtime has the keys
Winter’s in the backseat with its head between its knees
Summer’s gonna hold your hair / while you toss snowballs everywhere
Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!

Winter’s just might sober up
the snowfall forecast’s climbing
and we might just get some inches after all
It looks like things will whiten up
Shame about the timing
‘Cause it ain’t gonna snow here till next fall!

Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk! I’ll toss your coat back into the trunk.
Autumn’s riding shotgun, cause Springtime has the keys
Winter’s in the backseat with its head between its knees
Summer’s gonna hold your hair / while you toss snowballs everywhere
Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!
Go Home, Winter, You’re Drunk!

 

So, that’s the good news.  The bad news is that I’m writing a dozen more and I’ll have a Big Ugly Christmas Album out for next year!  Happy Holidays to you all, and to all, a Good Night!

 

You and I Remember New Jersey Very Differently

23 April, 2015 | | No Comment

So there we were, once again on the road home, when it all went to hell – that’s right, somebody had to pee.

It all started, like most weekends do, on the previous Wednesday, when SOBUMD took the Reigning Queen of Pink to Baltimore to see Wicked on the Baltimore version of Broadway. I stayed home and hung out with Number One Son and the Human Tape Recorder, and by hung out I mean mostly they ignored me, which is about par for the course at 14 and 16 years old, I suppose. As the RQoP and SOBUMD returned from their sojourn, we started packing in earnest for the trip to New Jersey for Easter. We hadn’t been up to see family in far too long, and it was time to cross state lines, nail some beers, and resurrect relationships – all the trappings of Easter, without the suffering. Some say you can’t really have Easter without suffering, but we were willing to forego full verisimilitude for the sake of skipping the whole agony bit.

The universe, of course, had different plans, but we didn’t know that as we packed.

Saturday morning saw us with wheels up at Oh-Dark Thirty, which was in reality about “Oh it’s getting pretty light out at Six AM.”

The gods of the highways were with us that morning, and we were well under way before the sun was up in earnest. (People in Ernest, PA, are probably pretty tired of hearing about things happening in their town from the rest of us.) We made NJ by 1030, stopping once in PA for the chance to pay FAR TOO MUCH for gasoline, or, as SOBUMD put it, “support the local economy.” Once there, hugs and hellos unfolded into lunches and dinners, which were interspersed with opportunities to acquire beer. Beer was acquired along with marshmallows, and the evening devolved wonderfully with a fire, conveniently contained in a fire pit, and the roasting of marshmallows, buns, bunions, and booties. I left the firepit once I realized that not only was I the only Big Ugly Man Doll there, but I was in fact the only man there at all – I ran like the coward I am, and left the fire to its feminine fate. Therefore I only heard about the sautéed bunions after the fact, but I’m reliably told that booties were shaken and bunions were toasted. Only the fire pit knows for sure, and it’s not talking.

Easter Sunday dawned with promises of miracles, and we were not disappointed. There is a Muslim guy in New Jersey making bagels, and he’s open Easter Sunday with nice, fresh, hot, Jersey bagels – the kind you can get in New York, but not here where I live here in Va. We’re too far south of the Mason Dixon to get a decent bagel, and too far north to get decent BBQ. It’s a culinary purgatory – I have to assume I was a bad chef in a past life. Anyway, we jump at the chance to get *real* bagels when we travel north. These were wonderful!

Driving home from NJ, we stopped at the Clara Barton Memorial Rest Stop, which is clearly owned and operated by Cinnibon, to pee, and the fans blowing the scent of cinnamon were at full blast. (Note: I’m sure if Clara Barton were to come back to life and tour the NJ Turnpike, she’d be horrified to find out someone named some nasty turnpike piss pass and drop stop after her. “What the heck is this? This place is filthy! Get a mop, and take my damn name off that sign! Why did you name this crap after me? Susan B. Anthony got a damn dollar and all you could manage for me was filthy gas station restroom on the Turnpike?”) Anyway, we got back in the car, SOBUMD started driving down the road, and in about 10 minutes she was coughing. And coughing. And more coughing. Eventually I looked at her and asked if she wanted me to drive. Nods head. “Can you talk?” Shakes head. We switched drivers on the left shoulder of I-95, always fun, and I pulled us over at the next exit. She sat there sucking for air with an anaphylactic asthma attack until she could breathe enough to swallow a bit of water and get 3 Benadryl down. 2-3 more minutes and I’d’ve stuck her with the epi-pen. Got the rest of the way home by midnight; took her to the urgent care folks the next day, since she still couldn’t take a full breath, where they said “You don’t have an inhaler? Now you do; tape it to the epi-pen and carry both at all times.” So she’s back to breathing again.

All three kids were pretty much silent the rest of the way home – they were pretty freaked out at the thought that she might die there. I didn’t think she’d die, but I was unsure enough that I pulled us in front of a place called the “Country Pride Restaurant” instead of the Subway, which was next door. I figured if she *did* die, I wouldn’t want them reminded of it every time they passed a Subway. Too many of them. I told SOBUMD my thinking on this later; she laughed. She also gave me the finger, but at least she laughed.

As my aunt used to say, another Easter shot to hell.