From CNN: Starbucks ‘bomb’ was only a flashlight

From the story: “”I love that Starbucks,” Schouten said in an interview with the station. “The people are saints. They know I’m homeless. They let me drink coffee for 50 cents. I love those people.”

I admit it - I am a pitiful man. But I can’t help it…I love the holidays, and hate like the devil to see them go.

So I spend a lot of time doing little things to hang on to them. The Christmas tree is still up, lights twinkling, even though it’s sucking down more water every day and still getting a bit dry. There are still presents underneath it, although mostly empty boxes of cool things being used (or played with) elsewhere. Each evening I have a glass of egg nog, spiked with just the tiniest bit of rum. Heck, I even have the runway lights still running (every year, I place lights along the side of the house to aid St. Nick in his travel…once he passes the neighbor’s tree, his team can follow the runway lights to a perfect landing on the roof).

But as I begin the task of auditing the past year’s finances for tax time (yep, still in deficit), start making equipment plans for the first half of this year (gotta research a new motherboard/processor for the audio computer), and get farther and farther away from that magical week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when darned little of import gets accomplished, I get deeper and deeper into the daily grind. The depressing thing is that in a few weeks, the holidays will be all but forgotten, and as the march of days continues we’ll forget about that magic, which is the most powerful I’ve experienced in my almost half-century on the planet.

On the other hand, that may not be all bad. Admittedly, although I start looking a little foolish listening to Christmas carols in the second week of January and eventually have the solstice holiday ripped from my clutching hands, it would be a pitty if every day had the same power and mystique. Maybe what makes the winter holidays so darned special isn’t the tree, or the presents, or the runway lights…maybe it’s that it only happens one week a year, and the other fifty-one are ordinary so this one can be so darned special in comparison.