The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.

My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.

In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.

Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.

Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!

Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts,

To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."

"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.

My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."

"My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile."

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.

"I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.

I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..

Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."

"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?

It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.

To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.

For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.

Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."


Remember our troops this Christmas.

Okay, so, here's the deal-

The MAAW tour begins soon.  VERY soon.  They're passing through Baltimore in early April, though I'm unsure precisely when or where.  I DESPERATELY want to see this show.  I haven't seen Disturbed since their Believe tour, and they've done so much since then!  Justin doesn't want to go because the only band that he knows that will be there is Disturbed and he's not particularly fond of them, and I'm certainly not going by myself.  I need someone to go with me.  Is anyone interested?  If so, PLEASE let me know!

My resolutions for the new year are to open my mind, broaden my horizons, and make a few friends so I actually have something to do on the weekend.  Damned antisocial tendencies...

I'm spending New Year's Eve alone because Justin wanted to go to a friend's house, as he does every year, and I feel silly being the only adult in the room not imbibing alcohol.  I sit there with my soda and watch everyone interact so freely and I get terribly frustrated because they've known each other all their lives and have wonderful inside jokes and personal experiences to share and I barely know anyone enough to join in the conversation.  If I weren't painfully socially awkward, that is, I may want to join in the conversation.  Besides, Justin needs some time away from me.  We work together and we live together.  I'd get tired of me, too.

As I'm sure most of you know (most of you being the one or two people who actually read this thing), I've been talking about seeing the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, for quite some time now.  It just came out on DVD and I snatched it up.  We watched it a few evenings later (I was strictly prohibited from watching said movie without him) and I have to say that I was impressed.  I didn't think anyone could play The Joker as well as Jack Nicholson, and, indeed, it wasn't the same, of course, because every actor brings their own flavour to a character, but Heath Ledger's performance was classic, memorable, and intriguing.  He's gleefully careless, yet diabolically methodical.  You don't know, really, if he's insanely brilliant or brilliantly insane.  The only part of the movie that I didn't like was when Batman dropped Maroni off of the fire escape and he landed on his feet and we heard the bones in his legs breaking.  Ugh... It turned my stomach.  I couldn't look at the screen for a full minute while I pulled myself together.  Something about that snapping sound just... Anyway... I also loved the changes they made to the Two Face character, both subtle and obvious in both Harvey Dent and his darker alter ego.  He had such a small part, really, as Two Face, but it definitely stood out.  His performance burns into your memory, so to speak.  Pardon the terrible pun, of course.  All in all, great movie.  I'd recommend it even to people that I hate.

I also grabbed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the same time.  I'd seen it in theatres, of course, being the Indy geek that I am (though I'm a Bat-geek, as well, and I managed to miss out on that experience, dammit), but I watched it again as soon as I got it home, and have watched it twice more since purchasing the movie.  It's really a very good film.  It goes against the grain of the other Indy films, but it also fits in perfectly.  Two of the original films were about Nazis and Christian legends and artifacts and the other was about saving an ancient civilization (with very odd practices, I might add; I've watched this the least of all of them because the heart thing just creeps me out), so they focused quite a bit on religions and well-known and widely-pursued ancient artifacts, while the newer film focuses on extraterrestrials (or interdimensional beings, as we later find out) and an "artifact" that I, personally, still am not sure has been speculated to really exist as the others, as I've found nothing on it, but it brings enough of the classic Indy flavour into it to make it endearing and addicting and fit perfectly into an empty slot in the Indy library that you didn't even know was there until you saw it.  If you haven't seen it yet, go get it.  No, really.  Right now.  I'll wait.

I also picked up the new X-Files movie, I Want To Believe, at the same time- I did a lot of shopping that weekend.  This one I can't say much about because even the smallest details may give away something vitally important to a fan of the classic show and I'd end up with a lynch mob outside my window, but suffice it to say that it's also a great movie.  I've watched this one twice, as well.  Can't get enough of my Mulder and Scully.

Another thing I've been doing a lot of lately (you can only watch so many movies before your brain starts to hurt and you have semipermanent white spots before your eyes) is reading.  Stephen King, of course.  What on Earth else?  He's released several books in a very short time, the first being Lisey's Story, which everyone raved about but I wasn't terribly fond of, Blaze under the Richard Bachman penname that was supposedly killed off years ago after contracting "cancer of the pseudonym", Duma Key, and Just After Sunset, another collection of short stories to add to my King library.  I've already said that I didn't enjoy Lisey as much as apparently every book review columnist in the world, mostly because it was extremely slow-going, even for Stephen King, master of the three hundred-page character introduction, but it did have its perks.  Most were at the end, so I won't discuss anything here, for those who haven't read it yet.  Blaze started out very good, but the smouldering embers had cooled by the time the story finished.  The beginning kept you on your toes, but the ending was a bit anticlimactic.  Again, though, it had its redeeming qualities, but I'll leave that be, as well.  It's been long enough since I read it and I've devoured so many books in the meantime that my current memory of the story could scarcely do it justice.

My faith in my Mister King was, as always, beautifully and artfully (pardon the pun- again) restored when I picked up Duma Key.  I had begun to wonder when I'd see another truly creepy King book, but I found it in Key.  It's disturbing and terrifying on so many levels and it really keeps you looking over your shoulder throughout (if you draw or paint, don't read this book- trust me), but it's not so horrifying that you lose sleep over it, which I've only experienced with three of King's short stories- The Road Virus Heads North, 1408 (which renewed my unease and mistrust of strange hotel rooms), and The Moving Finger.  If my love for King's work was restored with Key, it was increased with Sunset.  None of the stories, save one, were really eerie, but they were all intriguing and wonderful reads.  The only one that really left me with that copper-fear taste in the back of my throat and the hairs on my arms standing up was N.  It wasn't creepy so much as it was disturbing and unnerving.  As someone who shares a frightening common trait (OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) with both the main character and the subject of the main character's writings (it's a story about a man writing in his journal about a patient), it hits a tender nerve and makes you afraid to rearrange your bookshelf for fear that it will turn into something more sinister.  I already fear the number 23 (if you haven't heard of the 23 Enigma, go look it up; it's the bane of Obsessive-Compulsives everywhere- it haunts you!), and now I'm paranoid that I will begin to see creatures bursting forth from the void and have a sudden urge to arrange everything in even numbers and geometric shapes with lots of diagonals.  The spice cabinet should be afraid.

I suppose that's all I've really got for now.  My meaningless ramblings are usually...well, meaningless.  I hope everyone has a fun New Year's celebration, whatever you plan on doing.  BE SAFE.  Don't drive drunk- sleep on your friend's couch, for heaven's sake; they won't mind when they see that you're alive in the morning- and even if you're sober, beware of crazy swerving drivers who brake too often.  They may be rapidly leaving "soused" and approaching "pickled".

Be careful out there tonight!