How did you celebrate Festivus (December 23)?

I’ve got a problem with some people, and I will tell you about it.

Made some really yummy chicken for lunch today.

I also made biscotti with my husband for Christmas Eve.

This evening we watched the last three episodes of the UK show Bodyguard on Netflix. I recommend it.

I had to cheat my ass off to defeat my kitty, Katrina in the feats of strength. ;-(

My father passed away on December 25, 2002, but I fought his corpse and kicked its ass!

I danced on a pole.

Listened, OMG, to music of Meredith Monk.

I never heard of Festivus until just now, so I looked it up. I’ve been missing something, all right.

I worked. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Airing of grievances, hm? Every day is festivus to me, if you ask my husband ;)

I do have a tradition for December 23rd: I usually meet up with friends and family at a local bar. It’s packed, and there’s always a cover band of Simon and Garfunkel. This year, we all listened to the songs from home. It was a bit sad, but I did feel a sense of connection to everyone. Especially with “El Cóndor Pasa”, which is so very hopeful.

Thanks for sharing! I’ll remember this for next year.

I aired my grievance to the framer rebuilding my barn. I wanted the sliding door to be flush with the building. He performed a feat of strength by pushing the wall with a massive SkyTrak forklift;
.

I cursed at the news.

I gave cards telling people I had donated to The Human Fund in their name.

The family watched The Strike episode of Seinfeld together.

Drove myself to distraction trying to determine why the locomotive won’t move on the electric train. My brother sent me the train 5 or so years ago, and fully remembering from my youth the man hours that can be consumed dealing with the frustrations arising from such enterprises, I have resisted all urges to even unpack the “labors of Hercules”. Well early this month my brother (who is buying a much smaller home with him and his wife) sent me a huge box of track and accessories—the wife went crazy with excitement and anticipation, and the application of pressure to realize HER fantasy commenced. By now she knows exactly which threats successfully push my buttons, and convinced that my lack of anxiety inducing activities due to covid is bad for me, she tells me that SHE will herself undertake the task of constructing the railroad, knowing full well that I realize the implications in THAT threat.

Well the long and short of this is that the tree being up and lit, the “boss” determined the railroad should not only go around the tree, but extend the full length of the living room along some 25 feet of 2 walls 20 feet apart. A phone call to my brother assured her that we had more than an ample supply of track, and he suggested with the switches we could branch off from the huge oval to extend the track into the hallway, through the legs of the piano, into the dining room and back to the “mainline” oval of the living room. I knew from experience that this was no simple project. What I didn’t know was about the fiendish “advances” in track technology and the horrors of something called “real trax”. Looking at the stuff, I became immediately suspicious, because connecting the O gauge sections was clearly not as simple as plugging them into one another as was the O gauge track of my youth. This stuff involved connecting the track through intersecting clips that required the sections to come together at an angle starting at an outside rail, then snapping the remaining 2 rails in place—BIG frustrating pain in the ass!! Not only are the copper clips susceptible to deform and even breakage, there is guaranteed circuit continuity failure in trackage of extensive length and current drop with distance from the point of power application. Thinking about it, I decided to first clean the rails with isopropyl alcohol (99%). Then treat each copper clip to a bath in contact cleaner. The wife, at first suspecting these measures as unnecessary foot dragging attempts to delay fulfillment of her fantasies, settled down after I showed her some of the documented suicide notes and attempts on the part of others dealing with this track. So—a day and a half of cleaning track, as well as the wheels and rollers of the passenger cars, then another day of painstaking assembly, rolling the passenger cars along the assembled track to check the current continuity through watching for the blinking of their interior lighting as they roll on the line. So, the main oval is connected with additional power applications every 20 feet or so of track—steady power, no dropouts. And now a locomotive that sits there all lit up and mocking me with its immobility. Went to the net, called the “service”(cruel misnomer) department of the manufacturer, currently engrossed in the joys of going out of business with the wonderful consequence of no one available to point me toward a solution. I dis get some phone numbers from the poor guy left behind to man the the deluge of calls one might expect to an electric train company at Christmas. Peace on earth?

Never heard of it. But any old excuse for a bar b q and six pack. As my old pappy used to say.

On second thought, that sounds like something that should be lanced by a doctor.

@Nomore_lockout: Festivus is a made up holiday which originated from the Seinfeld TV show. There was no tree or candles, there was a pole (Festivus pole). The holiday is celebrated as follows, cut from Wikipedia: “The holiday, as portrayed in the Seinfeld episode, includes practices such as the “Airing of Grievances,” which occurs during the Festivus meal and in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed them over the past year. After the meal, the “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is pinned.

It’s a joke holiday but one that you’ll see on Facebook and other places where people say “Happy Festivus.”

I climbed to the top of a lamp pole and balancing on one leg with the other tucked in like a flamingo, chanted “Festivus for the rest of us, Festivus for the rest of us”. I then slid down the pole kicking out at and vanquishing invisible enemies from past Festivus festivals.

@stanleybmanly….my dad bought us a cute train track set to run around the tree. 11 years later it took up the entire basement and featured entire towns and farms and mountians and trees. And cars. People. Businesses.

Anyway, I made crab cakes on a pole.

What made it memorable was my boyfriend squeezing my butt in public while we were waiting in line at Target to buy something for my dad. :P It was a good day, in all. It was fun to be out shopping in the evening with everyone (while maintaining safe distance, of course). I forgot that it was Festivus, though.

@Dutchess III Then you know and understand the debilitating hazards of obsession. Model railroading is one of those childhood hobbies that I quickly came to understand as an adult is likeccommitment to such pursuits as farming or collecting venomous snakes. I love looking at other folks’ wonderful layouts, but not for a minute do I ever allow myself to ignore the man hours of effort, endless problem solving, and terrifying money sucking potential of such addictions. I look at those fabulous layouts on youtube and recognize that they are actually assemblages of reams of hundred dollar bills and man years of the sort of crap I’m going through now. Merry Christmas. “A festivus for the rest of us”

@stanleybmanly You turned Festivus into Frustrivus!

60 plus years ago my parents set up a train set for us kids in the basement. It sure was fun. But, I cannot imagine the frustration my father endured putting it all together. And just to add to the proverbial frustration sandwich, my mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer so they no doubt put a premium on time. Maybe the train set was therapy for them.
Anyway… The tracks were on an 4×8 sheet of plywood ( which is in the basement in my house now with the complete train set in boxes. )
Being a “precocious,” science-minded, preteen I knew the tracks needed to be cleaned with fine steel wool. If I recall the package was called 0000 and was very fine. A few rubs with the steel wool and the tracks would sparkle. Occasionally a few splinters of the steel wool would be left behind on the track and when I turned it on they would immediately burn up in a flash. Cool!
It was not long before I started putting more and more steel wool on the track and sending it to steel wool heaven by blasting it with the train transformer on high. It was a magnificent sight if the lights in the basement were off. Poof!
Of course, I did this without telling my parents – even though the power surge dimmed the lights in homes for miles around. .
Anyway as you could predict, one day the Poof! was so big and took so much power the transformer burned out and the trains would not run. My father spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong. (I never told him.) After looking at that inoperative set for years my dad packed it up and gave it to me when he moved into a condo in Florida.
It now sits in my basement making me feel guilty every time I pass by the storage box.

I’m curious about the transformer, and am wondering if it and your train set are from Lionel. But I don’t want to spark you toward my own narcotic. Take a lesson from my suffering and keep storing that layout where you can’t notice it. Merry train free Christmas Cookieman.

@stanleybmanly….virtually every object on his set was hand made. I remember him spray painting peat moss green to be used for tree leaves. Building buildings out of balsa wood.
He was an electrical engineer so you can imagine the terrible tangle of electrical wiring underneath!

@stanleybmanly I went into the basement storage area this morning. There are mouse droppings and insulation on, and no doubt in, the boxes. I will resist digging deeper until after this holiday. There is a lot going on for the next 3 days.
If I’m smart I will never look at it again.

I sure thought of it a lot last night.
(Looking up at the sky) I’m sorry, Dad!)

Festivus for the rest of us!

Really, the “Airing of Grievances” is any day I call or text my family. :/