Why Christmas Music Gets Me Every Time

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I know it may sound weird to start talking about Christmas when Halloween hasn’t even come up yet. But last night, while my oldest daughter was making dinner, she put on a Christmas station on Pandora—and just like that, I was transported straight into my first Christmas memory.

I must have been maybe five or six. And when I say I “remember” it, I’m not 100% sure if it’s a real memory or something I pieced together from old photos—but it feels real. Someone dressed as Santa Claus came to our house. To this day I don’t know if it was my dad, a friend of his, or someone my parents hired—but “Santa” showed up. And to my absolute shock, I got a G.I. Joe dressed in full camouflage, plus a yellow helicopter and a Jeep with some kind of weapon mounted in the back. This was the early 80s, so getting war-themed toys was totally normal. That’s the first Christmas I can truly recall.

The Great Couch Debate (and Why My Office Survived)

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Grovemade on Unsplash

Over the weekend, my wife and I were talking about how good it would be to finally replace our old, beat-up couch in the living room. I don’t even remember where we originally got it—I just know we hated it from the very first day we assembled it. It’s too small, the back cushions are too soft, and if you lean back for more than twenty minutes, you end up pressed against the hard frame and needing a chiropractor. Most of the time we double up the cushions to make it usable, which also means there’s now a silent competition in our house: whoever grabs the extra cushion gets an additional twenty minutes of comfort.

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Why Christmas Music Gets Me Every Time

The Great Couch Debate (and Why My Office Survived)