Happy Holidays 2012

Graffiti Art. Queens, NY

 Well, it’s finally happened. The Castro Christmas letter has finally gone electronic. I know some of you are thinking… It’s about darn time. (Some of you might use a different expletive, and that’s OK.) Others of you might be upset that you had to go online in order to read this stupid letter, but if that’s the case you probably didn’t log on in the first place, so we’re wasting our collective literary breath. Unless you 

Castro Theater, San Francisco, CA

are the type of person that logged on just so you can complain about logging on, in which case we don’t much care that this put you out. However, there are also the significant percentage of you that may be disappointed to not have a “hard” copy, as they say for more important reasons: After last year’s letter, we heard back from some of you that might be disappointed that you cannot read this letter from the toilet. To which I say, get a laptop or hit the “print” button. Or, have someone read it to you, c’mon, let’s think outside the box. We could give you a line about how we are going green and saving trees by going electronic, but the truth is that the only green we are saving this year is the money for the printing costs. It is the economization of Christmas. What a shame.

On a Ghost Tour in New Orleans, LA. See the ghost over Stacie's right shoulder? Ooooooo...

“It’s the holiday season, so hoopdidoo and dickory dock…”If you are writing a holiday song, throw reason and commonsense out the window, and just start talking gibberish. Then get Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, or Boris Karloff to sing it. Bang. Instant classic.

So, first things first… (I guess this is the 3^rd thing) how about that HOTT and risqué Christmas picture! It’s our aim to be more edgy in ’13, and that’s how we are starting. No, the truth is that we spent the first few days of December in the beautiful Turks and Caicos Islands, celebrating the wedding of Stacie’s brother Ben and his wife Shelby. While we were there, we got caught on the beach with a towel, our Christmas hats, and a bit of inspiration.

We're just a couple of hard-workin' warriors.

As we were thinking back upon 2012, and the things that have happened in Castroville, there was 1 re-occurring theme: food. A lot of what we do and what we remember involves eating. Man, we really need to re-think our lives. Gosh, the more I think about it, the less I want to write… what’s wrong with us???

Wouldn’t it be cool to write a whole Christmas letter hitting random keys on your phone and letting Auto-Correct have it’s way? That sounds like a job for the great Tim Fescoe.

The Gum Wall, Seattle, WA. Yeah, that's chewed gum all over the wall...

Ok, well, let’s see… we must have done some things that didn’t have to do with food…. The trip to the Caribbean (although we did hit a sweet spot for lunch that was right on the beach and had fresh conch); Stacie made it to her 50^th state, with an April trip to Seattle, WA (we had some good homemade donuts, and made a visit to the gum wall). We did visit 2 other countries besides the TCI:  Canada (visited a Diners, Drive In & Dives spot); China, (man, Chinese food in China is

Awesome Dumplings, Shanghai, China

absolutely incredible… we got these lava filled dumplings for a buck.. Fuhghedabodit); Uh oh…. Not going so well,,, still talking about food. Well, we did run some races this year… we had a blast in February at the Krispy Kreme

Great Wall of China, Beijing, China

Challenge… It’s a charity race where you run 2.5 miles, eat a dozen donuts, and then run 2.5 miles back to the finish line. Kudos to Peter Ahrens for being the only guy in our group to finish all the donuts. (He paid for it though). Speaking of Peter, he took us to our first Warrior dash in May. In a word: awesome. I recommend doing it. You’ve got to check out the year in pix just to see that one. 

 Sweet! There was no reference to food in that one!

The Bund, Shanghai, China

China was one of the highlights of the year, but of course the trip was too short. We visited the Great Wall, Forbidden City in Beijing, the Terra cotta warriors in Xian (you may have seen these at your local PF Changs) and also visited Shanghai, home of three of the tallest buildings in the world, and the aforementioned hot lava dumplings (did I mention they only cost a dollar?) also, the proprietors of the dumpling shop seemed annoyed that Jed couldn’t speak the language.

Football-wise.. Well, 2012 wasn’t the best season for the Hokies, but we still stand behind our team. Tech rallied late in the season to extend it’s bowl streak to 20 straight years. And, even in a down year, we still are better than UVA, beating the Wahoos for the 9^th straight season.

Oh, and one more thing. It’s not our news, but it was one of the happiest moments of the year, and dammit,  we are going to talk about it in our letter.  Our friends Kilby and Johanna gave birth to a bouncing baby boy named Badin Jed Kilby. Yes, it’s exactly what you think. Kilby named his own son after himself.

A fall trip to Cascade Falls, Pembroke, VA

Well, just because this is an electronic letter, doesn’t give us free license to wax poetic, be longwinded, verbose, grandiloquent, or one of those people that rambles on and on and on. And on.. And on.  So in closing let me bid you farewell, wish you Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannaukah (although, that’s probably over by the time you get this) and Prospero Ano! Please take the time to view our pictures at this link. As you go through you’ll see travels to such great American cities as New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle, San Francisco, Asheville, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Boston, and international locations in Canada, China and the TCI. Please stay in touch and feel free to leave comments on our page. Actually, I’m not even sure if it’s set up to do so, but I felt like this letter needed some kind of line that left things open for further communication. Which we all know will come in the form of a similar letter a year from now.

The Year in Pictures

Peace out!

Jed & Stacie