The Lygers » Christmas

Sleeping in the Lion’s Den

Ryan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:19:42 +0000

Many years ago, before there was dirt, my family and I lived in upstate New York. While there we had some neighbors who became good friends of the family. We soon started a tradition of exchanging Christmas gifts with each other. Despite all odds, the gift exchange has endured. I must give props to both our neighbors and my parents for this because we moved away from upstate NY in 1985. I probably would have given up on the gifts around 1986. However, I am truly happy for the gifts they give. Often they include something homemade. Our wedding gifts were handmade teddy bears wearing the exact style dress and tuxedo we wore at our wedding. That was pretty good, but their Christmas gift topped even that. Feast your eyes on my new lion pillow cases. Hell yeah! I immediately replaced my crappy Bed, Bath & Beyond pillow cases. That’s right, Ryan “Like a Lion” finally has a pillow case worthy of his kingly head. Katie was a bit reluctant to have them on the bed at all – much less on my side – but once I gave her the lion-like pose you see in this picture, she relented. I also received a small lion figurine. It stands guard over my cubicle entrance at work. So, thank you for the Christmas gifts, thank you very much.

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2009 Christmas Brag & Gag Letter

Ryan — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:02:02 +0000

Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin

So the Christmas season has come yet again. I know this because CVS has already pre-staged their Easter decorations. So another year has gone by. It has been an exciting one for The Lygers.

In January we attended the Inauguration of President Obama. It was about 20°F and it took us 5 hours to walk 3 miles … but it was a good blog story. We’re glad we went, but we’re not sure it’s something we want to do again. It’s much easier just to watch it on TV.

We had both sets of parents visit us in DC. We marched them all over town until they were dead tired. Some of us (Ryan) did this to maximize the time to see attractions. Others (Katie) did it because she got lost.

Katie secured a full time teaching job at Washington- Lee High School in Arlington, VA. Since taking the job she spends most of her free time grading essays. Ryan makes sure to look conspicuously lazy while she does this.

Katie spent the summer in Santa Fe, NM at one of the Bread Loaf campuses. She has only one summer left before she is a Master of English. After classes ended Ryan flew to New Mexico for a week of traveling. They visited Ryan’s aunt, cousin and grandfather – all New Mexico residents. K & R also managed to squeeze in a day at the Ten Thousand Waves spa in Santa Fe and White Sands National Park.

While Katie was in Santa Fe Ryan visited Cairo for two weeks. While there he learned to walk like an Egyptian and relive all his Indiana Jones fantasies.

In August Congress decided to give free cash to Americans who had strategically purchased gas-guzzling vehicles in years past. Not to be left out of the cash bonanza, Ryan was a loyal American and traded in his Mustang GT “clunker” for a Japanese Toyota Rav4. Katie added in her Camry as a straight trade-in so we went from 2 cars down to 1. Our first trip with the new car was to Sunset Beach, NC for a vacation with Katie’s family.

During the year we also visited The Homestead Resort (mooching off some lawyer friend’s free perks), Charlottesville, Baltimore, and Thanksgiving in MA.

Three days before Christmas and DC is still digging out from 18” of snow. This caused a big brouhaha with Katie getting stuck in Atlanta because of closed airports in DC. Eventually we got her home but required 5 hours of driving by her mother and 8 hours by both her brother and Ryan. This pretty much ruined Ryan’s day of napping and playing Xbox games.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanza, and Happy Festivus for the rest of … you. Oh, and also a Happy New Year.

Katie & Ryan

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Christmas in Antigua

Ryan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:46:00 +0000

Since I wasn’t allowed to take any time off during training, Katie and I decided to postpone our honeymoon until Christmas. Not wanting to do too much for our honeymoon, we opted for a trip to the Caribbean. After some internet searching I found some excellent deals at some Sandals resorts. They have several resorts throughout the Caribbean but I chose the one in Antigua for no other reason than I hadn’t been to Antigua before. We booked our honeymoon starting on December 20th and flying home Christmas night.

The preparation of the trip was a learning process for me. I hate to check a bag. In fact, I once went to France for a week with only a small backpack because of my dislike of checking bags. Since airlines are now charging for the privilege, this annoyance has only gotten worse. What I never think of are the 37 different types of lotions, shampoos, and various other liquid beauty products that are required by women when they travel – which, unfortunately, require checking a bag. Since we’re going to a beach resort they only clothes I need are one business casual outfit (as required by several of the restaurants at the resort), one bathing suit, a hat, sunglasses and a couple t-shirts. I made the mistake of recommending a similarly light amount of packing to Katie. She started with a good bit of clothing. I finally talked her down to a medium amount of clothing, yet I should have let her bring the whole lot because by day three she was “out of clothes to wear” despite having what I considered a solid 2 weeks’ worth of clothes.

My Lyford upbringing requires me to be a cheapskate so I managed to save $100 by purchasing airline tickets that took us through 5 airports and increased the trip duration to 14 hours … but I saved $100. Actually, the trip was supposed to take us through only 4 airports (Our starting point – Washington National, Charlotte, St. Maarten and finally Antigua), but I didn’t realize the flight from St. Maarten to Antigua made a pit-stop in St. Kitts as well.

We began our trip leaving Washington National the morning of December 20th. As expected the airport was a madhouse. We waited in an extraordinarily long line (which was required because we had to check a bag – just wanted to emphasize that once more) but eventually made our way through the check-in line and security to board our flight. We connected in Charlotte and continued on to St. Maarten where we had about a 3 hour layover.

St. Maarten is not the worst airport I’ve been in (the Russians might have that market cornered), but it’s certainly not going to win any awards. There are two “restaurants” that sell items one would normally see from a street vendor – only the prices are quadrupled. Katie eats about as many meals a day as a hobbit so we forked over some cash for Katie’s “second lunch”.
Finally it was time to board our flight to Antigua. I’ve ridden on a 4-seat Cessna before, but that was the only plane smaller than the one we now boarded. It seated about 15 people in an area that, in any other location, would seat about 8. My legs would not fit between my seat and the one in front of me so I had to sit sideways – as did the 10 year old child next to me. There was no door between the cabin and the cockpit so I was able to get a good look at the instrumentation. There had been some upgrades – the addition of a forward scanning radar and GPS system, for example – but judging from the rest of the equipment I would say our plane has been in service since the mid 1960’s. By this time it was about after dark so there was no reference point on the horizon to fix on to – this made the turbulence that much more exciting.

When I got on the plane is when I found out we’d be stopping to drop off some passengers in St. Kitts. Katie, however, didn’t hear this announcement (or the second, third or fourth announcement, apparently). When we stopped in St. Kitts she walked right past me towards the door. “Where are you going?” I asked. Katie had a look of confusion on her face until I explained the whole “pit stop in St. Kitts” phenomenon.

We finally landed in Antigua around 10pm. As we were taxiing in to the terminal Katie looks out her window and says, “look, there’s a big plane.” I figured she meant a 30-seater rather than a 15-seater. We flew into this airport on a little dinky plane, I figured it was because the airport was only big enough for little dinky planes. Well, I look out her window and there, next to about 4 dinky little planes, is a giant Virgin Air 747. Huh? This runway is big enough for a 747 and we flew in on Midget Air. Well, we did save $100.

Sandals had a free transfer from the airport to the resort. We finally checked in about 11pm. Apparently the resort was only 60% full so we were upgraded to a suite room. Thank you global economic crisis. Basically the “suite room” wasn’t really a suite but an oversized room. The nice thing about the suite rooms was that you had a mini-bar that was free and restocked daily. Most excellent. Wanting to shower after 14 hours of travel, we discovered the room didn’t have any hot water. The problem could be easily solved by readjusting the handle, but I don’t carry a set of hex wrenches with me on vacation so we were at the mercy of the hotel maintenance staff. It took a couple of calls to the front desk, but a man came and promptly fixed the problem.

The resort has something like 8 or 9 restaurants each with different schedules – some have breakfast, some don’t; some are closed on Mondays, other’s aren’t; some require “formal dress” others only require that you are dressed. We learned all this on an orientation our first morning. We might have learned more, but we left halfway through because it started to get boring. The food was pretty good. Our breakfast buffet had French toast, waffles and omelets made to order. The orange juice tasted like pineapple juice, but pineapple juice is good too. Four of the restaurants required reservations. We booked those the first day and were lucky because all four were almost completely booked. You must need to book your dinner reservation before you arrive if the resort is at higher than 60% capacity. The four restaurants requiring reservations were Eleanor’s – with Caribbean food; Kimono’s was a Japanese steakhouse that also has a very good sushi bar attached to it; Mario’s was Italian and OK Corral served Tex-Mex. Aside from the first night when we ate at the only restaurant still open at 11pm – Cricketer’s , the English pub – we cycled through the other’s for our other four nights.

By far the best restaurant was Kimono’s, and not because of the food. Normally at Japanese steakhouses the cook will flip the food around, make little volcano’s out of a stack of onions, etc., etc. Our cook did magic tricks – excuse me, “illusions”. Unfortunately not all of his illusions worked. I guess that happens sometimes when your magic props are small, plastic and come from a box of Cracker Jacks. I thought these high quality illusions would be the highlight of my evening … but I was wrong. I first suspected this when our waitress told us she had for us “a very special surprise”. It was a surprise all right. After dinner our waitress brought in one of the Filipino sushi chefs (our cook was also Filipino – apparently Japanese cooks are in short supply in the Eastern Caribbean). He positioned himself, cleared his throat and proceeded to sing to us Kenny Roger’s entire “Lady”. I thought that was the pinnacle of my evening – until his encore of Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello”. I almost gave him a standing ovation – not only for the singing, but for his selection of songs – neither of which I had heard in more than two decades.

There are various excursions you can pay for, but many of the activities at Sandals are free – including SCUBA diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately the wind was too high while we were there to take advantage of either. We were able, however, to paddle around on a sea kayak for an afternoon. Most of the week was spend lounging on the beach, lounging by the pool and sitting in the hot tub. I love hot tubs. We usually had one of the three hot tubs on the resort to ourselves – another benefit of the economic crisis. Interestingly, however, towels were hard to come by. I guess the trick is to wake up early, snag a towel, use it to reserve a chair on the beach and then go back to bed. People seemed to be pretty good at not taking chairs with towels already on them.

By the final day, Christmas Eve, Katie was tired of “being sticky” from all the sunscreen. She made it clear to me several times throughout the day. However, the day was salvaged with a Steel Drum band playing a concert of Christmas tunes that evening.

We woke up Christmas day to begin our 14 hour (and thankfully uneventful) trek back to DC.

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Christmas Tree XXL

Ryan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:59:00 +0000

So a couple weeks ago Katie comes to me with her wish to purchase a Christmas tree. Call me a grinch, but I’m not too fond of them – they take up space, they cost money, the real ones shed needles everywhere, the fake ones are non-biodegradable, etc., etc. After a couple weeks of nagging I finally caved in, but only if it was artificial because I don’t like vaccuuming needles every 6 hours. Plus, the cost of the artificial tree can effectively be depreciated over years, if not decades, whereas the real tree lasts 1 month.

Now, we live in a small one bedroom apartment so I’m thinking we get one of those little tabletop jobbies – it looks nice but doesn’t take up much space. Katie has something else in mind. We get to Costco and she pulls out the 7.5 ft supertree. I couldn’t even remember if our ceilings are 7.5 ft tall. I fought against it, but lost. The thing barely fit in the back seat of Katie’s Camry, and then only with some significant cajoling.

We now have in our 1 bedroom apartment (with no storage) a 7.5 ft Christmas tree and a giant empty Christmas tree box. At least in January we’ll be able to combine the two and only have the giant box.

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Lessons and Carols at the National Cathedral

Ryan — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:13:00 +0000

This evening we visted the National Cathedral for “A Service of Lessons and Carols”. Mind you, these weren’t Christmas carols, but several songs you would probably recognize (O come, O come Emmanuel, Wachet auf, etc.). The cathedral had it’s “Choir of Men and Boys” on hand to sing several of the carols which was good because the congregation pretty much sucked at singing.

The cathedral is your standard run-of-the-mill cathedral (big, stone, stained glass windows, lots of old people). They have a very impressive organ with over 10,000 pipes. The only problems with organs in big, cavernous, stone structures is that you end up with a quite severe echo.

At the end of the service the congregation all lit candles to sing the last hymn. Katie and I are both in agreement that playing with fire is quite fun so this was quite an enjoyable part of the evening.

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First Annual Brag & Gag Christmas Update

Ryan — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:15:00 +0000

It is again that time of year when families send out their annual Christmas updates. Not to be left behind, we will join this Christmas tradition of reminding everyone how awesome we are. We’re too lazy and cheap to buy stamps and mail them out so you’ll have to be proactive and read it here on our new blog – “The Lygers” (a mashup Ryan’s surname and Katie’s maiden name – Lyford and Swiger, respectively).

Since getting married on August 30th, we have settled down (albeit temporarily) in Arlington, VA. Our apartment has a lovely view … of the Hilton across the street. Ryan considered documenting the number of rooms with lights on each evening in order to perform a statistical analysis on their occupancy rates throughout the year. However, he then decided that would be far too much work and opted to watch some TV instead.

Katie has worked hard to “make the apartment livable” by buying such things as pretty colored placemats and bathroom cleaning supplies – items that Ryan had previously never considered essential to keep on hand. We also have enough pots, pans and other cooking supplies to choke a camel … all of which apparently are also essential to “make the apartment livable”. Ryan still doesn’t see how, but he does enjoy a nice home cooked meal nearly every night so he has learned to keep his mouth shut and stay out of the kitchen.

Upon arriving in Arlington Katie decided to lower the national unemployment rate by going out and getting a job. She didn’t jump right on it, though. The first month was spent sleeping until noon and watching many hours of the cooking channel. All of this was to “mentally prepare herself” for that thing everyone dreads – a full day of work.

Katie did eventually find a job – in fact she found three of them (apparently all that “mental preparation” actually worked). She is now a substitute teacher for both Arlington and Fairfax Counties and a part time teacher for an after-school mentor program. Ironically, Greenville, SC pays substitute teachers about 30% more than Arlington or Fairfax counties. Go figure. As a result she gets calls to substitute around 5:30am on many mornings. Ryan is still waiting for his body to adapt and sleep right through them, but until then will probably be grouchy and irritable from 5:30am onwards.

Ryan is in training with the State Department and will be until next summer. During his training he has learned several important beaurocratic skills which are important for any government position. These skills include, “waiting in line to get a badge”, “filling out reimbursement paperwork” (that one actually took three days of training), and “pestering HR relentlessly until they finally do the 10 second task they should have done in the first place”. Luckily most of that was the first few months of training and now Ryan has moved on to the “meat and potatoes” of training. He would elaborate more, but then he’d have to kill you. No not really, he just likes saying that. No seriously, he would have to kill you. No, no, he’s still joking … maybe… Luckily Ryan’s training site has Fox News playing 24/7 in the break room so he’s been able to keep current on all the important issues of the day – like what Joe the Plumber thinks about Obama’s foreign policy initiatives.

We will be spending our belated honeymoon in Antigua over the Christmas holidays. So, while much of America will be freezing their butts off, we’ll be drinking a neverending supply of pina coladas on the beach.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Ryan and Katie

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Christmas Eve

Ryan — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 21:57:00 +0000

For Christmas Eve I wanted to watch the Denver Broncos game. My parents wanted me to go to the Christmas Eve service. I ended up going to the Christmas Eve service.

The service started out like most church services – boring. Usually the Christmas services are slightly better than the rest of the year because there is a decent collection of Christmas carols. Unfortunately this church decided to choose a collection of the slowest carols for their service.

I probably would have dozed off if it wasn’t for two unique performances in the service. The first was two young girls (5th grade, maybe?) playing an oboe duet. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the oboe is one of the hardest instruments to play. Well … it’s one of the hardest instruments to play in tune. 5th graders can barely play a piano in tune, much less an oboe. As soon as I saw those reeds come out I knew my ears were in for a special treat. I was not disappointed.

The next unique performance was the children’s play that was performed. Children’s plays are money! The cast was made up of three sheep, two Burger Kings, three angels and a couple of unidentifiable characters. I’m not sure exactly what the play was about because multiple sections were acted by the director trying to whisper lines to the forgetful kids.

At several points during the play the cast would all come together to “sing” Christmas carols. One of the sheep used this time to show the audience his stomach. In the angel group – two of them would sing and third would just stare at the other two. I’m pretty sure several were just lip syncing.

All-in-all a blogworthy service.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Ryan — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 17:24:00 +0000

I had a very relaxing Christmas day here in Sofia. I’m taking care of Kat’s apartment and cat so basically I’ve just been camped out here taking advantage of her AFN satellite (aka American TV shows). Christmas night I went to a party at Paris’ house. It was slow until around midnight when about 20 people all showed up at once.

I’m heading up to Budapest on Thursday to celebrate New Years so the blog postings will be spotty for the next week or so. I plan to make a few picture posts of my first 5 months in Bulgaria – 1 or 2 sets before I leave and the rest after the new year.

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AmCham Christmas Party

Ryan — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:16:00 +0000

The party crashing continued last week with the annual American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) Christmas party at the Hilton Hotel. They way I see it; I’m an American, I’ve read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and as an MBA grad I am keenly interested in Commerce. Therefore, I feel I am fully qualified to attend a Christmas Party put on by the American Chamber of Commerce. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I showed up a couple hours late to the party because, a) no one checks invitations after a couple hours and b) I was meeting several embassy friends who weren’t going to be there until later. I made sure to wear my “Christmas Party Crashing Outfit” – slacks, blazer, dress shoes and a nice button-down shirt – so as to fit in with the other snappy dressers. Not everyone subscribes to my “blend in with the crowd” attire, however. As I walked in the Hilton I met an embassy friend’s husband who was also meeting all of us there. He was disguised in a baseball hat, Sweden football shirt and jeans. The great thing about Bulgaria is that no one cared. Later in the night I saw a guy wearing tight leather pants. In fact, tight leather pants are quite popular for parties where you want to impress. They sure do impress me, but mainly for having the guts to wear something like that at a semi-formal party.

Not five minutes after arriving at the party I run into the DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) of the US Embassy. The DCM gets high marks from me. I’ve met him several times at various Embassy parties and he is always interested in the work I’m doing with the MBA Enterprise Corps. Anyway, he takes one look at me and says, “I know a party crasher when I see one. Do you have an invitation to this event?” Doh, I was caught!

“Ummmmm ….. maybe.”

“Here take mine.”

What a great guy.

With my borrowed invitation in hand (even though it wasn’t necessary) I headed straight to the open bar. I meet up with my Embassy friends and did a bit of schmoozing with some other people I knew. They had a band which wasn’t particularly exciting, although the singer was a clone of Pamela Anderson. Perhaps Pamela is trying to start a new life in Bulgaria. After a couple drinks the party was winding down so I took off with my friends. All-in-all, another successful Christmas Party.

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