Dear 123Greetings subscriber,

I don’t know about you people but I haven’t caught my breathe with the holidays. Buried in the snow and slipping around the side walks ain’t easy either. I have news for you this week, first let’s start with a holiday classic…

What is it about Fruitcake that people hate so much? I mean it’s just cake, people! But when every December comes, fruitcake bears the butt of all jokes. We used to joke on the stoop about each other’s fruitcakes. My favorite is: “Your mama’s fruitcake is so heavy they had to hire a hand truck to haul it in!”

We’ve always hated old and stale fruitcakes, especially the store-bought ones that people give as gifts when they don’t know what to get. Actually, does ANYONE bake home-made fruitcakes anymore? We have a couple of theories, one that fruitcake was first made when Mrs. Claus took the crumbs that had be there for a while on Santa’s beard. Another is that there is just one fruitcake and it’s been circulating the globe for at least the past 40 years…

Poor, poor fruitcake! But hey, what will we do without fruitcake humor during the holidays? Besides, it’s an ancestor cake to those other breads and cakes that are fruitcake-like, including black cake, dreikonigsbrot, babka, king cake, and even panettone! Think about it, and it’ll make you appreciate it more. The holidays would be so boring if we couldn’t crack jokes about mom’s fruitcake. After all, there are good fruitcakes out there ya know, you just have to sift through the rubble. (Pun intended.)

It’s official folks, Aaliyah and I are no longer an item. Maybe it’s because of my quirky humor, maybe it’s because of my not getting out the bling, bling and stepping it up a notch. We mutually called it off after Christmas. She wanted to pursue her Ph.D. in Anthropology and a long distance relationship was not going to work for either of us.

I haven’t been feeling good about it. I already miss her and the house has been deafeningly quiet all of a sudden. Then my old buddy Adrian called up. He’s moving to NYC and he wanted to crash at my place. We were in the same classes in freshman and sophomore year in college. He has very interesting background, He’s half Chinese, half Puerto Rican. I’m really looking forward to having him in the house for a while.

As for Aaliyah and I, somewhere along the line, maybe we just lost the connection. There were always so many things going on at the same time. There’s the holidays, the snow, my friends, her friends, her life is moving in a different direction, I’m trying to deal with day-to-day issues, she’s looking at the bigger picture and long term. We’re just not cut out for each other and we’re not going to be bitter about it.

What about you? Do you have a friend you call when you need someone to talk to? Or even to just say “hello”? Holidays can be real lonely at times but hey, there will always be friends who answer your call.

I guess this New Year’s Eve will not be like last time. Aaliyah and I went to the big party at Time Square last year. We’ve only seen it on TV so we decided to freeze our butts off and join the crowd. It was really great. Something about mass madness is so exhilarating. I think this year is going to be a quiet one – we are getting together at the Guinness bar two blocks down from my place. Adrian’s going to be there so we can catch up on lost time.

The New Year Day is obviously always a Bad Hangover Day. I mean come on people don’t tell me you don’t usually have a hangover. There’s no cure for that I tell ya!

I always manage to go overboard and drink a lot right up until the New Year’s countdown. It’s like the world’s going to stop turning at midnight and we have to drink all we can before then. Well, I got news for ya, THE WORLD IS NOT GOING TO STOP TURNING! Pace yourself, man! Have a lighter hand with the liquor this New Year’s Eve and save your liver for the rest of the year! Of course this is me talking. And if you really know me, you’d do what I say and not do what I do! Ha Ha.

But overall, have a good time with friends and family because that’s the most important thing. Make sure you have warm clothes – you don’t want to end up on the sidewalk and freeze to death in the middle of the night. And most importantly, be safe!