The Family

At the Austin Zen Center there are tea and snacks available after the Saturday Dharma Talk.   The other day the ‘snack’ came from Voodoo Doughnut.  Voodoo Doughnut is open from Wednesday to Sunday – 24 hours a day, but they close on Sunday when they sell out.   Since doughnuts do have a shelf life, they do like a bakery does:  ‘day old’ doughnuts are available (really just ~8-12 hours old) if you are there to catch the deals.  Maybe they aren’t as fresh, but the price reduction can make it worth doing.

Or, if you’re like me, and feel like being a bit silly and don’t have a clue about what any of them are going to taste like…   Well, I went in hoping to catch a deal.  The deals come in two forms:  A box of random doughnuts for 6 dollars, or a bucket for 10 dollars.   They were all out of boxed doughnuts.  But…

So. Many. Doughnuts. Yep, we’re going to make ourselves sick if we’re not careful here.

They did have a few buckets.   So I bought one.  (it was either that or a simple dozen for 10.00 )  Oh, and that bucket – it isn’t empty.  Mostly empty, but there’s still a dozen or so doughnuts in there.  Bottom ones got a bit more smashed up than the rest, but that’s expected.

Sometimes the kids have a contest over who gets which doughnut (‘but I wanted the one with the pink sprinkles, not the chocolate sprinkles!’).  Not an issue today.  I think I broke the barrier between ‘rare treat’ and ‘unlimited resource’.  I’ll be trying these and figuring out which ones are worth re-trying fresh and which ones I’ll pass on in the future.   Like that pink one – Daughter said those were ‘too sweet’.  I haven’t tried it yet, but that’s impressive when she doesn’t want to finish even the 1/4 piece of donut.

Oh, and I also bought a fresh doughnut.  No Joke:  it’s the Cock’n’Balls.

Yes, it is cream filled.

Regular doughnut provided for scale.  To quote Christina:  “Oh.  It’s bigger than the pictures online make it look”   And really, the jokes just write themselves here.

Here’s the plan:

We’ll all gather in New Braunfels on Christmas Day. The idea is to all gather at noon, but that’s flexible. Whenever everyone is here is when we’ll start.

Food is going to be open grazing, not any formal sit-down meal. We’ll get something to eat before starting in on presents, and we’ll bring desserts out after presents, but other than those obvious outlines it will be pretty relaxed.

As far as eating, here’s what we have:
Nelia: veggies and fruits, pumpkin cheesecake
Christina: rolls, dessert item tbd
Ramona: meat & cheeses, punch/juice, cookies tbd

If I’ve forgotten some major food group, let me know. Or feel free to just bring it along. It’s all good.

Theme:  Something Inky

I’m leaving that up to interpretation.  Pack of colorful pens, ink&paper drawing, a squid – all have come up as “would that be allowed?”.  Well, they are all inky, so yep.  Totally allowed.

Luke has Ramona
Nelia has Christina
Joseph has Luke
Ramona has Chris
Chris has Nelia
Christina has Joseph

There’s the list – I didn’t so much draw names as look at last year’s Christmas drawing and started at the top with the rule of “flip family, flip gender”.  Worked till the end, which would have ended up with Christina/Nelia trading gifts with each other, so I switched Christina & myself’s recipients.    Hope that works out well enough for everyone.

What is our usual price range?  I’m drawing a blank on that one…