Wednesday     December 26, 2001   3:10 am

A few days before Christmas I took BART over to San Francisco to do some shopping. I felt no pressure and had several days to get the things I needed, although according to the news reports I would be classified as a desperate last minute shopper. The city was cold and slightly rainy. Downtown was crowded. I didn't feel happy. Rather I felt alone with simply a task to accomplish. I'm unemployed, almost out of money, and I don't know what the future holds.

As it turned out, everything worked out ok. I came back from the city that day almost empty handed but over the next few days I was able to find all the gifts I needed, and I was satisfied and intrigued with all the things I had bought for everyone.

Christmas Eve came very fast this year. The Christmas spirit didn't visit me very strongly. Suddenly I found myself at my aunt's house making Tamales as we do every year. Fortunately this year I had a digital video camera. So during the Tamale making I shot little video clips of people spreading masa and talking. Six or seven minutes of what I thought was mediocre footage turned out to be plenty to make a little movie that everyone enjoyed. I even enlisted my mom's help. I was hoping that digital movie editing wouldn't be too complicated for her to understand at this point in her recovery, but the Apple software is so straightforward and well designed that she picked up the idea right away, and we were able to spend an afternoon scrolling through and arranging video clips, and picking out a sound track, before she got tired and went off for a nap. While she was sleeping I finished things up.

We played the finished movie after dinner. Everyone loved it.

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