I pray this note find’s you fat, broke and dizzy. Sure signs of a great Christmas! I've decided to split my action packed holiday adventure drivel into a three-part series, so as to not to blow up your email box. I am also endeavoring to avoid being "needlessly tedious," as one keen observer...uh, observed of my last email.

Diane and I took the 11:30 PM red-eye flight to Atlanta. Having made the mistake of letting her pack my bags, it was no surprise when I realized she had forgotten my headphones. Now how was I going to watch the in-flight movie! Don't you think for a second that I'm going to pay $5 for their headphones! Don't you know this movie will be FREE on ABC in four years! Ok...Ok...deep breaths. "That's OK honey...I should probably sleep anyhow." Wait! It's Toy Story 2! Mattel's Barbie makes a cameo in this one! Aaaargh!..."That's OK honey...you sleep." While I secretly plot to hide your hairbrush so you can live with bad hair days!

We arrive in cold, dreary Atlanta at 5AM. I've had a half-hour of sleep. Of course I stayed up and watched the movie! I found I have the unusual ability to read computer-generated characters' mouths! Diane's sister, Sharon and brother-in-law, Paul, are there to meet us. You remember Sharon, the blonde Scarlett O'Hara, and Paul, Hugh Grant, but better looking. He swears he's never been to Hollywood & deVine. We immediately rush to the world of Georgian staples, Waffle House. We meet Rosalie, Diane's mother there and we set about "Y'alling and smackin' up griddlecakes and grits. It was a real hootenanny! Time for sleep. We mosey back over to Newnan, Georgia to catch some winks at Sharon's palatial plantation. We promptly awake at the crack of 3:30 PM. I feel like the Scrooge. I haven't missed Christmas Eve! Get Tiny Tim a Turkey!

You have no idea how Christmas affects Diane. The sugarplums don't just dance in her head, they bleed out of her ears! She is hovering around the Christmas tree that has enough boxes under it to build the Giza Pyramid and insisting we open them all NOW! Of course, most people wait for Santa to come or even midnight. But not Diane, 5:30 PM Christmas Eve is close enough! So we begin the family tradition of opening each gift, one by one, and oohing and ahhing over every pair of socks, knick-knack and Kleenex pack. It is decidedly different than the shark frenzy of the Rush household. We make Ernie, the other Yankee in the mix, open first. He feigns total excitement over the too, too large golf shirt I have bought him. He's nice like that. After three grueling hours we finally finish. I have once again lavishly spoiled Diane with a throng of expensive baubles and...junk that I might need. She has bought me clothes. You would think I have been walking about on this earth naked. But since I have the fashion sense of my Dad, this is probably a good thing. I am also told that I have a brand new couch in my future. The new couch was necessitated by feeding my old one to our dog. She is paying for her crimes in a Phoenix kennel. Now I'm going to have to start on a new butt groove!

The next day is Christmas Day! Oh, the joyous wonder of sparkling mystery! Huh? Anyway, Diane has managed to convince us that Santa has come and left us stockings! So we begin the process again. But this time I get what I have been waiting for! A deluxe McDonald's Fry Cell Phone! Wait until I call Spielberg on this thing! He'll probably buy the movie rights to this email!

Diane's father, Frank, and the best friend neighbors, of the last Atlanta email fame, come over to join us for Christmas dinner. Frank brings gifts like Santa, except he's much thinner. He endows me with a leather briefcase and all I got him was a Field & Stream subscription. Don't you hate it when that happens! So next year I'll buy him a block of gold and he'll get me an anvil. We'll never even out and will live forever in "gift distribution limbo." Back to the story. We gorge like the gluttonous Americans that we are on the roast beast. And Paul makes us Chivas Regal Stingers that could give George W. Bush a hangover. The lights go out early...

Ernie and Rosalie are up and out of there before the crack of dawn for their ride back to North Carolina. Diane and Sharon are up and out of there before the crack of dawn for...what else...shopping at the after Christmas sale at Targét? How many of you people actually do this? I have no idea why they do this, but it means I get to sleep in for as long as I want. So no complaints...until they came back with a metric ton of Christmas decorations! And Diane wants me to lug them around the 60,000 acres of Atlanta International Airport! So next year our house will look like Whoville! It is also Boxing Day, so we get more gifts! This is an English thing. I'm not sure what it signifies. Something to do with getting rid of the boxes, or maybe fighting over the gifts, either way, no one is hurt.

After nine hours of shopping the girls are ready to do something so we head out to see "Castaway" at the local theater, thirty minutes away. The movie is the anatomy of my life, but we won't go into that. I'll save that for therapy. After that, we find a great restaurant named "The Old Mill." Being the Kennywood aficionado that I am, how could I resist! It was built in 1823 and even had a waterfall behind it. I had the alcoholic meal of the local microbrew, packed potato and the bourbon sirloin.

Our last day in Atlanta, we decided it was time to act like tourists. So on a foggy, rainy day we went to the Coca-Cola Museum. They had the history of their product illustrated by their sales campaigns. People like Al Jolson, Howdy Doody and Shirley Temple hawking the world's most recognized concoction. No mention of the cocaine they use to put into it. But they even had a shrine to Mean Joe Greene's famous commercial. They gave you free Coke and also had an international room with sodas that were sold around the world. I tried the Watermelon Coke that is sold in China (very good) and the ginger ale of Zimbabwe (flat). But the main attraction was the gift shop. Well, OK, it was the main attraction for me. I spent the last of my money there.

Next, we went to Underground Atlanta. It is basically a shopping mall, underground. It was like being in the movie "Under the Planet of Apes." We shop at a place called, "Art by God." They are selling a Triceratops skeleton for a $132,000, if you are interested.

Well, it is time to catch the plane, so we are out of here. Off to my next adventure in Phoenix, the Insight.com Bowl (Pitt vs. Iowa State). That will be part two of the holiday trilogy. I know you can't wait! But if you find these diatribes "needlessly tedious" and you just want to escape them, just hit the delete button. Or read every third sentence...