1224 the night before christmas

My sister and her husband dropped me off at SBCC in time for the Christmas Eve 6pm service. I had Lyle take out one of the chairs in the front row, so that my wheelchair would fit. But I changed my mind and had Mike reposition the chair, then I transferred to it.

Carol asked if I wanted to sit in the second row, but I chose to stay in the front. But when worship started, I had nothing to hold onto so I stayed seated wile the congregation stood. Next time, the second row.

Pastor Gary spoke about how the birth of Christ was prophesied in the Old Testament, much like the coming of a special one in the Star Wars saga. But while Star Wars is fictional, the birth of Christ is not. Up until this time, Pastor Gary was wearing a lightsaber on his right hip.

The service ended with a candlelight prayer. Joel performed “O Holy Night” with the candlelight. And the Hula Ministry performed a dance to “Silent Night”.

I had arranged a ride with Mike and Carol, but was kinda hungry so I joined them on a quest for food, since it was early. But we soon found out that a lot of eateries closed early.

We pulled up to an intersection and I said that I thought that Coco’s was closed. Mike said, “How can you tell? We’re still two blocks away!” That’s when I realized that we were at a different intersection than the one I thought we were at.

After trying a number of places, we ended up at Norm’s on Hawthorne Blvd. Mike said that the place seemed familiar. I commented that Norm’s was where we ended up last year after Christmas Eve service (see he blog post for 12-24-2007). We even had the same table, although the group was much smaller. It was just Mike, Carol, Janice and I.

Mike ordered one of the specials, but was drawn by the dessert. Interesting, because when the dessert came, he only had a couple of bites and the rest was consumed by Janice.