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Dec 25 My suitcase was overfull, so I left my books at home. I get to Dulles Airport and a cab mocks me with the sign "TV is gooder then books!"

The terminal is fulla Asians. They shout "Santa Clausu!" as I walk by in my Santa hat and green scarf and red bowling shirt and green pants. Spreadin' the love.

Now I'm wearing a Santa hat while eating a bacon cheeseburger in the Five Guys in Dulles Airport. Mmmm Five guys. The most secure burger in NoVa west of the Pentagon.

The two hours at Dulles on Christmas I only see one Hasidim, a young guy whose sideburns haven't dropped yet. We have to wait for our delayed departure plane to arrive, so I start playing my travel electric guitar. People look at me funny. Nothing new.

I fly next to a lady reading a copy of "Dewey, the small-town library cat who touched the world."

My sister Melissa greets me at my gate at the Knoxville airport, as she works there. She shows me off to her coworkers, including the janitor who wears the same POW-MIA lanyard I wear to The P-nt-g-n twice a week.

Melissa and I exchange gifts. She gives me homemade CDs and mints and apple Mentos and the Steve Martin autobiography. I give her an Inuit seagull totem necklace I bought in Coastal Oregon.

Now I'm in my mom's guest room. Mom has painted the furniture with Christian symbols and text with an epileptic vibrancy. There's a lot of that seizure-inducing yellow that Van Gogh used to induce petit mal seizures. Pics later.