I think I'm ready, yeah, what's up fungal associates? Welcome to completely arbitrary the podcast about trees and other related topics. I'm one of your hosts. My name is Alex Croson and I'm alongside me. I'm Casey.

Hello everyone. Hey, case. Hi, Alex. I'm Casey. I'm here host of completely arbitrary the podcast.

Excited for this episode. It's a good time to introduce ourselves, reintroduce ourselves. Yes, if this is your first time. This is completely arbitrary. We're podcasts about trees and other related topics. What we mostly focus on is the silliness of the world along with some scientific facts. 70% of the time what you hear from us. You can say to someone else with confidence as a fact. 30% you might want to Google. Yeah, Google. Just give it a quick. Let me check that. This is what we do.

Every week. This is about as good as it gets. It's good as it gets everyone. Come on new listeners. We will see you later. Oh, Alex today. We're not going to lose any listeners. Today we are going to get a whole slew of new believers in this tree. Wow. Well, before we get into our tree, Casey. Yes, hot off the press here. Exactly. Christmas just ended. We just we just celebrated Christmas. I don't know what you were going to say. Why did you jump ahead of me like that? I didn't know where you were going to go. That's where I was going to go. Oh, you

were. Usually I try to guess something random. I know you hate this, but I also enjoy it. We're like, well, Casey, we have news and I usually try to say that's right. And then say some crazy absurd thing that makes no sense. Well, thanks for doing that, I guess. But today it was true. We just had Christmas. Yes. You and I both celebrate. And we both had a we both had a good Christmas. Yeah, we sure did. Yeah, you spent some time with it was a whole new kind of adventure. I think for both of us. That's right. We had new traditions happen. Do you want to give a quick overview of your holiday? I will.

We just are lives in Mill City. It's a very, very tiny little town way out in the middle of nowhere. And usually we would do the same thing that we've done since I was a small baby child. We'd always started my mom's house. We'd go to my grandma's house and we'd go to my aunt's house. Then we'd be done. It's a lot of moving around. Yeah, it's a lot of moving around. It was it was never. I think it was just like, well, we got to see every family on this day. And it was just an easy one, two, three kind of thing. So this year there was a huge snow storm or ice storm.

It was. And so instead, so my sister had this big crazy plan to drive an hour and a half in on the 24th. See somebody then go from there, wake up in my mom's house, then drive to my grandma's house at 10 o'clock in the morning at 11 o'clock in the morning, drive down to Mill City, another hour and a half away, do something with her boyfriend's family. And then they have a kid together. So they were all going to drive back over to my mom's house again. So it'd be like five hours of driving there and back again in two days.

And then you meet over at my aunt's house and it was just like a whirlwind. I was like, you shouldn't do this. Everyone was like, you shouldn't do this. And she was like, I'm doing this. Wow, then the ice storm happened. And she's like, I'm not doing that. And so we ended up having a lovely like kind of a late morning, the latest of all the Christmases I've ever had usually get up really early. And as an adult, I'm not as like, Oh, yeah, get up at six in the morning, like go down an open presence. Now just kind of like this is going to be fun. Yeah, I am okay.

With having a nice slow coffee morning. Yeah, chill out. Then of course, we went over to my mom's house really quick when my grandma's went to my aunt's and everything was very well paced.

Good. It was really nice. Got spending with family, give some gifts, got some gifts, had a nice prime rib dinner. Oh, yum.

Yeah, it was very good. It was very lovely. Wonderful case. Yeah, what about you? You want to share?

Well, yeah, I do. I for the very first time in my life, I spent Christmas with and Christmas Eve with my partner, Lily.

Yes. It was fantastic. I haven't, you know, I've, I've, I've talked a little bit about on this show about my mother passing away about six years ago,

right around Christmas. So I, I for the last six years, I have not had great feelings toward the holiday. Yeah.

And it's been very hard and usually every Christmas, I'm like miserable and panicky and this Christmas was a huge exception to the rule.

That's so good to hear. I had a fantastic time. I spent it with Lily and her family in their beautiful, like, large, like home with their 20 foot Christmas tree.

Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? Yeah, for real. It was, I believe it was a noble for, I don't even live in a place that is 20 feet ceilings.

Right. This, it was a huge fucking tree. That sounds awesome though.

And it was just like so full of love and we played games and we had delicious German food. Yeah.

I felt like I grew closer to my partner and, and like, and vice versa. And it was, it was just really nice being a part of this big, you know, happy, sweet family.

Yeah. You know, I think I, if I would have gone to Christmas with my family, it would have just felt like I was repeating the same pattern.

Yeah. You know, and like, not breaking out of that sort of, like, traumatic pattern. Yeah.

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