My Christmas Eve.

• Christmas morning might as well be like any other morning in the Kaulins household.  Except, I don't have to go to the school.  The clan is all asleep.  There is no tree and there are no presents to unwrap.
• My Christmas Eve wasn't so good.  It was spent at home.  I spent most of the evening in one room while the Wife and Tony stayed in the other room.
• When I arrived home, I wasn't in a good mood.  What the wife had said the night before had hurt me to the quick.  I wasn't in a mood to fight.  There was no point, I figured, because the damage had been done.  I was going to have to wait out the storm that be my wife when she is in a bad mood.  When I opened the front door of the apartment, the wife and Tony were in the second bedroom.  I went straight to the first bed room and laid down.  I had turned off my mobile phone so people had to try to reach me through my wife's phone.  When someone did phone, I didn't answer the phone when the wife tried to make me.  I told the wife I didn't know what to say.  How to explain that we weren't going to go to the Christmas Dinner because she was tired?  The wife then said that she would go to Christmas Dinner.  But to me, she didn't appear enthusiastic about it.  So I said why bother.  After that brief exchange, I did a four hour vigil on the bed while she stayed in the other room.  So my Christmas Eve and Birthday was a rather lonely one.
• Eventually, we made up.
• Apparently, I have a reputation around Wuxi of being cheap.  So, I was told by someone at the school.  But on the other hand, the wife says I spend too much money.  Who is right?  Whatever.  Dammed if you do.  Dammed if you don't.
• I had finished work at 500 PM.  I made a point of it to wish everyone in the building a Merry Christmas. 
• I am now the head foreign trainer at the school.  The foreign vice-president's contract was not renewed.  Why it wasn't renewed is an interesting question.  There were two views.  One was that the school could operate without him and save on his big salary.  The other was that he had offended the Chinese bosses by wanting to make changes to how the school operated.  And thus the Chinese boss saw this as a usurpation of his power and so let the foreigner go. 
• Now that I am in charge of the foreigner contingent at the school, I work for the Chinese bosses.  I am stuck with a bunch of trainers who believe the latter version of what happened.  It puts me in an awkward position. 
• Being in a supervisory position, my view of humanity has lowered even more than it already has been.  I realize of course that I have to have more backbone.  My view of myself is also diminishing these past few weeks.