Don't Count Your Presents before they're Unwrapped

There really isn't such a thing as "holidays" in the hospital setting. Since no one has figured out how to simultaneously cure sick people, even if it's only temporary, the hospital won't close and the nurses/doctors/assistants still need to show up to work.

White, Fluffy, Cold stuff right outside our Houston home

But I had Christmas Eve through New Year's Day off, so Mark and I went north to visit family and real snow (as compared to the morning-long wonder of Houston snow, which apparently doesn't count).

Mark's interaction with Northern Snow was next to nil, since he had a cold and consequently spent most of the time indoors.

That would have been my response, too, but I wanted to test out my new snow boots. I tromped around in it without getting cold and wet feet, so I call it a success. I've been accumulating winter gear ever since dating my Northern man; our first winter together, I tried out a new winter coat. Next winter item to collect: mittens that keep my hands warm. That'll be an uphill battle, since my hands are normally cold even in Houston weather.

We spent Christmas day with my family, which meant we opened presents by my family's tradition: one at a time, going around in a circle. The first task of Christmas is to sort presents by person, which helps speed up the rotating unwrapping. My parents try to get an equal number of presents representing an equal amount of money spent on each person, but my (fairly) recent marriage messed things up.
You see, several weeks before Christmas my mother requested our wish lists. Normally it's a list created on Amazon, and Mark and I share an account, so my parents got a joint wish list. Which should be fine...but we didn't specify what was for whom.
So on Christmas morning, Mark started things off and opened an auxiliary cord; I had added that to our wish list because the aux cord in my car is shredded. Which means that kind-of was a present for me. We encouraged Mark to open a different present, one that would be specifically for him. He chose a book-shaped present, since he likes reading...but it turned out to be anatomy-based comics that I had requested. We decided to move on. When his turn came around again, he opened car floormats, which surely would be for a male, except that they were for my car, and thus not really for him. In summary, by the end of Christmas morning, every single present Mark opened was essentially for me, except for the gift I gave him, which was a hockey game that we would attend together.

Mark got even, though.
He gave me his cold.