So I fed my whole website into Google Gemini 2.5 and asked it to write a new Christmas Letter. Here is what it produced!

The Lutfey Letter – 2026 Edition: Is This Thing Still On?

Greetings Earthlings, Fellow Humans, and Potential Future Pen Pals!

Another year has zipped by faster than a UPS truck trying to make express delivery cutoffs before a three-day weekend. It’s time once again for the annual Lutfey family chronicle, painstakingly curated for your amusement and/or bewilderment. If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve survived another orbit around the sun, or you’ve successfully guessed the password to the archives. Either way, pull up a chair, grab a beverage (preferably not one that will stain the upholstery when you inevitably spit-take), and let’s dive in.

First, a programming note: After extensive internal debate (mostly involving me trying to convince Buddy the Bagel hound about the merits of third-person narration), we’ve decided against writing this year’s letter entirely from his perspective. While his insights into optimal napping locations and the philosophical implications of unattended food scraps are profound, his grasp of grammar remains… developing. So, you’re stuck with me again.

The Lutfey household continues its slow, inexorable march towards… well, something. Katherine remains the bedrock of sanity, somehow managing work, life, and the rest of us without (visibly) resorting to questionable coping mechanisms. Isabel is now navigating the treacherous waters of late high school – a confusing blend of demanding independence while simultaneously needing someone to locate her keys/phone/left shoe approximately every fifteen minutes. College applications loom, bringing with them the existential dread of essay prompts and the logistical nightmare of campus tours where every guide sounds suspiciously like a game show host. Samantha, deep in the throes of mid-teendom, communicates primarily through eye-rolls, cryptic slang I need an urban dictionary to decipher, and the occasional grunt that might mean “hello” or possibly “the dog just ate my homework.” Speaking of the dog, Buddy continues his quest for unsupervised counter-surfing glory and has taken up interpretive dance as a means of requesting walks.

My tenure as a UPS driver continues, providing daily doses of exercise, existential contemplation at traffic lights, and interactions with the fascinating tapestry of humanity (and their dogs, some of whom have very specific delivery protocols). My route remains a source of endless anthropological study. Discovered this year: the sheer volume of inflatable lawn decorations one neighborhood can sustain defies both logic and HOA regulations. Also, the mystery of the disappearing garden gnomes on Elm Street took a dark turn involving a squirrel, a misunderstanding over acorns, and witness protection. Don’t ask.

On the project front, the basement workshop continues to occasionally produce items slightly less dangerous than originally conceived. The CNC machine was recently employed to carve highly intricate patterns into… toast. Don’t judge; breakfast has never been more aesthetically pleasing, or generated more crumbs. My quest to learn Dungeons and Dragons hit a snag when my one-eyed cleric accidentally polymorphed the party’s barbarian into a throw pillow during a critical negotiation with a goblin king. Apparently, “persuasion” and “pillow-morph” sound similar when shouted during combat. Who knew? My patent for the energy-saving remote control holder hasn’t resulted in untold riches yet, but I did get a very nice rejection letter from a major electronics company on what appeared to be recycled papyrus. Progress!

We didn’t manage any intercontinental travel this year, unless you count Isabel’s virtual reality tour of the Martian colonies for a school project, which mostly involved her complaining about the questionable Wi-Fi signal near Olympus Mons. We did, however, brave the crowds for the annual Kinetics race, entering this year as “The Existential Squirrels.” Our craft, a marvel of engineering involving repurposed lawn furniture and an alarming number of zip ties, performed flawlessly right up until the moment it encountered water, at which point it achieved buoyancy levels previously only seen in anvils. We may not have won, but our dramatic sinking garnered sympathetic applause and possibly a tetanus shot for the pilot (me).

As I gaze out the window at the suspiciously quiet suburban landscape (are the squirrels plotting again?), I find myself pondering the big questions. Like, why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves? And will humanity ever perfect the art of the silent snack bag opening for movie theaters? The world needs these answers, and possibly more space cowboys.

That seems to be the Lutfey experience, circa 2026. May your holidays be filled with joy, your Wi-Fi be strong, and your pets refrain from eating inedible objects. Until next year, remember the wise words often attributed (probably incorrectly) to various historical figures, but which I’m claiming for myself right now:

“Life is weird. Embrace the weird. And maybe hide the good snacks.”

Warmly (or possibly just suffering from poor thermostat regulation),

Omar Lutfey

It was just another typical retro 80’s Saturday night for me– I started streaming the original Tron movie on my 75 inch flat screen television, pulled out a cold six pack of Jolt soda from the refrigerator, and popped in a 5.25 inch floppy disc into my gaming computer which contained a slightly pirated version of “The Oregon Trail.” I was so excited to start the game that I hardly noticed the freak electrical storm brewing outside.

I can’t say exactly what happened next, but Jeff Bridges was playing glow in the dark death Frisbee, the last empty soda can fell on the carpet unnoticed, and the largest atmospheric electrical discharge ever recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all occurred the nanosecond the game’s title screen appeared on the monitor. In defiance of all the known laws of man and science, I suddenly existed solely INSIDE The Oregon Trail!

The game is in some ways similar to the matrix in The Matrix. Pretty much everything is reduced black and bright green characters on the screen. However, due to technological restrictions of the time, characters in The Oregon Trail game can’t do super cool things like learn Kung Fu in three seconds, stop bullets mid-air with their thoughts, or eat fresh baked cookies from the Oracle. 

Despite these limitations, I quickly adapted to life on the trail. The first decision I was faced with involved what type of transportation to purchase. I splurged and bought a top of the line model. This thing had everything– four wheels (no, not four wheel drive, just four wheels), a cover, and only a few large holes in the floor. I expect this will help to minimize loss of supplies and offspring throughout the journey. At the start of the journey I proclaimed, “No farting in the covered wagon!” In all honesty, my family did quite well adhering to this rule. The oxen, on the other hand, were in no way shy about clearing out *everything* from their lower bowels at any random moment in time. At least I would have the courtesy to run behind a rock when I needed to take care of business.

The journey across the Oregon Trail is filled with many unique dangers. While many travelers have been forced to deal with coyotes, bears, and sharknados, our largest setback involved fording a river during the peak of spring runoff. “Let’s just go around it!” was the first thought that came out of my mouth. It turns out that was a really, really bad idea. Plan B involved scavenging the area for materials until we were able to build a rudimentary CNC machine. Once this was functioning properly we used it to build a slightly less rudimentary saw mill. From there we applied to the local water resource management agency and in six to nine weeks we received a permit to build a temporary bridge. Once this was completed the crossing was a breeze.

After a few weeks on the trail everything settled into a predictable routine. While our navigation system was rudimentary at best, I suspected the end of our journey was near. One night, after the wagons had been circled and dinner had been served I took a moment to reflect on my video game life. The moon was nowhere to be seen and the cloudy arms of the milky way stretched clearly across the sky. Everything just seemed like it was going to work out OK. The cook, who looked exactly, and I mean spot on, like Sam Elliot from The Big Lebowski, was just finishing drying off the last mug with a dirty towel and wandered over to me for a few words.

Sam: I’ve got two things to say. First of all, when children are old enough to be afraid of the dark they aren’t REALLY afraid of the dark, they are just beginning to understand the utility of the light.

Me: Yeah, wow, that really makes a lot of sense. I guess I never really thought of it that way. What is the second thing?

Sam: You just died of dysentery.

Me: That’s shitty.

Sam: Yeah, you should have gotten that looked at the last town instead of sneaking off to the brothel.