Holiday Blues

Howdy, Everybody;

Christmas was OK this year, I guess, but somehow it's not the same as when the kids were, well, kids. It seems that it's been so fragmented anymore. Son J is in from New York, for a couple of weeks, and has spent a couple of days with us in that time. We spent the Saturday before Christmas helping Son R assemble a very nice swing set / fort combo for Granddaughter T, which was fun. Especially with the wind gusts to 40 mph.

In the days preceding this, Grandma (my wife) made about 47 batches of 17 different kinds of fudge (I'm exaggerating, but not all that much). After all that stirring I bet she could break a brick with her right hand as long as she hit it in a stirring motion. Wax on, wax off....

When I said Christmas was fragmented, I mean that for every family sub-group, there's a separate opening of presents. This year, apparently the other Grandparents had theirs before ours. Unfortunately, when it was our turn, several of the toys we had purchased for Granddaughter T had already been given to her. Next year we need to coordinate a little better. You live and learn.

Us grandparents have passed the Christmas torch to the kids, so we celebrated Christmas day in the afternoon at R's house. It was pretty nice, but this was the first time we haven't had it at our house since we got married. Nothing wrong with that, that's the way it should be. It's just a transition for us. The times, they are a - changing. Now that I think about it, we did the same thing at Thanksgiving, also for the first time.

We didn't even put up a tree this year, although we did decorate outside.

I spent several days of my vacation / holiday days writing a computer program for use at work, to make it faster to quote pump systems. I love doing this stuff, but still; it would have been better to spend the time with family. But they were pretty much all either working or visiting other people during this couple of days. And the weather was crappy, so I didn't want to be outdoors.

Last night, I had an excellent look at Mars, bare eyes. Probably the clearest I've ever seen it. It was too cold to stay out long, though.

So now we're in the dead zone between Christmas and New Years. There's a campfire going on tonight at the deer lease, which we'll be going to, and that will be nice. Both of our boys will be there, as well as other close friends, and we're looking forward to that. And then Monday we take J to the airport to go back to NY. That's pretty much an all day event, the airport being around 150 miles away.

So, that's how it is at Pop's place at the moment.

Happy New Year!
-Pop