Today was the day to wrap all the presents. Lori and I spent a couple of fun hours hiding each in a cocoon of season’s paper. Now they add a lovely touch sitting beneath the new tree.

Tomorrow, our Daughter’s children will venture from next door and destroy the paper we lovingly used to hide their gifts. We are fortunate the trash cans are empty—for the moment.

Yesterday, we had Christmas present exchange with our Son’s family in the early afternoon. Later, my Daughter and family joined us for dinner and an evening chatting around the firepits. It was a beautiful night spent remembering the year with hot chocolate and burnt marshmallows.

This year has been unlike any year we remembered. The first few months were passing as usual, and then C’OVID disrupted the rest of it. Months in a full lockdown, then a start to return to normal before another lockdown.

We don’t know what the rest of the year will be like or what next year will bring but look forward to it.

Thank you for visiting, and we wish you and yours a safe, healthy holiday.

If you like, you can use the comment form to share your holiday with us.

‘Tis the countdown to Christmas and the panic is subsiding, or is it?

Make a list, check it twice

The list made, and names checked off as the gifts hidden waiting to be wrapped. Such a relief to know there is no need for another hectic shopping trip or jaunt online to find a gift.

What kind of gift? Is the person a child, family or friends? An adult friend? An acquaintance or co-worker? The relationship is paramount to the next phase of gift procurement.

You review the list again. Terror strikes the heart. You remembered a name that should be on the list. Oh drat, another gift needed.

Children’s gift

When it is a child, there is someone to guide the gift selection. Call, email, or text the parents and place the burden on them. Demand they tell what the child or adult wants or needs. Require them to give multiple options to ensure you can locate a gift that will be appreciated.

Adult’s gifts

Adult family members, friends, or co-workers require fewer mental gymnastics. Think hard, and an acceptable gift idea will creep out of the mental spider webs.

In case the spider is still weaving, what makes a perfect gift? Gift cards! A gift card to a favorite restaurant, to a store where they shop, to a dinner theater or movie, or a cash card.

Once you have the gift, you can cross the name on the list off. Your heartbeat can slow, the sweat on the brow can be wiped away, and the nerves calmed until another name comes to mind.

I hope that you won’t experience a mental faux pas and wake up Christmas morning remembering you forgot someone. Review your list while there is still time to find that perfect present.

Have you experienced forgetting a person you should had a present for? The comment form is the perfect place to tell me about your experience. Look forward to hearing from you.

Tis Christmas Eve and it resembles a cold fall day at our home. The weather is clear and warmest it has been in days. Miles north, it has been cold with freezing rain or inches of snow. A wintry mixture is worthy of the season.

We are fortunate our travel to spend the holiday with family is short. Our Son’s family, who we will visit with today lives a short forty minute drive away. We will load the presents and other goodies soon. Tomorrow we will share the day with our Daughters family who lives next door. God blessed us with hale and heathy children, son-in-law and daughter-in-law, four granddaughters, and three grandsons. That we have our health to enjoy them is another great blessing.

This summer we bought a SUNSEEKER recreational vehicle. It is a mobile home-on-wheels which we took on an excursion to Texas. The test drive proved its worth, and we look forward to many trips starting when the weather is fit. Until that day, it sits faithfully beside our house ready at an instant. Spring will come soon enough.

Our trip planning will no longer have to be scheduled around my work vacation since I retire in January. After over 17 years in the same job, a long time for a contractor to the government, we will be free to go anytime. This life change is exciting to anticipate.

It is time for my wife and me to load the presents in the four wheel sleigh and be off to play Santa on Christmas Eve.

Time passed.

We played Santa and had a wonderful time. We are back in our nest waiting for the morrow when we get to be Santa once more.

Before we go, Lori and I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas day. Be safe during this and the coming days. And remember that I enjoy hearing from you.

Schedule change

The Pipeline 2008 Boys Red are moving indoors for the winter season. This means a change to practice days. There are now Monday and Tuesday instead of Tuesday and Thursdays. As a result, I won’t be posting weekly on Monday. Look for new posts on Sunday.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with my daughter’s family and their friends who were visiting from Iowa. My wife prepared two turkeys. One was traditional, stuffed, and cooked in the oven. The other smoked with pecan chips. Both were hits with everyone.

Grandson’s Birthday

Bradley’s first double-digit birthday was today, Sunday. He was able to spend days leading up to it with his long-time friends from Iowa. His birthday wish was to have a peanut butter crème cheesecake. My wife found a recipe that uses her newly acquired Instant Pot and gave him a seven-inch birthday present. Put ten candles on it and let the boy enjoy. Fortunately, Lori made a couple of five-inch versions for the rest of us. The rest of us shared one of the five-inchers while Bradley’s older sister claimed one for herself.

Black Friday

In the past, we have avoided the crowds screaming for Black Friday sales. There are multiple other days when comparable sales occur. There are sales on Memorial Day, July 4^th, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Black Friday, Christmas pre-sales, Christmas post-sales, and even New Year’s Day. Sometimes there are sales not associated with a holiday.

I had to pick up a prescription at Sam’s. We were presently surprised to find the place only moderately busy. In addition to my medicine, we found something for grandchildren’s Christmas. Feeling lucky, we went on our weekly shopping at the Commissary but found it closed. The attached Navy Exchange was wall-to-wall people. The checkout lines ran down the main aisle. This may be the reason why Sam’s was moderately busy. Or it could be all of the dedicated Black Friday shoppers were finished and asleep at home.

This year’s experience did nothing to convince us we want to become part of the Black Friday Shoppers Club.

Christmas Season

I am looking forward to Christmas this year. I will be retiring in January after 51 plus years employed. 25 years and some months and days in the US Navy and more employed as a consultant to the Navy.  I am not worried about having things to keep me active in retirement. More about that another time.

I would enjoy hearing about your Thanksgiving and Black Friday experiences. Leave a comment using the form below.

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Will you have snow for Christmas? Perhaps it will be warm like it was here this morning. Or it may be freezing rain like we had yesterday. Yesterday, we woke to freezing rain and single digit temperatures. Today it got up to low sixties before the rain and wind started. My Mother called the weather we are seeing here “pneumonia weather.” That is what she called warm days interspersed with cold, rainy or snowy days.

Snow is not in the forecast. It wasn’t in the forecast for Corpus Christi, Texas in December, 1973 either. My wife had not remembered seeing snow in her twenty years. Having grown up near Peoria, Illinois, I did not remember a year without snow. Engaged to be married in January, I took my wife to meet my family.

We drove. It was the week before Christmas. It was in the mid 40’s when we left Corpus Christi.  We enjoyed good weather through Dallas and most of the way to Muskogee, Oklahoma. We were on Route 44 southwest of St. Louis when we saw the first snow. My wife was mesmerize by the “white stuff”.

We did not encounter any problems until we were on the outskirts of St. Louis. The sun had set. Snow limited visibility but not enough to force us to stop. It was after rush hour when we entered the city proper. Here, my wife’s appreciation for snow underwent a drastic change. The road surface became rough and we were limited to speeds in the range of 25-30 miles per hour. The reason was the snowplows had created a washboard surface on the road. If we tried to go faster, we bounced and the car slid. The trip through St. Louis was nerve-wracking. We were relieved when we crossed out of Missouri into Illinois.

Ruts in the road are good

I would like to report that my wife’s appreciate for snow improved with crossing the state line.  The snowplows in Illinois had kept their plows above the surface. They left a few inches of snow in which their truck tires formed ruts. I was familiar with driving under these conditions, snow ruts with the snow banked on both sides of the road. The rest of the trip home was at good speed while my fiancé complained I was going too fast. I don’t think I was but it was so long ago I can’t say I wasn’t. Regardless, I got us home safely.

My wife’s appreciation for snow took another turn the morning after we arrive home. She learned that you can make snowmen and have snowball fights. We spent several days there during which the roads cleared. The trip home was made on clear, dry pavement.

There were two positive results from the trip. My parents and siblings met my fiancé and she met snow. Both were fortunate occurrences. My fiancé became my wife in early January and the Navy sent us to Iceland where we saw many feet of snow.

I enjoy hearing from you. Do you have any stories about weather? Comment and let me know.

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The tree needs more Christmas presents

I lay awake last night considering Christmas gifts for my grandchildren. My wife and I had purchased the big items and they sat wrapped under our little tree. “Little” is a 5 foot artificial one we bought when the living room became too small for the big tree. Big screen televisions and new furniture shrunk the room. *The little tree looks great decked out with decorations collected over 42 years and buried under wrapped Christmas presents.*

The brain was on auto considering and rejecting many possibilities. Out of the deepest, darkest recesses of a writer’s mind came the idea for presents almost every child under 20 dread – books! Didn’t I enjoy reading as a child? Wouldn’t they enjoy the option to read instead of watching television and playing video games? Of course they would!

Living in fantasy worlds

Riding the edge of nocturnal peace, I hopped back to when I was my oldest grandson’s age. That was the year I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series and I was hooked.  I wanted to find a way to Mars but only reached it through John Carter. I shared this desire under the stars with my best friend as we camped out.

I burned through Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and lost sleep after reading Something Wicked This Way Comes. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and Isaac Azimov’s Foundation Series were some of the most expensive books I bought. *Well worth my yard work and babysitting money.*  E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman Series carried me through an interplanetary war and the conflict between super races. These and authors of the same ilk fed my imagination and solidified a love for reading.

Least you consider me lost in fantasy, I enjoyed reading other writers. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, George Orwells’ 1984 and Animal Farm, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (started, never finished.) There were many others. But my first love was fantasy and science fiction.

Today’s adventure creators

Jump forward and I am adventuring with Daniel Arenson’s, Lindsay Buroker, David Dalglish, C. Greenwood, Craig Halloran, M.A. Nilles, R. A. Salvatore, Kelly Walker, Jeff Wheeler and more. Fortunately, not all adventures require swords, armor and magic. There are alternative worlds populated by writers I have read such as K.M. Weiland, Kassandra Lamb, Kait Nolan, and Marie Grace.

Fifty years of reading pleasure started with books available to me and read as a youngster. I bought some and received others as Christmas gifts. Perhaps gifts of books will start my grandchildren on a lifetime journey through worlds built by imagination.

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