In A Flash

A lot has happened since last time we met.  Sorry about the lag time.

At this moment, C and I are sitting on the couch, watching the Broncos play the Steelers.  I’m usually one to hop on the underdog bandwagon, but in this case, I have some surprisingly strong feelings - mostly in the vein of having a case of the hots for Troy Polamalu (The blocking!  The speed!  The Head & Shoulders commercials!), but also… it seems that I just don’t like Tim Tebow very much.  Every time I hear something nice about him, I dislike him even more… is that bad?

I apologize - I didn’t get on here to write about the game, but the Tim Tebow Superstar stuff gets me a little riled up.  I wanted instead to give you a brief, slap-across-the-face summary of the past few weeks, which have been exciting, depressing, hilarious, and almost below zero already.  Here goes:

Pack it up!

We will be closing on the sale of our house in just 12 short days, so we headed down about a week before Christmas to try and box up our effects.  Good: I didn’t have a meltdown on the kitchen floor, an event I was positive would occur.  Bad:  There’s no food in the kitchen anymore.  Ugly:  Take-out pizza for 4 out of 6 dinners.  We needed to eat some apples, like whoa. 

Out at breakfast one morning, C “accidentally” left the pepper shaker top mostly unscrewed.  I'm sure he did it because he knows how much I like heaping mounds of black pepper on my eggs.

Christmas

It’s hard to describe how much my dad likes Christmas.  He has a real reverence for the significance of the holiday, but I’ve also never met a kid more excited for the morning than my father.  Or for Christmas Eve.  Or for whenever he can persuade us to start opening presents, which on this particular year included nose flutes.  The Good: No present was larger than a beach ball.  The bad: No beach balls.  The Ugly: No beach.

Get [chilly] Together

Each year over the New Year’s Eve weekend, we host a camp reunion for staff and students.   The weather is usually a significant factor for the success or failure of said weekend.  One year it was terrifyingly cold with lunatic winds and snow that felt like tiny hypodermic needles.  Last year it reached a balmy 40 degrees, and felt like we ought to pull out the canoes.  This year it was somewhere in the middle - a nice balance.  The Good:  No one fell through the ice.  The Bad:  I am too much of a sally to stay up until midnight anymore.  The Ugly:  I couldn’t find the right cookie cutters, so for the “Christmas Cookie Decorating” activity, the kids had to slap frosting on women in dresses, circles made from drinking glasses, and get this… pigs. 

Low & Slow

When I was ten, I was given a Christmas gift that was beyond my dreams.  Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs that morning, sitting next to the tree was a glass cage with a small Chinese box turtle in it.  Lois has been a trusty companion since then, and at 21 or so years of age, she has waddled her way into the corners of our house and the nooks of our hearts.  She has become fairly free range at this point, mostly wandering around the first floor of our cabin or my parents living room until she finds a place to take a nap.  Well, friends, she’s moved on to new pastures.  The Good: Lois is alive and kicking, and was a Christmas present herself this year.  The Bad:  She’s keeping another family up at night as she bangs into the sides of her cage like a jailed army tank.  The Ugly:  Here’s to hoping she doesn’t give them salmonella. 

s-a-l-m-o-n-e-l-l-a. . .

Other things have happened in the last few weeks as well, but I don’t want to keep you here forever.  I will work hard to post consistently, but another recent development is that I’ve started a new job, so I’ll have to get organized with my time.

I'm a pretty on-time person, so that should be easy.