Dysmey Blog Archives  >  holidays are not quite over

holidays are not quite over

The last entry about my car was a downer, so I will lighten it up with this entry on how my holiday season went.

Apart from the strange weather that was bitter cold one week and pleasant as if spring the next, I have had a nice XMas and New Year.

I got out the XMas Coke bottles with the plastic poinsettias and put them on the window sills, just like I did when I lived at my sister Tina's. The problem is that the sills at Tina's house were wider, and only the blinds kept the bottles from falling off. Then there was the miniature XMas tree, whose lights would not work at all even with new batteries. That's leaving with the trash.

My work unit with the rest of the University got a four-day weekend to celebrate XMas, since it fell on a Tuesday. I got new clothes, some DVDs, a humidifier in the shape of a cat, and other fun stuff. I also got to eat Madre's Christmas cookies — black walnut butter, butterscotch oatmeal, chocolate chip and lemony sugar — all week.

I contributed to my brother's present, although I do not even know whether he came and got it. I got more memory for the computer of my sister the editor, and got her printer up and running again. That made her very happy. I give the folks a slightly out-of-date nVIDIA video card, which freed the processor and memory in their old computer of having to handle video output. Now their computer is a lot faster. I got books for the nieces, and a book gift card for their mother.

We were not so lucky for New Year's Day, although we got off at three on New Year's Eve. That day was so extremely cold and windy that I could not go to the folks' house to ring in the new year.

The holidays for me are not over yet. I have a birthday coming up on the sixteenth, right in the middle of the month. It is followed by a three-day weekend.

We are happy at the local library as well, but for a different reason: The library was awarded the grant, for which we the board have been working on for the past couple of years. I took a half-day to drive to the State House in downtown Indianapolis, which was the first time I ever set foot inside it. I went there as the secretary of the library board to join the librarian, other board members and a couple of people who helped up get the grant. We were given an official document by the lieutenant governor and got our pictures taken. And yes, I was smiling.


Posted on the Dysmey Blog on 8 January 2008.