Yesterday, I got together with a friend I'm doing some advisory work for at the Meeting Grounds. We hung out for about an hour and talked shop, as well as just BSed with one another. It was a pretty nice time. I spent most of the day reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I picked that book up in the Austin airport to read on the plane ride home. I managed to finish it last night about 9pm -- excellent book, I'd recommend it.
Today, we went down to my aunt Jan's place for the family Christmas gathering. This is my dad's side of the family, so it's a rather large get-together (11 kids in his family, about 40 cousins or so, plus their families and kids; so about 80 people tend to show up when it's all said and done).
Mom was the one driving on the way down, and she did something quite out of character -- she passed someone in a no passing zone. What makes this story better is the fact that straight ahead of her was a cop car parked on the side of the road trying to tag people. :: grins :: She didn't get pulled over -- I guess the Sartell police don't have eyes in the back of their heads. ;-)
And for those of you who aren't in Minnesota -- as of 9:45am, it was -8 outside without the wind chill.
We ended up having almost 60 people show up for the party -- I got a handful of pictures for everyone to enjoy. Sadly, some of the families couldn't show up because of issues keeping their fingers attached. :-/ Dean (my Aunt Melissa's husband) lost 2.5 fingers on his hand yesterday in an accident with a saw. Yeesh!
More on the vacation as details come in. :-)
What the hell is wrong with you people??! -8 is nothing to brag about! It was 6 F (-13 windchill) in Chicago today and it sucked.
Remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. by