Christmas '15

     Well, another Christmas has come and gone.  Here in Charleston the temperature reached 81 degrees...a record for the date.  Sure enough, a few presents did show up.

     Cindy joined us for a Christmas breakfast of bacon and pancakes with real maple syrup.  I did a small standing rib roast on the Traeger for a fairly early dinner so she could go to work.  Durelle added Ann Grover's broccoli casserole and the rice pilaf that she has been doing for almost fifty years.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Jackie Fare sent along a personalized Yankee Candle with a sentimental picture and caption.  Thanks, again, Jackie.  My being a sentimental old f***, I got Durelle a new clothes dryer.
     In driving around Hanahan there were some nicely decorated homes.

     The sign, if you can't read it, says,"Ho, Ho, Ho.  Donner and Comet are loose in the neighborhood.  Please drive slowly."
     The stitches are gone from my hand.  A palm reader will think I have encrypted my life's story.
     This post number 650.  I thank all the hard core readers who have hung in there.  I wish you a healthy and happy 2016, and I hope our country will have a better year than has recently been the case.

Disconnected Observations

        A year or so after we moved in, we had to have three dead or nearly dead trees removed.  They were a large factor in choosing this lot, but they did not survive the construction process.  There's a city ordinance that says that, if you take down a tree with a diameter of six inches or more at chest height, you must plant a replacement.  So, outside our front door, we planted a holly that is now thriving.  The berries barely got red enough in time for a Christmas picture, but there sure are a lot of them.

    

  

    

     I have been asked about the status of the bus.  The major problem, of course, was the main slide-out.  It has been bothered by fragments of broken safety glass when the rig was burglarized several years ago.  We have had several slide failures since.  Each time a shear pin has failed while trying to close a jammed slide.  A shear pin is like a mechanical fuse.  It is made of a soft metal so that a drive motor won't fail.  After several failures, there was an ovaled hole that made failure easy if not inevitable.  It has been repaired to the happy satisfaction of both ProTech and me.

     I had some hand surgery Friday to repair a "trigger finger" on the ring finger of my left hand.  Trigger finger is like a small scale version of carpal tunnel syndrome.  The ligaments that open and close a finger pass through a sheath.  When interference occurs, you can close a finger, but releasing it is difficult and may require a painful release using the other hand.  Surgery was a 30 minute, out-patient affair, but I had to show up at 0600!  Durelle picked me up around ten.  So far, so good.

     We had a pleasant connection last Sunday with previously unmet relatives at a local bistro.  Harry Cloutier was my uncle.  His wife, Marjorie, was a Cobb from Maine.  Her brother had a son, Rick Cobb, who was living in the area.  Cindy, Durelle and I met Rick and his wife, Doris, at Madra Rua, a nearby Irish pub .  He's a Citadel grad who retired from the Air Force, so we had a lot in common.  Here's a picture.  I must confess that it was Facebook that made the reunion possible.

     The tree is up and "Things are starting to look a lot like Christmas".

     There are no presents under the tree as yet, but I suppose that Santa will take care of that.