Here’s the new watch I got Betsy for Christmas

A few weeks before Christmas, Betsy told me that her watched had stopped working and when she took it to Wright’s to see if they could fix it they told her it was not worth it. So I decided to get a new one for her, which I did. Turned out the watch that had failed was not the fairly good one I had gotten for her several years ago but a cheaper day to day wear one she had gotten. So she still had the good watch, and she wanted a ring so it all worked out. She returned the watch and here is the ring she got:
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And so here is the ring that Becky Douglass bought for Becca back in high school.
beccaring1

Maybe these are related and maybe not…

For Christmas, Matt gave me throwing knives. Well first it was just a throwing knife. I tried it out on the bulletin board in my office and it took me 5 tries to get a stick.
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It turned out that the company sent me the wrong item. It was supposed to be a set of three. So Matt called and complained and two days later, the set of three showed up.
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I decided to really try them out so I set up a plywood target down in the new garage and here are the results of my first 6 throws:
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and
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5 out of 6. I threw them with a 1/2 turn (in other words I held the knives with the point towards me) from 12 feet.
Matt got them because he remembered the knife throwing story from my youth (see below).
Any way, Monday morning I was sitting in bed having coffee and the TV was not on yet. As I reached for something from the night stand, out of the corner of my eye I saw in the reflection of the blank TV screen what looked like a man’s head peering in the window:
peepingroof
It turns out to be the corner of the Clayton’s http://laparkan.com/buy-vardenafil/ roof but it was probably a good thing that I didn’t have the throwing knives in the bedroom!

See the bigger picture here

When I was about 12 or 13 I had a Boy Scout knife which I had bought at summer camp. I can’t remember whether the handle got broken by accident or I just decided that it would be a better “throwing” knife if I removed it and just wrapped the handle with electrical tape. One day I was down in the cellar and noticed a big cardboard box at one end. I can’t remember what it was from but it was door sized. So I went and got my knife and stood back about 10-12 feet and let fly. The knife went right through the box and 3 of the storm windows that were stacked up behind it! I quickly retrieved my knife, adjusted the tear in the cardboard to be less obvious and slunk away. I never heard what my father said when he went to put the storm windows up later that winter. I must have been away that day or something but I am sure he was less than pleased.

Home Alone – 2009

After more years than I care to count going out on New Year’s Eve the weather and holiday exhaustion won out this year and we are home alone. We had a few inches of snow this morning through early afternoon (which led to a spin out of a jeep with a subsequent crash into one of Art’s trees – no injuries luckily). I made Betsy Filet Mignon, ‘shrooms, onions and peppers, Asparguys wrapped in prosciutto, and baked potato. Some eggplant and Bulgarian feta (thanks Jus and Elif) bruschetta for openers. It was delicious.
Still learning how to take pictures with the Droid, and with the webcam attached to Hermes (for the roll call pic at the end)
Link to pics

White Christmas – goodies, goodies, goodies


Link to pics
Well we got about 7 or 8 inches of snow last night and this morning. It was light and fluffy and the Ariens had no problem at all with it.
They were predicting anywhere from 4 to 12 for us so we made sure we had all the ingredients for goodie http://laparkan.com/buy-tadalafil/ plates for various Christmas gifts.

So yesterday and today we made Chocolate Mint Squares (Grace DeMore’s recipe), Oreo balls (Alisa’s recipe except we didn’t have any sprinkles.), and the perennial favorite chocolate dipped apricots, and this we added banana chips, pineapple, mango, and papaya.

Christmas goodies

Christmas goodies

Go ahead and laugh San Diego!

You know you miss this 🙂
Yes the snow has begun. As it often happens, the first snow of the year was on the Lopano Christmas party weekend. It was not a big deal since it was only an inch or so and the roads were still warm. Today is the real deal:

(link to pics)
Art and I are scheduled to switch over the Ariens this afternoon. Hopefully the snow won’t get so heavy that the blower won’t handle it. Yes that last picture is me holding my new Droid as it charges. I am not going to activate it until after I get back from Kevin Martz’s next week just so I have plenty of time to fiddle with it.

It’s a wrap – and hermes appears on the scene

Many years ago, Betsy expressed envy at Dosie’s industrial Saran wrap dispenser. So we bought her one. This had to be at least 15 years ago. We only pulled it out when we had run out of the little 100ft boxes you get at the grocery store.
Finally, finally, it ran out:
Clear cellophane wrap

I don’t know if she knew it was about to run out or not but a few weeks ago, the following kraft paper dispenser showed up at the door. Here it is in place, ready for Christmas gift wrapping http://www.mindanews.com/buy-accutane/ duty.

The new wrapping roll ready for Christmas gift duty

The new wrapping roll ready for Christmas gift duty

And after a few years of duty at darack as HAMS, the hoard’s application machine, this machine has morphed into the new Camp Cornell media computer. It has a Visiontek Radeon HD 3450 graphics card with HDMI out as you can see below:

Hermes ready to go

Hermes ready to go


Right now it is just waiting at login. As soon as the wireless keyboard/trackball shows up Thursday, I can login and see how it looks.