sad christmas

Christmas is a happy time,

For some. It is a horribly depressing time for others.

I suppose those times of opposites are the most depressing for some of us. To be unhappy around happy people is a sentence of pain.

Those of us who feel reasonably peaceful often find it difficult to understand those who do not, I fear. And, those who are having trouble know the rest of us are clueless.

I just took my first nap today, and I feel a bit better, but it is cold, snowy and depressing.

We sleep in the living room, on the hide-a-bed. So, we are the last to get to bed and often the first to be awakened.

There are 22 or 25 of us, and even in a good sized house, that is a lot of people, and even if it is a happy time it can be noisy.

In my old age, I find noise particularly disturbing. I worked for years in noisy places without much of anything in hearing protectors, but now almost all noise bothers me. Still I am so glad to have my family all here, and to be able to hear them.

Some are skiing today (three grandkids and one friend), some are getting up late and I just did my first nap (hoping for 3 for the day).

In some ways I am ready to go home, but it will be a good day after all.

Christmas already?

Enough already.

Ok it is christmas, and you can be as merry as you like.

There was a foot of snow on the ground and it snowed another 4 or 5 inches lasts night.

If you don’t have tire chains on your rig you don’t go far, unless you use daughter’s Jeep. In fact, yesterday we helped the "paper boy" get out of a snow bank and he had chains on his front wheel drive import.

I don’t mind a bit of snow, but this is over the top. I always carry chains in the winter, but this time I forgot to put them in, so I am one of the unchained, which right now means don’t get off the plowed roads.

And, since it does not consistently snow here, there is little snow removal equipment in use and all of the side streets are treacherous.

But I bellyache here.

It was a good evening last night: 3 daughters; 2 sons in law, 5 grandsons, two granddaughters and one granddaughter in law! We had a simple meal and a whole evening of talking and play.

Some played in the snow until it was quite dark, others hunkered around computer screens. I lost count, but there was about 5 or 6 lap tops in use at different times, plus the house desktop.

We enjoyed each others company.

And, one of my daughters works for Willie Wanka in the chocolate factory (she is the creative one), so there was a good amount of chocolate, not just any chocolate, mind you, but really really good stuff.

The christmas tree has a LOT of presents under it, but Matt was reminded that there will be a LOT of people here when presents are opened. I think it is twenty two or twenty three.

Grandson David and his wife Mandy are here from northern California. They have suggested that they will likely add to the population some time fairly soon, so our family will be back in the new baby area again.

It is had been along time on that one.

Did I forget to say Merry Christmas to each and all? I am sorry.

I throughly like my family, but there are times when I wish I had my hearing protectors from the cabinet shop. All of this fun can produce a lot of decibels.

go?

i have an old farmer friend (he is in mid 80's and I have known him as long as I can remember, so yes, he is an old friend) who hung on to a few bucks along the way, and travels a fair bit, because his wife and daughters "force" him to.

He tells me that the best part of any trip is the drive from his mail box to his front door. He lives in a self planted forest, and has a long drive way, so he has a few seconds for reverie.

I am about to agree, and, like him, I adore my kids and grandkids

No new snow last night, but some is predicted today.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE everyone.

Oh well.

walla walla

We are at our daughters house in Walla Wallal, safe and sound.

The highway was dry almost all of the way, but a major winter storm is due yet tonight and the advisory lasts 2 days.

In terms of weather we made it right at the best time.

There is about a foot of snow here, which is some what unusual, to put it mildly.

more snow

Today is travel day.

It snowed 4” here last night, but the road cams show black road most of the way. One lane at least. That is good.

Dea has already left San Francisco heading north. When she gets to where the shorter road cuts across the center of Oregon and the freeway goes on north to Portland (a longer route), she will inquire about the best route.

Portland has a lot of snow and I would guess that the town is pretty well shut down. Grandson David came from north california (which is actually in the center of the state), drove to Portland where his wife’s parents family life, got within a hundred yards of their house and got stuck in the snow.

But when I check around a bit,there is a LOT of snow in a LOT of places this year. Since I am not a snow buff, I will not trudge on, and not complain.

I was listening to Bing Crosby yesterday sing; "There is no place like home for the holiday." Hmm. He might have been onto something

I’ll post again this evening.

snow and travel

We live in a pretty dedicated desert, so there is not a lot of moisture any time.

That is not all bad, we avoid a lot of rainy days, and even when it is cold, we often do not get much if any snow.

But that is not true down the road a bit.

Tomorrow we are driving 250 miles up through the corner of Oregon to Washington State. Our daughter lives about a mile and a half into Washington State, so we won’t drive there a whole lot.

And they have snow big time. She told me they had a foot a few days ago and it has been snowing almost every day since. Even Linda in Portland reports 6 to 12 inches of snow. Portland is a hilly town and snow brings the whole town to it’s knees.

A storm passed through our area over the weekend and another one is not due until Wednesday, giving us a one day window to travel.

I suggested calling the trip off, or at least offered that for thought, but Deanna who lives the furtherest away was not impressed with my idea! Grandson David drove from Sacramento to Portland yesterday and said it was ok, but a little slower. Deanna will drive from San Francisco to Portland on Tuesday.

Linda in portland has a Jeep jeep with nice new snow tires and she is getting around pretty well. We were there once when there was 5 or 6 inches of snow. It was fun to drive along with Linda and watch Mercedes and Jags and more, stuck in the snow.

We have traveled this road between here and Walla Walla literally hundreds of times, and know the road well. What I don’t know is which driver who has never on snow before gets between me and a safe trip.

Once we were traveling along on compact snow base. I bought half a cord of firewood to put in the pickup for ballast, it worked well. We were going along at a fair speed and a SUV passed me going a good bit faster than us. I told Miriam that they were out of control but did not know it.

We had not driven 5 miles and saw them on the side of the road having slapped the guard rail enough to put out a SUV light, but enough to cause serious injury.

Funny I did not see them again that day.

We are taking our ancient (1992) Chevy Cavalier, but it is in good mechanical condition, has new tires that have been sipped. You can look that one up!

To all of us that will be traveling this week: be careful and slow down.

my music

I have been moving music!
For the last long time, most of the music I listened to came over the radio, public radio in this case.

Some years ago my daughter and her computer programer husband put their music collection on their computer, so they could easily listen to music as they choose.

I put “some” of my favorite music on my MacBook, and listen to it via ear buds. OK I had almost 800 “songs” on my “book”.

Then I got an iPod and began putting more play lists together. It was fun and it was not to difficult. When I got a semi ancient Mac desktop computer (in computers a 2 year old machine is old and a 4 year old one is very ancient). It had a smallish HD, but all I wanted it to do was be a backup, and to allow me to organize my music.

We don’t have a large CD collection. But a hundred CD’s is hard to manage on any kind of a big CD player that I could afford. We have a player that has room for 50 CD’s, but the options are listening to everything in order, or jumping from cut to cut, and that has limitations.

Enter the computer. Right now I have about 6 GB of music on desktop and I can pick a tune at a time, or an album at a time and put it on a play list. I can create a bunch of them.

The downside is that it takes a while to transfer a lot of CD’s to the computer, and then back it all up. But with winter and time I am doing it this week. I have a thing about proper use of copyright material, so all of the CD’s I have are ones I have purchased. O, there are a few tunes that granddaughters have sent me, but that is not a significant portion (with luck my jail time should be minimal).

And at will I can copy from that collection to my iPod, allowing me listening wherever I might go.

Tomorrow we are gong to travel 250 miles. I will fill the iPod with music we will enjoy, and then hook up two sets of ear buds, so Miriam and I can both listen as we drive. (My iPod does not allow it to be tied in with the car music system, that one was over budget!)

Along with the books I download from the internet and listen to, this whole thing has added a lot of listening pleasure to my life.

It is cool, as my granddaughers might say.