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I hope you all had a wonderful VEWPRF holiday and New Year's
We had a nice Thai dinner across the street then came back and settled. Sadly they were out of plum wine, I was rather looking forward to a glass. Russ had to work remotely to help with engineering, a regular thing that they have to perform to keep the telescope in tune, then again pre-dawn with an Apollo run. Unfortunately the seeing conditions were pretty sucky at both times.
During our last trip to Phoenix, Jason's mother (my friend who died of a stroke back in April) gave us a TV. It's just a little 20" or so RCA, bt it's much better than a 26" Panasonic that doesn't work. We brought back a converter from Cloudcroft the weekend of Christmas (the TV only had a coax connector), so I cobbled together my AV equipment and we watched Hot Fuzz on DVD a few nights ago and for NYE, we watched A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on Laser Disc. Russ had been putting off watching HF with me, I think she thought it was a screw-ball comedy, and it isn't. It's kind of a sly, almost black, comedy, and she really enjoyed it, particularly the slashy subtext of the flic. I took some time to watch a couple of old Mel Brooks movies, High Anxiety and History of the World. Sadly, the Brooks collection that I bought at Thanksgiving is un-augmented: no significant bonus material. So I probably won't be trading in my commented DVDs any time soon.
The highlight of our NYE was probably doping the dog. The poodle was getting hyper with all the fireworks being set off around the house, so we gave her a benedryl. She gets them occasionally for allergies, it also has a good sedative effect. Very quickly she was lying down, thoroughly doped out. Mildly amusing.
Christmas was good, we spent it in Cloudcroft. I gave Russ a car charger for her iPod, something she's been needing for a while, and I gave both of us copies of Stardust and Harry Potter/Order of the Phoenix DVDs. We watched the former at the observatory Christmas Eve, which is when we had Xmas dinner (fillet mignon, orange-scented green beans, and cheesy mashed potatoes, sadly I forgot to bring the bacon that I'd intended to wrap the fillets in) as I had to head back to 'Cruces on the 25th to be at work on the 26th. We had snow on the ground in Cloudcroft and at the observatory, and the thermometer in my car reported 9 degrees three times as we drove up Friday night, but it didn't snow while we were there.
My birthday was the 16th, and thanks for those who gave me shout-outs. I shot a wedding that weekend, and the couple paid most of my initial fee in cash, which let me get a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 2. We've been having lots of fun with it, and we went a little wild last week and hit Game Stop and picked up the first Brain Age, NY Times Crossword (Russ is a junkie), Platinum Sudoku (I'm becoming a junkie, Russ has moved on to Kakuro), and Age of Empires, which I'm still trying to figure out how to play.
So all-in-all, a pretty good December and end of year for us. Aside from the loss of Jason and Jim's brother Myge, we're all in reasonably good shape and hope to stay that way.
During our last trip to Phoenix, Jason's mother (my friend who died of a stroke back in April) gave us a TV. It's just a little 20" or so RCA, bt it's much better than a 26" Panasonic that doesn't work. We brought back a converter from Cloudcroft the weekend of Christmas (the TV only had a coax connector), so I cobbled together my AV equipment and we watched Hot Fuzz on DVD a few nights ago and for NYE, we watched A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on Laser Disc. Russ had been putting off watching HF with me, I think she thought it was a screw-ball comedy, and it isn't. It's kind of a sly, almost black, comedy, and she really enjoyed it, particularly the slashy subtext of the flic. I took some time to watch a couple of old Mel Brooks movies, High Anxiety and History of the World. Sadly, the Brooks collection that I bought at Thanksgiving is un-augmented: no significant bonus material. So I probably won't be trading in my commented DVDs any time soon.
The highlight of our NYE was probably doping the dog. The poodle was getting hyper with all the fireworks being set off around the house, so we gave her a benedryl. She gets them occasionally for allergies, it also has a good sedative effect. Very quickly she was lying down, thoroughly doped out. Mildly amusing.
Christmas was good, we spent it in Cloudcroft. I gave Russ a car charger for her iPod, something she's been needing for a while, and I gave both of us copies of Stardust and Harry Potter/Order of the Phoenix DVDs. We watched the former at the observatory Christmas Eve, which is when we had Xmas dinner (fillet mignon, orange-scented green beans, and cheesy mashed potatoes, sadly I forgot to bring the bacon that I'd intended to wrap the fillets in) as I had to head back to 'Cruces on the 25th to be at work on the 26th. We had snow on the ground in Cloudcroft and at the observatory, and the thermometer in my car reported 9 degrees three times as we drove up Friday night, but it didn't snow while we were there.
My birthday was the 16th, and thanks for those who gave me shout-outs. I shot a wedding that weekend, and the couple paid most of my initial fee in cash, which let me get a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 2. We've been having lots of fun with it, and we went a little wild last week and hit Game Stop and picked up the first Brain Age, NY Times Crossword (Russ is a junkie), Platinum Sudoku (I'm becoming a junkie, Russ has moved on to Kakuro), and Age of Empires, which I'm still trying to figure out how to play.
So all-in-all, a pretty good December and end of year for us. Aside from the loss of Jason and Jim's brother Myge, we're all in reasonably good shape and hope to stay that way.
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And tomorrow, I read tons of random stuff from comics on down.
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I'm having a lot of fun with my DS and the sudoku puzzles, though I'll never be as fast as my wife. I don't mind, I kick her butt at the change game and another daily training program.