Monthly Archives: December 2012
Merry Christmas . . .
Well, the incoming cold front made itself known early this morning with 40 to 50 mph winds rocking the coach about 6am.
The high yesterday was 78, and the low last night was 68. But today the high is supposed to be 74 with a low of 31!
BRRR!
About 10:30 Jan and I headed over to Chris and Linda’s for Christmas dinner. Jan fixed a delicious corn casserole and deviled eggs.
As far as the eggs, we decided to try a different way to hard boil them. We BAKED them in the convection oven.
According to the Internet (and everything on the Internet must be true, right?) you can hard boil eggs by putting them on a rack in a 325 degree oven for 30 minutes, and then dumping them in an ice water bath. It worked pretty well, but a few egg whites had a partial brown discoloration, I think because they cracked.
The other problem was they were very hard to peel, but I don’t think this was because they were baked. Both the Internet and our daughter-in-law Linda said the fresher the eggs, the harder they are to peel.
And these eggs were very fresh. They were being loaded in the cooler as we were taking them out. Most websites say to buy them a week ahead of time and then boil them, We’ll try that next time.
Linda fixed a great meal with a spiral ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry gelatin salad, and delicious yeast rolls. And of course, a heavenly butter pecan cream cake.
After that fantastic meal, and fighting off a nap attack I spent some time cleaning up Chris’ computer and hooking a new laser printer. I also set up Google Cloud Print on the machine, and then on Piper’s iPad and Chris’ Galaxy SIII.
This way Piper can print to her home printer from anywhere she has Internet access.
Forgot to mention that Santa brought Piper a new bike this Christmas. Apparently they’re bringing back bikes in the retro style that look like they were built in the 50’s.
Since Chris had to go into work tonight, Jan and I headed home about 4pm, still fighting a lot of wind. And the temperature was distinctly cooler than this morning.
And it just got cooler all afternoon. And then the bottom dropped out. At 6pm it was still 70 degrees here at the park, but by 8:30 it was 40.
That’s quite a drop. And it’s supposed to go down to 31 tonight.
More BRRR!
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Things you thought were true, but aren’t:
Dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Increased K-12 spending and lower pupil/teacher ratios boost public school student outcomes. Most of the DNA in the human genome is junk. Saccharin causes cancer and a high fiber diet prevents it. Stars cannot be bigger than 150 solar masses.
ffgadfds
Christmas Eve Traditions . . .
Jan and I spend Christmas Eve morning doing pretty much nothing. Really nice.
Later in the afternoon I had a chance to try out my new Quad-Copter.
It quickly became obvious that it really wasn’t flyable inside the rig. At least until I get it trimmed out so that it flies a little more stable.
So I decided to try it outside. I had a couple of good flights, but I was constantly fighting the wind which took a lot of the fun out of it.
I plan on taking it with us over to Chris’ tomorrow where I’ll have more room.
About 5pm Jan and I met the rest of the family at King Food for our traditional Christmas Eve family dinner.
We’ve been doing this at this same restaurant for about 25 years, and always look forward to it.
One of the most memorable times was in 2004, when Houston got its first ever Christmas Eve snow. We were sitting there eating and all of a sudden these large white flakes started cascading to the ground.
The Weather Service had said that we might get a few flakes, but no accumulation. Well, by morning we had 4 to 5 inches of ‘no accumulation’.
sfgdfg
The way we do it as a family is everyone orders their favorite entrée dish, and then we all share. But strange as it may seem, no one wanted to share Jan’s and my Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce with Jalapenos, XXXXXX Spicy.
Just left more for us.
After our meal we all headed over to Brandi’s to open family presents, another family tradition. We have always open gifts from one another on Christmas Eve, and then Santa comes on Christmas morning for the little kids.
But the Christmas morning part had fallen by the wayside recently since Piper got older. But now with Landon around, Santa is back in town.
We all had a great time watching Landon open his presents. He was a little hesitant at first, but soon he was ripping off the wrappings like a pro.
Tomorrow Jan and I will be going over to Chris and Linda’s to have Christmas Dinner with them. Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Aunt Sherry are heading up to the Katy are to have dinner with our friend Shawna and her family.
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Thought for the Day:
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe. — Rudyard Kipling, 1919. “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
dfadfs
