Holidays in the Rear View Mirror

We had a very happy holiday here at the Smith house. There were family and friends around us, we had lots of good times and no bad ones. We never ran out of food or drink, and the dogs kept us entertained every minute. It was great.

Now as I see the snow on Pilchuck, creepoing down to the bottom of the hill, thoughts turn to skiing and snow activities. I hope things get cold enough to support the snowfall we need for skiing and other activities. The happy start to the season in November seems to have puttered out. It has actually been dry, and we need the snow to kick things into gear. My awesome tires are still awesme, but I don;t have much of a chance to show them off.

We are scheduled to visit Whistler at the end of January, so I suppose that is a sort of guaranteed snow event. Maybe I should not worry?

To and Fro - this is the Fro part!

Note: I wrote this while on the plane back from Atlanta. I have men remiss for not posting it sooner. My apologies.

After spending a week in Alpharetta it will be good to be home again. There is not too much for me to do when I am there except work, go to dinner, and sleep. I don't get to exercise and it gets dark so walking is genially not possible. The group always goes out for a big lunch so I skip breakfast most days to compensate. Exercising again will be great. And golfing a bit.

Last night was the company holiday party. Most of these have been deadly dull but last night was the exception. I had fun, and so did Judy. She wore a slinky dress and looked fantastic. We mixed and mingled. There were several new folks, all of whom I knew, so we spent some time meeting spouses and SO's, some of whom were very interesting. At the conclusion of the evening we went over to the company president's house for another drink before calling it a night. All in all a very positive evening. And I wore the holiday hat I bought in Finland which was a sensation. Lots of fun.

So here we sit on the plane heading home. We are both in economy but are not sitting together. She is on the aisle in row 34 and ditto for me in row 23. We are getting in about an hour early, so that is good. Hopefully we can spend some quality time at home.

No travels planned this week. Lots of paperwork to deal with, and project work.

Finger nail report

In September I smashed my finger. It is the middle finger on my right hand. A heavy lid came suddenly down on just the end of it, smashing the finger nail and turning a large part of it black. It hurt a fair bit, but the processes that have ensued in the past 3 months have been fascinating to watch. The damaged portion is now in the last one third of the nail, with a new nail growing out normally and under the damaged part. I used a nail file to remove the worst of the damaged part several weeks ago, and now use clear nail polish to glue the top and bottom parts together. I trim off the end of the nail normally with clippers and the damaged and disconnected nail gradually grows out. It looks a bit damaged from a distance, but if you just look at it closely you see normal healthy nail growing out from the base, and dark spots that persist on the sides. Did you know that the center of the nail grows lots faster than the sides? It does!