hoolidays


Christmas saw us staying close to home this year. While I did miss our family in PA I did not miss the drive down and back one bit. The whole MA family gathered in Plymouth for gifts and dinner on Saturday (gumbo for dinner again with freshly homemade andouille) and then breakfast and stockings on Sunday morning. This left Sunday afternoon and Christmas day to us.

For our first Christmas dinner to ourselves we had decided on a simple roast chicken with Mom H's double cheese potatoes. Not wanting to buy Monday's dinner poultry on Friday I put off the shopping until Sunday. However, due to the Pats' game and a general feeling of comfort at Oma and Opa's house, we didn't get to the grocery on Sunday until 6:05pm which found us standing outside a locked set of doors as the store had closed at 6. Some people were making the dash through the 'Out' doors as they opened to release the shoppers from inside but I didn't want to be one of those people. We quickly made the rounds to the other 2 grocery stores only to find that they too closed at 6pm today and that all 3 stores were not opening on Christmas day at all. So instead of moping for very long we decided to put my new pizza peel to immediate use. Although I was quite sick on Monday you can clearly see that I was up for the job.



While the toppings were entirely pedestrian by some standards (sausage instead of salumi and mozzarella instead of mutz), it really hit the spot and I was glad to see that I haven't completely forgotten how to make a passable pizza dough. And the new peel worked great. Much nicer than using our wooden cutting board as I've done for the past 6 or 7 years.

 1 comments

chirp chirp
first things first. Welcome to the world, Ivy Joanne.

I'm very happy you're here and that your arrival was much easier on your mom then when your big brother was born.

all baby and no desire to keep a baby blog means not many updates I guess. One fun thing about being a dad is that I've slowly been learning how to do many things with only one hand. Unscrew caps, get food from the fridge, wash out dishes, open beer, play computer games etc. All advanced-beginner level stuff really. However last night saw a new level of monodextrousness: I put on one of Andrew's socks with one hand only. Clothing can be tough in general and socks in particular can be difficult due to small socks and small baby feet which are usually spazzing all over the place. But last night I spread the sock open across my fingers and then swooped in to smoothly slide the little bugger onto the babe's fleshy foot. It was amazing. I felt like Daniel Larusso when he caught a fly between his chopsticks. Even more special was that Maureen was on hand to share in the joy and wonder of the moment.

Two weeks ago I got to visit Vicksburg, Mississippi for some software training. It is a pretty dreary place, but still has many more options for lunch than we have here at home. One highlight of the trip was visiting a casino with two guys from the UK. There was an awful cover band playing and we just sat at the bar and had a few beers. The Brits enjoyed their American honkytonk experience very much which was only made better when we got hit on by some women in town for a real estate conference. The one girl took the unique tack of trying to list all the odd things that people had found washed up on the beaches after Katrina. Her description of a half-octopus, half-lobster type critter was the most interesting by far. She didn't seem to have been drinking too much so maybe she was just crazy.  0 comments