Mike and Meg are here (Kelly's brother and his wife). We have been having a blast since they got here even though we've barely left the house.

They arrived on the 23rd and Kelly picked them up at LAX where they had to wait another two hours for their luggage. Not too bad of luck considering the situation people flying through Chicago were in that day. Then the drive from LAX to here took 3 hours because of traffic.

Christmas Eve, we had a big breakfast here and hung out by the fire until we had dinner at Scott and Janet's with their family. It was a blast as usual. Kenny (Scott and Janet's son) brought his blow dart gun to show us and I ended up volunteering to let his wife Jackie, a blow dart sniper, to shoot me in the belly in exchange for a lemon cake made just for me (she's an amazing baker). It really hurt but was so worth it. This I agreed to even on the night that I was the DD for us all; Jackie's lemon cake is THAT GOOD.

Then we hosted Scott and Janet at our place Christmas Day and I made a couple of chickens. Everyone tells me they turned out okay, but if Janet had served me crap like that, I'd still be talking about her today. Then Scott and Janet had another engagement and Mike and I proceeded to drown ourselves in holiday cheer. The girls helped too, as you can tell by the mouth on Megan in the last second of this completely innocent attempt to send an e-holiday message to friends and family via Traincam.



I think that was the f-bomb!

We took five takes of this and this is the closest to being family-friendly.

However, Christmas day was not all sin and debauchery, there was also a promise from god with a Christmas rainbow at about 1:00PM



Then today we drove a bit locally and tried to soak in the way the San Gabrels look with the snow and the clouds.





Then we watched the sunset from Creepy Abandoned Place In the Middle of the Desert.

        

It rolled into the Palmdale Station at about 6:50 tonight. They put on a little show and have a sing along. People don't really sing along any more (even me), which is a shame. It's a pretty neat treat and it's a toy collection drive as well, which FILLED the back of a large stake bed truck with toys.

        

It all started at 6:00 AM. A light dusting that was supposed to melt away and become rain by 9-10:00 AM, maybe turn back into snow later in the day or evening, maybe 4-6 inches over that next night. Kelly and I took a few photos thinking they would show about all the snow we'd be likely see.







Kelly found a stray neighbor cat that was stranded due to the snow and built her a shelter for the storm. We call her Fluffernutter.





We fed her REALLY well and she stayed in there all night, She went home late the next day  but comes back most days now, but not overnight. Maybe her prolonged absence is making the owners rethink letting her roam so much.

The snow never stopped all day and by noon, there was a heavy, wet blanket over everything.





We changed the hummingbird fuel from Jet A to JP-7 (one part water and one part sugar) so they could get some fat reserves for the overnight.



They're all puffy with their winter plumage. I wonder where they go at night.

It just kept snowing.








There was more before dark and overnight after these were taken. There was 18 inches on the grill.



Grills and picnic tables don't lie.

The next morning was incredible.









But there was one casualty.

        

This picture is from, "leave my driveway and exit the development, turn left, take a picture of what you see," it's that close.

This is the view from the guest bedrooms looking north at the Tehachapi Mountains.



I love seeing them with snow.

So, with  all this coldness outside are we staying warm? I'll let Amanda and the new real Christmas tree answer that. 

 

        

The Republican party is toast for a while. I believe that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are nearly as responsible as George W. Bush, but this site is not about politics, it's about important things like cats, road trips, and Christmas lights.

But I do remember one thing that Rush Limbaugh said, probably 15 years ago, that I just recently learned how true it was. Rush, as a radio personality, started as a DJ first, as most of them did. I remember hearing him lamenting the fact that the business model for "oldies" stations was to only play Billboard top 10 songs from an era. He hated that  the younger generation were denied access to a lot of really great music because some good stuff never got onto the top 10.

So last night, Kelly and I were watching a commercial and she said " I want to know what that song is."



It turns out that it only got to Billboard 14, so my generation has never heard it on the airwaves. What a crime it is that this was un-played while I know the words to (and have a blog named sort of after) "Doo Wah Diddy" (the worst song ever created), and that I have heard "What's New Pussycat," yet this Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons gem, I only heard once on an Adidas commercial?

Complete travesty.

        

The Space Shuttle finally departed on its return ferry flight from Edwards AFB to Cape Kennedy at 7:00 this morning. We've been stalking the progress of preparation and weather on the NASA site and through a recorded call-in number that Kelly programmed into her cell phone.

We left here at 6:00 and drove up north on the 14 to Mojave, then went east on 58 (it's not "the 58," just 58; not sure why, but 14 is definitely "the 14").

We found a spot north and west of Edwards and thought we'd have a good view of the departing 747 piggybacking the Shuttle Endeavor.

The dirt trail had no markings dissuading off-roading. Few places do around here and it's a huge pass time.



We got there just as the sun rose over the Dakota.


It was a brisk 31 degrees. See below for those who don't want to take our packing advice while visiting P'dale this winter/spring.



As it turned out, we were about 10 miles too far west. It was the ideal spot to have watched the landing, but they took off to the north and immediately turned east and we barely saw them and I couldn't get the camera to focus enough to get a shot.

But still, we did see it, and more importantly, I got to sit in the magnificent Mojave desert and watch the sun rise with my wife on a perfect, cool, still winter morning.

        

That's what my nephew used to call the Space Shuttle.

It landed here Sunday by surprise. We got a call from Janet and jumped in the car to head towards Edward's AFB, about 20 miles north of here. But we were way too late, and barely got out of Palmdale. We might have seen it entering the atmosphere, but it could have been a Southwest plane too.

So next Monday, we'll be heading farther into the desert to hopefully catch the ferry flight of the Shuttle on the 747. We see the modified 747 all the time, but have never seen the Shuttle attached.  

        

So, since I've been essentially Jeffrey's video puppet the last few entries based on comments, I decided to fulfill his demand to attach a video camera to the Lionel train around our tree. It didn't take much coaxing, just a sad realization that I didn't think of it first.

BTW, Jeffrey, I demand Little Baby Something-Something (LBSS) videos as payment, as one-year-olds start to be not so boring about this time. 

Assembly was complicated and well planned. 

 







The video turned out great, I can't stop watching it, it's like Amy Winehouse's life.

        

        

Warning, simulated swearing follows.

Since early summer, we've known that Kelly's brother and sister-in-law were visiting us for Christmas, and now Kelly's mother is joining us as well. So we've been plotting all the things we want to get done to the house, since they will be our first visitors from Back East since June, when we had barely settled in here as JJ and Jesse visited.

Our typical thing is to stand in a room and discuss all the things we each envision, then move onto another room. The last couple of weeks, though, we've been actually doing the work we used to just talk about. 

We've done and bought a bunch of things, all things we've needed, so it's good to have the forcing agent of having visitors to get us to get it all done. 

One thing that's been my project is getting the Christmas lights done outside. It's been a three weekend-long project so far and I don't think it's over yet. See, ours is the first house people see as they enter our neighborhood, so I've felt since we moved in that the front of the house is a duty I can't slack on. Like if I ever let things go, it would signal to other neighbors that it's okay to slack on their places. It's a ridiculous notion, since the next door neighbor to the west only mows three times a year, but it still motivates me.

Last weekend, I was putting these ridiculous oversized bulbs together, which line the edge of our driveway. Kelly was busy working on some of her projects, but passed me and said as I was screwing colored bulbs in, "Aren't you even going to put the lights in in the right order?"

"What the hell is the right order for colored lights?"

"ROYGBIV, mother f****r! God, I can't even watch you do that, you're RUINING Christmas!"

Later, Kelly's nugget of wisdom was, "I know that Christmas decorating isn't a contest here, but we're winning."

 











As per Jeffrey's request (again), VIDEO! If you look close at the landing of the stairs, you can see a bemused Amanda.