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December 24, 2006
Looks a Little Like Christmas
[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
Hooray for snow! Okay, even if it's only an inch of it and even if it's accompanied by freezing rain, it finally looks at least a little bit like Christmas. I'm even fine with the snow causing a few delays with my flight. It seems that airlines really don't plan on bad weather happening. I say that because our plane had to get some extra fuel before taking off from Pittsburgh due to the inclement weather around the Twin Cities, which apparently made the plane too heavy to fly safely. The flight attendants had to ask three people to volunteer to get off and take a later flight, and while two did volunteer almost right away, we were waiting around for another 15-20 minutes for a third to volunteer. When nobody did though, they just picked someone to get off -- fortunately it wasn't either me or Jacob! So that took half an hour, and then we spent another 10-15 minutes circling in a holding pattern over western Wisconsin (when I took this cool picture of the snowstorm, looking west), because the runways were needing to be plowed, meaning we landed about 45 minutes late. Oh well, at least we landed. And at least our flight home wasn't delayed five hours like Andrew's was to Chicago...
Friday afternoon Dad wanted me to put the lights on one of our Christmas trees, even though he can be somewhat finnicky about how exactly they get put on and how they look. At least this year he didn't totally redo my efforts. :-) But we got it all decorated and lifted back up on the ledge where it belongs. My parents dialed it back a bit this year, we only have three Christmas trees up around the house, unless you count one or two mini-trees, and then the mini-forest out on the sun porch. :-) I remember the days when we'd have at least five or six trees up around he house!
On Friday night Jake & I went out (huh?) to Club Cumberland for a bit, as quite a few people from high school were back in town for a "Home for the Holidays Bash." It was fun to catch up with quite a few people and find out what they're up to these days.
Yesterday, just in time for the end of 2006, I finished up the photo albums from Christmas break last year. They're on the Cumberland and Gustavus pages. I'll almost certainly get some more albums up from the first part of the Spring 2006 semester at Penn State over the next few days.
In the past couple weeks my parents have gotten a brand new widescreen HDTV and a satellite dish, so I've had a blast checking out all that stuff. Ever since we moved to Wisconsin way back in 1990 my family has never had cable or satellite or anything, so it's pretty cool to be able to spend a day being lazy watching movies like "Return of the King," "Tora! Tora! Tora!,""Ocean's Eleven" and of course "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." I'm also really happy they got satellite, because now I'll be able to watch the Penn State-Tennessee bowl game on New Year's Day morning (assuming I'm home then...).
Neither church that my parents are a part of are meeting today because so many people are travelling, so we're just having a quiet Christmas Eve morning here, finishing some decorating and wrapping presents and whatnot. My brothers and their families will be getting here tomorrow morning sometime. Hopefully what little snow we have will stick around. A brown Christmas is depressing enough, but especially in northern Wisconsin. Maybe I should move back to Australia, they're having a white Christmas Down Under in the summer!
Happy Holidays Merry Christmas everyone!
Posted by Jared at December 24, 2006 11:30 AM
Comments
Merry Christmas 1 day late dude!
Posted by: Tim at December 26, 2006 11:24 PM
Merry Xmas Jared Lee! I miss you! Thailand is a blast, wish you were here with me. Alas, you will have to make due with the many underwater pictures.
Posted by: Joshua at December 27, 2006 04:18 AM