Christmas past

Well, as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. That is sadly true of the winter holidays as well. As we have finally reached the end of my two college kids' vacation period, it was necessary to return them to college again.

Well, yesterday was truly a long day but I am thankful to God for the safe passage he afforded me and the kids. Sheila had to work, so I got them all packed up here (took till about 1:30 PM) and then unloaded and installed at their apartment again. Joy and I went grocery shopping too and we all had a few bites of pizza before I headed back home around 8:30 PM. That much of the day was long but uneventful. I would have been home around 11pm but for an apparently serious and bad wreck south of Gibson. They must have had every piece of emergency equipment out that they could muster. We were forced to make a perimeter loop around the accident scene; looping out about 5 miles around it. You could see it from the loop though. They had emergency vehicles all over the highway – covered about ½ mile of road I would guess. The end result is that I saw one ambulance going south from the accident scene with lights flashing after they first detoured me and then as we went around the detour loop, we had to stop three times for three other ambulances to go by. So, it must have been very serious. All the ambulances “appeared” to have people inside they were treating as evidenced by the lights being on inside and the technician working over someone. Very sobering indeed. It was raining and I attribute the accident to the wet roads although the road at that spot is quite straight. I hope those people fair ok following the incident. I have often thought of this possibility many times myself. I usually say several prayers along the route that God will keep me and the people coming at me at a closing speed of 110-120 mph….. safe. A sobering thought as well.

Even though Christmas is now well and truly behind us and tax time approaches, it was a good holiday and I enjoyed our time together. I look forward to the summer when hopefully the kids will return although Mark may be going off to his new vocation then. Guess we will see what the future brings.

So, today, it is back to school for all my kids - their usual state and back to work for me. I am enjoying the new project but we are in the daunting startup phase of the project so it is going to take a bit to get things under control well enough that we can proceed forward with the work. That's kind of the normal state of things. The initial phase is quite difficult in that you want to be sure you have captured all the requirements for the work before you begin the work. Hopefully we will be done with that very shortly.

My weather station continues to update regularly and is a source of much amusement and enjoyment. I have it updating our web page daily now (including rainfall measurements) and it mails the data to me at work periodically too. It has been a lot of fun.

Well, gotta get to work and start the new week. All my best to all of you and I hope you have a good week too!

Jerry