2011.12.30 Holiday Wrap-Up
The best part of the holidays has been spending a week with Simon.
Helping decorate the tree. Taming that wild stallion.
Watching him watching me. Making gingerbread cookies.
Lost in the wonder of it all. Toys and yoga - a festive combination!
"Why are you smiling at me like that?" Everything you need, really.
Bonus Feel-Good Know-The-Castles Story!
We also had an adventure where we drove up to Timberline Lodge to play in the snow... except that it had poured rain the night before so the whole place was just one giant ice sheet. Which, while less fun for Simon and the wife, I had an absolutely awesome time driving up and down the mountain (not to mention the classy drifting U-turn leaving the parking lot). Stick-shift + all-wheel-drive + not-snow tires = WHEEE!
OK, Here's A Relevant Tidbit, To Make You Go "Huh".
The wife and I were in our 2006 Subaru Outback on the freeway, going 110 km/h, when the passenger side window exploded with a startling BANG. Sheets of crazed glass rained down on the wife and scratched its way backwards along the side of the car. Really not sure what happened there. The insurance adjuster had never heard of such an incident before; the repair shop was certain that not only was an impact required for such a failure, it needed to be something sharp in order to cause such catastrophic shattering.
Needless to say, the $100 deductible feels like a perfectly reasonable expense instead of what could have happened if the window hadn't absorbed the impact of whatever-it-was.
Persistent, Aren't We? Fine. There's sad news too.
A truly awful thing was hearing about a good friend dying in a horrific suicide. She shot her estranged husband a couple times - but he's OK. She shot his girlfriend in the face - but somehow she's OK too. She also winged a juvenile in the hand, but they're also going to be OK. After the shooting spree in the home she co-owned with her estranged husband, probably using his gun, she called emergency services. Before they arrived, she killed herself.
Jen had problems with alcohol and depression, but she also generally had a mountain of insight and formidable faculties. I'm mostly just left with a confused, "Fuck, Jen - no..."