Hey y’all! Hope yer Christmas (or holiday of yer choice) was a pleasant one. I, for one, feel as if I packed quite a bit in, and in truth, I feel as if I am only half-way along; New Year’s Day still lies ahead y’all.

Anyway, in recent days past, I went out to the greater Rockford, Illinois area for Christmas (photos to follow soon.) I did this for a variety of reasons. One is that’s where my nephews were going to be, and I like Christmas with the lads. Two, sister Ellie was bringing the new nephew up from Oklahoma (a plus if only because it spares me the trip to rural Oklahoma); and Three, there was going to be a larger family gathering in the south burbs of Chicago, allowing me to visit with my grandma, who I simply don’t get to see very often, and who – I am sad to say – it seems may not around long enough for me to take such opportunities for granted.

There were other, more mundane, things going on as well. I wanted to go to a doctor in my parent’s hometown to get a physical (he is an awesome doctor who has been good to me for many moons.) Mi madre was having cataract-removal surgery after Christmas, and I felt that – as The Good Son – I should be there to help getting her there, getting her home, and helping a little with the boys while she rested. On top of all the stuff with the fam, I haven’t had a chance to hang with some of my boyhood friends in awhile, which means these kids of theirs I keep seeing in holiday cards, and who I keep chatting with on the phone, are increasingly familiar to me even though I can’t say I have even MET some of them in person.

That too needed to be remedied. I had the super bonus of being able to “work remotely” in the days following Christmas, so keeping it in Northern Illinois for a few days was something I could pull off without having to use tons of vacation days. It was a plan that ended up working quite well, the only real hitch being that I had to leave my precious gatos alone for Christmas – a source of great grief for all of us!

For the most part, good times abounded. Seeing grandma was particularly awesome for me. With Ellie’s bringing of Baby Ben, the youngest and oldest in our family were in the room, spanning 4 generations. At some level, most of the people in the room trace their lives through that one woman. In that respect, we all got pretty lucky. Grandma is of pretty good stock (her father lived to be well into his 90s), and she has lived long enough to be a Great Grandma several times over. I myself have had my grandma alive and quite important to that is the fact that she has been mentally active for my whole life. As I told her in my visit, it definitely is reassuring – after hearing she is enfeebled and wasting away – that she appeared to actually be doing quite well. In my current parlance, it is quite easy to see that Grandma’s “pilot light” is still well on, which is a major joy for me. While she was a suburbanite and married a GI injured during thee great WWII – things common among women of her time – she strikes me as never having been just a mundane presence, or a wallflower, anywhere or at anytime in her history. She is still mentally “with us” for the most part, so getting some time in with her was a big deal for me.

Much like visiting the fam, I got the chance to have dinner with Art & Karl. Karl went way way out of his way to get me a very rare, limited edition City Of Shorewood t-shirt. Chuckle if you must, but I would be willing to bet that anyone who would diss a de-luxe Shorewood shirt probably locks their door, puts on their Mumford PE Dept. shirt, and mugs in front of the mirror a la Eddie. I am an advanced scholar on these matters and you are an unruly buster. Got me?

Visiting the lads is always a good time. I know of no one (which isn’t to say hrere KIM SLID