All of the cards are in the mail. On the off chance that we forgot anyone, Allie wanted to send you a special note.
photo
15
Dec 15
I’m now pricing old Star Wars toys
Went out for lunch today:
We did not eat the Rhode Island Red. He lives at the restaurant, though, which is kind of weird, I’ll grant you. The front is a nursery and out the back is a fresh fruits and vegetables store. Attached to that is the restaurant and we get veggie crepe wraps and stuffed squash there. Stuffed squash is good stuff.
The service is spotty. It is staffed by a bunch of students and sometimes they’re great but other times you just get the cute “Oops” smile. Not much you can do but stare at that and think I hope that takes you far in life.
And sometimes you think you didn’t want a veggie crepe, but maybe some fried chicken sounds nice …
We did some shopping today. We’re doing one of the Santa games for the holidays with my family this year. It is the polite Santa game, because it is a family environment and there are kids and there’s a price limit and you can steal presents and so on.
We have to find two things under $10. It took some doing, but we did it. (And some of those people read this, so I’m not spoiling that again this year.)
We saw some other cool stuff though. And I’m going to show some of those things to you. And when you see these things, remember how smart George Lucas was about the original Star Wars. The movie was the movie, but the vision was in the merchandising. He got sweet deals because no one back then believed that toys and shirts would be a revenue stream. That was Lucas’ real genius.
Now, with Lucas having sold to Disney for a song, and the Mouseketeers putting their muscle into merchandising, they’ve proven George Lucas an absolute piker.
We didn’t buy any of those things. I object on philosophical grounds. Darth Vader is a feared and despised bad guy throughout the galaxy. He is not the face that should be toasting your bread.
We did, however, pick up a little present for ourselves. Cool little nightlight:
And two presents for under $10 for the family Christmas game. Still no fried chicken, though.
14
Dec 15
Happy Monday
And how was your weekend? Uneventful here, but I was ready for uneventful. Wrapping up the term and long hours seem to do that to me. We did get in a nice run, enjoyed the weather, saw some leaves:
Look at these go, this is about two miles into a four-mile jog:
Saturday night, we counted our good fortune and enjoyed a delicious steak fresh off the grill:
Breakfast this morning.
That’s it for today. Come back soon for more show and tell.
11
Dec 15
Most don’t remember their first roasted marshmallow
We went to a meet the merchants event in the next town over. We do a lot of shopping in that town. It’s a lovely place, a railroad town turned blue collar, until the jobs left, and it has recently come back as a great example of small town revitalization.
It is the kind of place where you drive around the square to get to the courthouse, where people point to the old storefronts and say “That’s where my dad used to hustle pool.” And then they could turn around, point in the opposite direction and say “That’s where we got married.” And then just a block away is the piece of railroad intersection that made this entire area boom in the 19th century. And to the left of that is an Irish pub, an Italian restaurant and a cajun joint, all on the same block. It is a neat place for a small town.
So we were there tonight, because the weather was nice and it was a good place to unwind and because we know some of the business owners. One we knew was doing S’mores out of her storefront. We stood and talked and had more than our share. I might have had three. Perhaps I had more.
And this lady brings her daughter, like so many other parents with their kids tonight. Only this little girl, this was her first roasted marshmallow:
She liked roasting them, but she found that she preferred them uncooked. And also the chocolate.
Here was one of the trees downtown:
Nice leaf turn, if a bit late. I’m sure we’ll see more this weekend.
10
Dec 15
Doughnuts in the parking lot
Leaving campus at 8 p.m. on the last day of finals may be as close as I’ll ever get to a last guy in the world scenario.
This parking lot is *always* full.
Now? After an afternoon and evening of recruiting phone calls to high school students, just like everyday this week …
Just me. Everyone, everyone is long gone. Most for the term.
But this is work that simply must be done from the office these days. And when I took this, of course, I still had some driving to do.
But, hey, I got in a five-mile run this morning, so there’s that.
