Deck the halls

with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla Washington and Kalamazoo! Nora's freezing on the trolley, holly golly cauliflower, ally ga-roo!
And if you recognize that you're familiar with a muskrat named POGO, who starred in a comic strip for lo these many years. It was much fun, but is out of print now. Well worth looking up if you have the chance, though.
There is some news- I will NOT be staying for the winter. It's a long, sad story- if you want the details email me and I'll spill all, but not here. That means that I'll be off of the Ice come the end of February, and with any luck will get to do some traveling in April and May before getting back to the daily grind. Where I'll be living is somewhat up in the air-the house I used to live in may have been rented, and I may not want to stay in Evanston/Chicago anyway. But I will be happy to see the kitties!
I have been helping people to build kites for our up-coming festival. Folks are being very creative, adding all kinds of fluttery and flappy stuff, and decorating up a storm. Now I just hope that the wind will remain as constant as it has, so flight can occur. The festival is on Jan. 8th-you can expect pictures.
The MidRats galley crew have taken up bowling. We go on Thursday mornings after work, and so far I'm consistently a mediocre-to-bad bowler. If I'm not the worst bowler in the room it's because Shane has decided to come along-once he managed to get a total of 23 points in 10 frames. I, at least, tend to break 70. Some of the kitchen staff are quite good, making strike after spare and so on. I'm happy when I manage to get the ball down the center of the lane. This is not helped by the ancient and warped nature of the lanes themselves. Bowling here will not improve your game anywhere else.

Stuff

I know, it's been too long since the last update. Sorry!
It felt like the week after T-day was about a year long. And this week has also taken its' own sweet time. But I did get a chance to take some more pictures around town:
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m266/bheydemann/stuff/
And I've been kind of busy-I organized a Festival of Kites, to be held on Jan. 8th, so on Tuesday evenings I've been holding kite-building workshops for anyone who wants to fly. It's been loads of fun. And I'm working as librarian for 3 hours on Tuesday mornings as well. And the MidRats galley crew has taken up bowling on Thursday or Friday mornings- last time I cleared 88. The lanes here were installed in 1962 and haven been sanded since....
And my brother Josh sent me a pool cue of my very own for my birthday. THANKS JOSH!!! Playing with a cue that is straight and has its tip is a big change around here. It's helped immensely. So my time on the internet has been severely compromised, hence the lack of posts here.
Weather-wise the outlook is grim. It's been over 35F for the last two weeks-warmer than it's been in Chicago! That's just NOT FAIR. I come 10,000 miles to get some good weather and it warms up. GRRRRR. Some of the local roads have had to be closed-when you're driving on ice you don't want to hear the description "soupy" about surface conditions. BUT- if the sea-ice breaks out of the Sound then we'll have Penguins and lots of fat Seals hanging around, which would be nice.
The next regular sunset has been scheduled-in late January,around the 22nd, I believe, we'll have 3 hours of sunset. It will make a pleasant change. Around that time the cargo vessel with all of next years' supplies will be arriving-vessel offload is always a hectic time, but there's lots of new foodstuffs to play with.
I'm off to exercise the perogative of those with a night off, and take a nap.