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.