I guess Christmas is here!  Once again we didn’t get the house decorated.  I’m not sure how many years running that is;  Too many I’m sure.  At least this year we discussed it, usually we just totally ignore it.  I was supposed to put up the tree while Donette was out of town, but I didn’t get it done.  My rationale was “Why?”  I was home by myself, we have zero visitors…  Didn’t make no good sense.  Maybe next year.  Or, maybe not.

We actually had a remarkably busy weekend for once.  I was on vacation all week, which was quite nice.  As briefly mentioned last week, our friends Ed & Kim were in town;  Our first official visitors!  (This, of course, sort of contradicts my earlier statement of “zero visitors.”  It would have been a good idea to have a tree up for their kids…  Oops.  We did walk up and down the street looking at other people’s decorations, close enough.)  They headed to Tahoe on Monday, then we joined them Wednesday afternoon.  Donette was a little sick so we almost bailed out, but the rooms were already paid for so we didn’t want to just lose them.  It worked out well.  She started feeling better after some sleep, and mostly we just hung around the condo while they skied.  (Snowboarded, to be more accurate.)  They reported the conditions a little on the lame side the first few days, but Wednesday night there was a pretty good snowstorm that gave them some white stuff to work with.

We all headed back to El Dorado Hills Friday afternoon, and they had to fly out Saturday morning.  We didn’t exactly tear up the town while they were here, but for whatever reason we were rather exhausted and spent the vast majority of the day on the couch watching basketball.  As a matter of fact, that is all we did.  Sunday was only slightly more productive.  Donette did a thorough cleaning of the house in an attempt to get rid of any left-over germs from her little bout with the flu (or whatever it was.)  Meanwhile I hit the gym for a while, or perhaps it hit me.  After that I did the grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner.  We elected to go with turkey again, but deep-fried this time.  I am giving a go to the “dry brine” method this time, mostly out of interest and cheapness.  For the record, I didn’t want turkey, so it better be good.  They make an inhouse turducken at the grocery down the street, and I was dead-set on grilling one of those.  Donette was a little skeptical though, and likely with good reason.  I just wanted to try it more than anything.  Second on my list was rib roast.  This one she agreed sounded good, but they’re a little spendy.  Turkey, on the other hand, is still $1.49 and always a safe bet…  A reasonable compromise.