Happy Birthday!

Wishin' my brother a Happy 17th Birthday! You know "My Wish" for you - I love you Matt!

17 years ago you were cute enough to take to show and tell in my 2nd grade class. Today I wouldn't take you to a show and tell for being cute, but for being the best brother I could ask for! Hope you have a wonderful birthday - with no balloons at school, but I'll give you some here!

A strange Thanksgiving

When you think Thanksgiving, you think turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. You think of a day spent with the crazy relatives, which is always at least somewhat memorable. This Thanksgiving was memorable for a different reason. There was turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, but there were no crazy relatives. The crazies definitely exist, but I didn't spend the day with them. My extended family, most of them at least, can't seem to get along well enough to spend a day together lately. So this year, Thanksgiving was spent at home in Madison, with just the four of us.

Please don't take my ranting here to mean that it wasn't a great holiday. We had a great time hanging out in the amazingly warm November weather in Wisconsin. The meal was fabulous, wine was great, time spent together was fun. We put the top on the convertible down, and rode around town for awhile and got some funny looks and a little cold. A stop at the Monona Bait Shop for ice cream topped the ride off. Not your typical, hang out with the cousins, watch a little football (or even play if it's nice enough out), Thanksgiving, but memorable nonetheless. We capped the night with a few board games (I managed to lose every one, no matter who was on my team), and just hanging out together.

Back to the family situation for a bit now... I'm sure there are only a couple members of the above mentioned family who know what a blog is, and even fewer who know that I have one or how to get to it, so this may never get to the intended audience, but here goes anyway. The crap that tends to tear this family apart is getting ridiculous. The hurt feelings, and tear-inducing comments seemed silly at the time, but seem like nothing compared to gossip and rumor spreading that are now causing people to not even be able to see each other for holidays. Enough already. Get over yourself. Life is too hard to let this crap get in the way of some of the relationships that really matter.

Hopefully Christmas will be different...

Do completely boring, emotionless blog updates even count as updates?

I know I haven't posted very regularly lately, but would you rather see boring mumblings, or wait until there is something at least a little exciting?