There really hasn't been too much going on lately, yet I feel that I've been busy enough doing and enjoying different things. Of course there was Christmas, which is always celebrated in three stages...Christmas Eve family and friend party gathering at a cousin's house, Christmas Day with my family at my parents' place, and a post-Christmas lunch or supper gathering with Edie's family sometime on the weekend that immediately follows the holiday. That's how it was this time around again, so I had my share of going out, celebrating, and enjoying the holiday.

My brother was here from Ohio for all of Christmas week, so I got to see him as time allowed before Christmas and then I spent a whole day with him on the day after Christmas. We spent the morning here looking at pictures, then he surprised me by taking me to the Mohegan Sun Casino (no, not to gamble in any way, (not this time, anyway) to have a nice lunch "on him" at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Restaurant. Yes, I had a giant margarita (I found the lost shaker of salt lol) and I loved my meal. I enjoyed an old Key West favorite of mine, conch fritters, and then had some mighty tasty Buffalo chicken wings...while my brother opted to have a Cheeseburger in Paradise after his margarita and fritters. I now have a souvenir glass and, as yet another surprise, a new set of salt & pepper shakers to add to my collection. Ed bought me the cutest shakers...one is a salt shaker that says "Lost Shaker of Salt" on it, the other looks like a margarita glass filled with a margarita (with salt on the rim and a slice of lime in it) that says "Margaritaville" on it, and both sit on a base that looks like beach sand. I love it, as Ed knew I would.

Since then, there was New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Edie and I like to stay home on New Year's Eve and do nothing but be together and usually watch the changing of the year on TV. This may not be the way we've spent New Year's Eve every year or how we may spend some or all of them in the future, but it's how we've been doing it for a number of years now and we rather enjoy it. So, that's how we brought in the New Year again this time...watching it together on TV while making a little toast and drinking a little wine. Then, on New Year's Day, we had my parents here for a nice ham dinner and to spend the afternoon visiting with us. So, this turned out to be a rather nice holiday for me, too.

Besides the holidays, though, there has been little to really get excited about. Yet, like I said, I feel that I've been busy enough doing and enjoying different things. I finished reading "G" is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton, I watched an old favorite of mine, Dr. Zhivago, totally un-interrupted on PBS, Edie and I watched Wall-E on DVD, and we saw the Kennedy Center's show last week and oooh-ed and aaah-ed all the way through. We got out to see the house with the synchronized-to-music holiday lighting display here in town, as well as the town's favorite decorated house, as voted by the residents.

I've also managed to start replacing some of my holiday decorations with those types of things most associated with the season of winter and with a few other favorite things we like to have around. I've also cleaned all the paneling in the apartment, changed the calendars (of course), wrote and sent out thank you cards for Christmas gifts I received, and doing a number of other necessary chores around the place, including a bit of snow shoveling and dealing with the icy path one must take to reach our door.

To be honest with you, this is the kind of busy-ness that I enjoy having in my life right now. No winter boredom is dragging me down and there are no hectic preparations to make or jobs to get done. I guess one could say that I'm pretty comfortable with the way things are and I'm enjoying it.

When I get my scanner working again (or replaced, if need be), maybe I'll get to post some of the pictures I took of the snow, a pic of the salt & pepper shakers, and some I took on the holidays. That's a major objective of mine right now...getting the scanner problem solved...because you know how much I love taking pictures and then sharing them here in mybloggers.