The week's round-up

Welcome to the New Year!  I arrived back in Savannah in time to watch Michigan State drown in a red tide at the Cotton Bowl, a spectacle that hasn’t been seen since Pharaoh’s army chased Moses and the Hebrew people through the Red Sea.  Undersea warfare would not be perfected until the beginning of the 20^th Century, something Pharaoh became painfully aware of, even though the Confederacy did sink a Yankee ship with the Huntley in Charleston harbor.   The past few days back in Savannah have been filled with excited things like cleaning out and painting a quarter of the garage (this will be done in stages), sailing, answering fire calls (although I missed a real fire due to work), and a return to my regular job…  My only real gripe was the faulty fire alarm that went off in a house where no one was home at 5:45 AM on New Year's Day!  Really?  But a faithful group of red-eyed volunteers showed up and checked it out and made sure there was no fire before heading back to bed.

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I enjoyed my time in the Old North State, even though many of my hours were spent working in my parents yard.  My daughter and I drove up the day after Christmas (she has always been fun to travel with, but it's even nicer now that she can drive!).   I got to see both of my parents often, who were living at different wings of a skilled nursing facility: my dad in rehab and my mom in the regular wing.  I also got to see my siblings and spent an afternoon on a boat with my brother, wearing shorts which seems odd in late-December.  We even got in and out of the boat on Masonboro Island without boots, for the water was still warm.  Watching folks do the “polar plunge here in Georgia where the water temperature is still warmer than Lake Michigan in August was a bit of a joke.  But even in Michigan, where they normally have to cut holes in the ice on Gun Lake with a chainsaw for the polar plunge, there was no ice.  Weird weather we’re having.

After spending time at my parents, my daughter and I headed across the state to visit my uncle and my grandmother.  Along the way, we stopped in Raleigh to visit Judy (her original blog was Kenju, now she blogs at Just Ask Judy) one of my longtime blogger friends.  We spent an enjoyable hour and a half talking to Judy and Mr. Kenju about many things including Georgetown basketball (Mr. Kenju played for Georgetown in the early 1960s).  Judy is a talented florist and you may have remembered my admiration of her posts about decorating the governor's mansion in Raleigh.)  I would have enjoyed staying longer, but we still had a long drive in the rain to get to Hickory, so we bid them farewell and continued to drive into the sunset (which was well concealed behind the clouds).   And that, my friends, was my last week in a nutshell. 

I hope you are enjoying your New Year!

Heading back after yesterday's races
Winter sailing without foul-weather gear!