Jalisco House-hop and Thinking of Gifts

We had our annual Jalisco Terrace house-hop last night. It's a progressive dinner organized by Rick and Jean Kraus. They do a great job of putting it together and keeping it on schedule once it begins. Lots of laughs and conversation. Once winter sets in around here, we all sort of cocoon ourselves in our homes and don't get a chance to interact much. The house-hop is a nice way of breaking that cycle.

I was able to finally get my bike back out on the road yesterday before the house-hop so I could create a calorie deficit with which to more easily eat more than I should last night with less guilt. We've been getting our fair share of snow and then some which has kept the streets icier and snowier than usual, keeping me confined to my rollers in our basement. The bottom falls out of the thermometer tomorrow but with any luck, the roads will be dry so I can keep doing my thing on them. I'm 140 miles short of 6000 road miles for the year and I'd sort of like to achieve that number. It's a number considerably less than I've done in years past but that's been the plan this year—do fewer miles so I can keep riding for years to come. Moderation. As I told some of my neighbors at the party last night, I fully intend to be out there in spandex well into my 70's. I'm not sure why but when I'd say that the reply was usually something along the lines of, "Really?" and "Eewww".

I've still got some Christmas shopping to do and I need to get busy this week and finish it. We don't exchange gifts on my side of the family between siblings so I don't have a very long list of people to buy for. Over the past several years I've scanned hundreds of family photos and cleaned them up with Photoshop Elements. My plan this year is to buy a digital photo frame for my mother and load the photos into it for her as a Christmas gift. My brother put together a beautiful photo book for her 80th birthday last month and she loved it. This would be another gift along that line.

Speaking of gifts, I was at the men's breakfast at our church yesterday morning and they closed the program with this video. Guys, take note so as to not end up in the doghouse. It's not too late to do the right thing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good video, Kevin! Thankfully I've been well trained. I'm even to the point that I don't need the list from my wife. After years of assimilation I know just where to go for gifts. Our dog is named Louis. It's short for Luois Vuitton. What does that tell you??? ;-)
December 16, 2008 at 2:35 PM
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