Holiday Card Round-Up!

This year, I have hand-painted a quasi-illumination for Bobby's and my holiday card, and I would love to send some to my online friends! If you would like a card, please comment here (and don't forget to include the name you'd like me to address it to, else you'll end up with a card addressed to your screen name! ;) Comments are screened, but if you'd like to contact me personally, please email me at DawnFelagund@gmail.com.

Likewise, if you'd be more comfortable receiving your card by email, that's fine too; the artwork will be digitally scanned so that I can print them, so it's not a problem for me to put together a digital card identical to those going out in the mail.

One last note: I lost the majority of my addresses when Comcast deleted my old account. Unless you've sent me your address since I moved (i.e., since July), then I do not have it. If you want a card, please send it to me again.

And if we've already exchanged addresses for cards, then you don't need to comment here as well.

Happy holidays, everyone! :)

Thanks, Murphy, for Keeping My Life Exciting

So we're driving home from SCA on Friday night. It's a little after midnight because we're both always so hyper after meetings (especially Bobby, having just spent two hours bashing people with wooden swords) that we always go with the other heavy fighters to Pizza Hut. Mind, we have to be up at six the next morning for our shift at the Aquarium.

It is the coldest night we've had in Maryland so far this year. The temperature is hovering around 26F/-3C, we're driving north through Carroll County, in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch blackness ...

... and we get a flat tire.

8^|

Okay, not funny, Murphy!

We were following the marshal who's training Bobby (Graham) and his wife (Dawn!), and luckily, we got a flat right in front of a gas station, but probably for that reason, Graham and Dawn didn't think much of the fact that we were limping into a gas station and didn't stop. We watched their taillights dwindle into the darkness. I think I wubbled a little bit.

Changing a tire in below-freezing temperatures, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, while exhausted and knowing that the alarm will be ringing mighty early--like in five hours--does not make futzing with a flat tire much fun.

Oddly, we got a flat on the same tire on the exactly a year earlier, minus one day, while driving home from Ocean City with Sharon and Kirsty. Much as we like Bobby's car (well, as much as two eco-radicals can like a car that's not a hybrid), it does terribly on tires. This is the fourth tire we've put on that spot. Luckily, Bobby bought the warranty after last year's flat.

( Also, the Conclusion to the Pie Plate Fiasco *sigh* )