Merry Christmas to one and all.... and Happy Holidays to all of you that don't celebrate the day. Last night was a lovely evening spent down in Floyd attending the choral concert and service that my friend Rima was participating in. A packed church with warm happy people all around. I was imagining how there must be thousands of church services just like that one going on all over the world tonight. A few snacks afterwards, and a chance to talk to a few of the locals. More and more of them seem to be recognizing me as time is passing. Some of them may even know my name. But for now 'That Guy From Colorado' is good enough for me.

   A really lazy day of it here today. The sky was nearly clear and very sunny and by this afternoon it was nearly warm outside. Warm enough to go outside for a walk anyway. Rima and I spent a lot of the day inside just relaxing. She put together a nice meal of barbecued ribs for lunch, while I countered with oven roasted pork loin with a reduction sauce of pan drippings, white wine a little onion, garlic and capers. Actually turned out better than I thought it would and we had pan fried cabbage and some steamed broccoli and zucchini along with it. Good thing it had been nearly 8 hours between meals or we never would of made it.

    We have been spending some time loading up some music on Rima's new I-pod. It has been fun going through some of my music and picking out some stuff she wasn't familiar with. Of course nearly all of my 60's and 70's rock stuff is unknown to her..... she's such a youngster at times. But there are plenty of contra dance, folk and classical stuff for her to choose from. We started her out with about 2,700 songs and we will add more as time permits.

   We have also both been packing for our nearly week long contra dance trip over in Morgantown WV this next week. She has been busy putting together "outfits" while I have just been busy seeing if I have enough black shirts and short pants to wear. Also packed for me though, are the two books that I received for Christmas. One, an Eastern U.S. bird book so that I might now be able to figure out what it is that I'm looking at out there in the trees, as well as another book of interviews and articles about older people who lived in this area and how they survived. It reminds me a lot of several 'Fire Fox' books that I have been reading and I am anxious to start in on it.

    So..... I may be posting pretty sporadically for the next week or so. The computer and camera are coming with me however, so expect something to be posted once in a while. But it's hard to sit down and write anything when there is dancing to be done.