Building websites...

Lately I've been working on a new website and blog for Brett. I'm planning on having pictures of a bunch of the chinks, chaps and other stuff he's made on the website, and a shopping cart on the blog page for purchases. So far it's coming together pretty well. His website is at www.empireleatherco.com and his blog is at empireleather.blogspot.com...

There's not much on either place yet, but it's slowly coming together...

...the goose is getting fat...

The Christmas goose, that is. Or was. Considering that this is now the second full week in January, and consequently Christmas was roughly three weeks ago, the goose, or turkey as it were, has long since been devoured and a new one will eventually be selected for Christmas 2010...

This was an interesting Christmas. The annual community Christmas program slash potluck was on the 19th, with our annual Christmas church service on the 20th. Cheryl and I went shopping, just the two of us (how weird is that?), instead of going to the program. Then Sunday night I did the Christmas service at the little church. Audience was actually pretty good sized, and Vicky finally got there to do the reading she's been wanting to do for the last two Christmases, but which she didn't get done because she kept getting snowed in. Then I started on two months of graveyard shift on the 21st...

A little note regarding graveyard shift: I worked off shifts for actually quite a few years, then I've been on days since I went in the lab, except for a month when I first came in from the yard. But this particular graveyard stint coincides with a combination shutdown and layoff (damn slow economy), so it's really quiet around here at night...

So anyway, we normally have Christmas dinner, with family, extended family, friends, whoever, on Christmas Eve, somewhere in the vicinity of 6 PMish. I start work at 7 PM. Consequently, I got to hear about how everything went after the fact rather than being in the thick of the festivities. Worked out okay, though. We opened presents the next day, and I got lots of goodies in addition to the gun safe I bought in November and which just got moved into the house and stocked from the existing non-fire safe cabinets last Friday. I even got a bunch of stuff I asked for, like a dandy pair of warm slippers, a new zip-up sweatshirt, and a DVD copy of El Dorado, starring John Wayne, James Caan and Robert Mitchum. What more could a boy ask for?

On the whole, in spite of having to miss the celebration in town, Christmas was pretty good...

PBR Finals

Hm, what have I done since Cycle Oregon? Oh yeah, the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) World Finals in Las Vegas in November. We took Brett to the NFR for his 21st birthday, which is in December, so Clint decided that we should take him to the PBR finals for his 21st. Being the understanding parents that we are, we did just exactly that. I got online early on and got us tickets for the second weekend, including the final final, made us reservations at the Jockey Club to use one of our timeshare weeks, and away we went...

The Jockey Club is an old property, but has been remodeled a bunch, so the rooms are pretty nice. The only problem with the Jockey Club is that it's being overbuilt by one of those megahotel/casino places. By that I mean that the new place is for all practical purposes engulfing the JC, which makes access somewhat interesting, and totally ruins the view on the south side of the building. Our apartment had a fantastic view of a concrete wall ten feet away. On the other hand, the Jockey Club is pretty much centrally located on the Las Vegas strip, between Bellagio and Monte Carlo and directly across the street from Planet Hollywood, so you can pretty much walk to most anywhere on the strip...

Brett and his buddy Cliff drove down on Monday, and we flew in on Wednesday. We got to the hotel about 10 PM and, being hungry, Cheryl, Mema and I went across the street to PH to get something to eat while Clint went to find Brett and Cliff. After we ate we took a walk up the Strip, spent some quality casino time and had a few "free" drinks then headed back toward our digs. We were almost back to JC when Cheryl's phone rang, and a voice said, "Where are you guys? It's after two, and we're home, and you're not! Where have you been?" We got quite a kick out of the kids calling to check on the old folks. After that we rarely saw them alive...

The bull riding was great. The weather was wonderful, we had good seats, and we had an all together fun time. We've had people tell us that "we've been to Vegas, we don't need to go back." But Cheryl and I both think we could go back a bunch of times, because you never get to see everything...