Catching Up

There's a lot of stuff that's happened that I just haven't had time to write about until now. So, I guess it's time to get caught up.

We had a rather quiet Christmas Eve. Richard just wasn't up to playing Santa this year. I'm not sure if it was the last minute jitters or what. Anyway, we tried to make pasties which turned out OK, but the crust recipe was not that great. We had a friend over and watched TV until about 9pm.

On Christmas, we tried the pasties again using Richard's favorite pie crust recipe. This time they turned out very good. We also had dinner in the evening at Richard's daughter's house. His oldest son and his family were also there. The food was great! The drive home was a bit nerve-wracking. There was heavy snow and wind around Altura, MN and it didn't get much better until we got close to Rochester. At least we made it home before the ice/sleet started.

We woke up on the 26th with a nice coating of ice on everything outside. It took some scraping but with warmer temps, we were able to get most of it off the driveway and sidewalk.

Yesterday, Richard decided he wanted to render lard. It ended up being a lot more work and a lot messier than I thought it would be. At least it smelled good when it was cooking. Richard also baked fresh bread and sugar free cinnamon rolls which were delicious. Our friend Mikey came by in the evening and we watched the movie "The Water Horse". It was a decent and entertaining movie so I give it a thumbs-up.

On Christmas night, we also watched "Hit Man" which isn't exactly a Christmassy show. The movie started out really good and interesting, but it fell into typical Hollywood kill-them-all type action movie. So, I give it a thumbs-down.

Speaking of thumbs-down, President Elect Obama, NBC Today Show, and Rev. Rick Warren all get one from me. Obama for choosing Rev. Warren to give the inaugural invocation, NBC Today Show for having Rev. Warren talk about Christmas on their Christmas morning show, and Rev. Rick Warren for being such a big fat liar. His repetition of the right-wing mantra that "Marriage has always been between one man and one woman in every culture and country for the past 5000 years...bla bla bla..." is a big lie. He should know better from all the studying of the Bible that he's supposedly done. The Bible is full of polygamists. Jews practiced polygamy well past the birth of Jesus, and most Muslim nations (and some others) still practice polygamy to some extent. Also, the Netherlands in 2001 allowed same-sex couples to marry. Other countries have also legalized it. So today, no one can say that "marriage has always been between one man and one woman."