House-sitting

The weekend provided an unexpected getaway with me house, or rather, dog-sitting for some friends from church that were going to be gone for Saturday night and would need someone to look after him so they wouldn't have to put him in a kennel for the entire weekend. I obliged, and it was nice to just have some time to myself and everything yesterday. I also got to spend some time working on my Guitar Hero abilities in practice for the New Year's Party that our small group will be having replete with XBOX and Wii. Should be good times when it comes around. But there's lots of stuff in the meantime, such as our impending trip to Charleston this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Of course, when you think about Christmas, one of the things that always comes to my mind at least is snow. I love it when it snows. It's all sorts of fun to play in, it cancels anything that you're obligated to be doing for the day, it's just all around good news. One of my most vivid memories around the holidays was during the "Blizzard of '93" where we got all sorts of snow here in East Tennessee, and I think that schools and everything else were closed for over a week. Now, for some people, that probably doesn't sound like much, but for Oak Ridge schools, that was huge since we were usually the only ones going to school when everyone else was out with some frost on the grass. At any rate, we were back at the house, and with a huge hill and a steep driveway directly next door, it became logical to start sledding down this driveway.

Across the circle that we live at the end of is a bunch of forest area with large trees, and a fairly substantial drop-off (especially when you're 10). But at any rate, that didn't really concern us. As most boys will do, we (my brother and I) decided that it would be spectacular to create a ramp in the circle that we would attempt to hit and go flying off in the wild blue yonder. So off we go constructing our ramp, and proceeding to go even higher up on the hill before attempting to hit it as fast as we can. Over the course of however long we were out there, the snow was gradually turning to ice due to our constant sliding down it. As we continued on, we figured out that you go faster if you're both on the sled. As we careen down the hill, which was essentially packed ice now, we start to think that it might not have been best idea. Once we hit the ramp, we know it wasn't a good idea. I'm pretty sure that Dustin flew off the sled in mid-air and landed somewhere in a snowdrift up against a tree, and I proceeded to fly down in to the ditch and in to a tree myself, cutting myself right above the eye. We got some nice air on the jump, but, needless to say, we got quite a scolding from mom when we came back in later.

The possibility of snow is not looking all that promising given that it is currently 73 degrees outside. I'll keep holding out for it though. Hopefully at some point it will actually feel like winter and there might be a chance at some snow. Given the overall hatred of the Little Drummer Boy, perhaps I'll fare a little better with the 12 Days of Christmas? Here's hoping.