"...we had to walk a mile up hill in the snow to play an rpg..."

I think this deserves and honorable mention on my blog.

Last thursday was slated as a date for Patrick's Star Wars game. Since Sheri was going to need the jeep that evening, Doug (one of the other players) came to pick me up.

Somewhere between my house & Patrick's (approx. 40min trip), it began to snow very hard. By the time we were exiting in Kingsport, the roads were slippery, and we actually slid through the intersection at the interchange and a red light down the street (when we came to a stop in the middle of the intersection). Doug had said he had wanted to stop at a Hardees near Patrick's place to get some dinner, but wasn't sure he wanted to make another stop in this weather.

Around this point, Patrick called us to see how we were doing, how the weather was, and to tell us that Tony had parked down at the Hardees and was walking up to his place since he didn't want to take the roads in his car.

By the time we got to Patrick's neighborhood, there was a nice coating of snow on all the roads, and one of the hills proved to be impassible - meaning when we got halfway up, Doug's little quasi-suv ceased moving forward. I call Doug's vehicle a 'quasi-suv' because, while it does have traction-control, it, unfortunately, does *not* have any kind of 4wd.

Now, I say the q-suv 'ceased moving forward', which was true - but what I didn't mention about that just now was that, after it did so, it immediately began sliding backward. It finally came to a stop about 20ft back down the hill in front of a driveway, which we slid back into, turned around, and did a (mostly) controlled slide back down the hill whereupon we decided we'd take a cue from Llama's strategy. We headed back down to the Hardees, got dinner as originally planned, and started walking toward Patrick's.

When we made it as far as the big hill - this time on foot - as the snow poured down on top of us, I turned to Doug, and, with a wry smile, that was what I said.

~PS

The snow seems to be following me around. I'm currently at my grandparents' house in OH where we've been snowed in for the night. Hopefully we'll still be heading down to TN tomorrow as planned, however.

Our trip has been good, though I haven't had my voice for any of it. It left me saturday the 19th and hasn't come back to me since. If any of you see it, please send it over. At least I'd gotten over the rest of being sick before we headed up here.

We got to see most of my extended family on both my parents' sides this trip - which was cool. I don't get to see these people often enough. I took a bunch of pictures which will probably be posted to facebook (where I'm starting to post more 'personal' pictures, reserving my gallery here for more 'artistic' photos.)

The evening sunday the 20th we spent in OH with my mom's side of the family. For most of the week, we hung out at my parents' house and relaxed. This was nice. We hooked the Wii up to my parents' projector and enjoyed some Wii Bowling and Super Mario on the big screen. That was highly amusing. Christmas day we spent with them and Sheri's grandpa came down to join us for the day. We opened presents, had a tasty dinner, and played games. On saturday the 26th we went out to see Kedrick & Addie (my 'boss' & his wife) and enjoyed a nice dinner and catching up with them. That brings us to today, when we traveled here to my dad's parents' house for christmas with this side of the family... ...whereupon we have become snowbound.

As usual, I got some fun toys for christmas, including Mini Ninjas for the Wii (yay!), the Mouse Guard hardbacks, the Star Wars rpg rulebook, a midi interface for my computer, a lego set, some cool clothes, some money for the 'camera fund' and some other cool stuff that's not floating to the top of my head quite as quickly.

~PS

I can now add "Voluntarily venturing out into a snow storm for the purpose of purchasing ice cream" to the list of crazy and strangely ironic things I've done.

Unfortunately, our plans for a birthday gaming night last evening were foiled by the aforementioned snow storm, which dumped 4-6 inches of snow on our area between 3:30 and 8pm and continued to spit more for a few hours after that. The only person who made it out to our place was Llama, but he had the unique advantage of not having to drive home that night. If others *had* made the journey, I think we may have had to make more room.

The fact that the roads were pretty bad, however, didn't stop Llama and I from making a run out to the grocery store and to arby's in the jeep - which got a chance to prove its usefulness in the 4WD capacity. It was a bit of an adventure, but in the end we arrived back at the now-appropriately-named Igloo completely victorious whereupon the three of us (Llama, Sheri and I) spent the evening hanging out and playing Wii.


As of now, I'm on vacation until the 29th. My one complaint is that I wish I weren't sick. Since wednesday, I've been pretty congested and have had serious difficulty sleeping. I'm starting to think the decongestant I've been taking is having the side-effect of insomnia. The last two nights, I've been unable to get to sleep for long amounts of time, finally dozing off, and then waking up only a couple hours later wide awake. This explains the time of this post.

If I feel a bit better and the weather eases up by then, we're supposed to head out sunday afternoon toward OH and IN for the holidays. I'm looking forward to this trip - I really hope I'm feeling better by then.

Also, the hiccups aren't helping.


~PS