Surprisegiving

Wow, it's been a while without blogging. Three special days without wife and family. The first time I've ever been apart from my wife on our anniversary. No point in dwelling on it. Then the "American" holiday of Thanksgiving. I didn't lose too much sleep over that, since we'd already celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving the month before. I figure I've been greedy getting two Thanksgivings every year anyhow.

But my dad's birthday followed just two days after the second Thanksgiving. Since Nancy had surprised (and scared!) her dad by driving up to see him, I figured maybe it was my turn to do the same. Also it made sense since I hadn't managed to get his present mailed off.

So, for the first time in a long time, I made the long drive to Texas by myself. The unfamiliar silence was at least interrupted when I could occasionally find a radio station that I liked. A broken CD player and forgotten cassettes didn't provide many other options. And a late start limited my possibilities for sidetrip adventures. The short sidetrips that I did will be in my next blog entry (hopefully before I forget).

Of course the surprise visit was a . . . surprise. My arrival was timed nicely to allow me to see the last couple minutes of the Aggies beating the Longhorns. Gig'em Aggies! Which means that I also missed the total chaos of people driving around following the game. Got to watch a couple neat shows on HDTV, drink some eggnog, and get some real Texas chicken-fried steak. It wasn't a weekend for really doing much anyway, with a constant patter of windy rain and temperatures stuck in the mid-40s. A couple hundred miles further west and I could have been in snow, but in College Station it was good just to be in a warm house. A house in the midst of some serious remodeling. I don't know when it'll ever be finished, but at least I can say that a lot of progress has been made since the last time we'd been there. I also visited Hope Evangelical Free Church. No telling how many times I've driven past it in the last 23 years, but never visited. It was a bit smaller than I'd expected, but friendly and comfy. And they had a neat thing on their bulletin board where folks could sign up to speak in the Sunday evening service if God laid something on their heart. That seemed like a mighty nice way to get away from everything being focused on the pastor. I think a lot of times that God reveals himself to His people in ways that they never get an adequate opportunity to share with others. Another church, another lesson learned.

The drive back was mostly in rain, or at least dreary skies. I had hoped to have a basic "mobile mesonet" put together in the Subaru for the drive, but didn't really get it all together. What I did have was just a datalogger and GPS and my nifty new power inverter to run it all. So I could record when and where I was, but not any temperatures or other interesting stuff. In any case, I was still pleasantly surprised (amid the exhausting boredom of I-20 at night) to see that there was in fact a substantial temperature rise as I pushed through the cold front somewhere between Monroe and Vicksburg. And I'd gotten it into my head that it was cold everywhere! Although there was no visible change in the incessant drizzle, the temperature was up to 66 degrees when I stopped at the Mississippi Welcome Center and the wind clearly coming out of the south.

Getting home just before ten o'clock, I got the cats fed, called my parents, and tried to psyche myself up for the morning after. A good Surprisegiving. But I sure am tired.