Update At When we made our way to church, it was raining. It had rained much of Saturday, and even some on Friday. My lovely bride, however, had said that "well, they're expecting it to turn to snow." Considering that at times on Saturday we had visibility of less than a mile at times due to the foggy/drizzly conditions, I figured I'd believe it when I saw it. On my way into Mass, I found myself muttering "New Year's Eve RAIN!?!" OK, maybe it was more of a sotto voce grumble, but hey. On our way to the grocery store to pick up our five-item list (which grew to three bags full - as ever), I said "you know, it could be changing". We got home at 1 pm, my sister stopped by (Hi Emily) to deliver unto the children their Christmas Gifts, and then we went to work. I checked my work computer (I was awaiting some form of feedback from my boss on a particularly thorny problem - which I still have not resolved), and then went into "grossen production mode" on rollups. For the last time. Please note that I'm not mocking rollups. For those of you who aren't from this area, don't entertain much, or just live in hermit-like caves, a rollup is a simple thing. Flatbread (Think squarish tortillas made of flour or other grains), covered in some form of cream cheese (I used plain spreadable cream cheese, Allouette brand whipped cream cheese (in garlic and onion flavor), and some garlic and chives cream cheese. Over that, any form of thin, flat sandwich meat. I used salami, turkey, ham, and roast beef, along with bacon bits (sometimes). Over all of this I would put a handful of shredded cheese. I'd roll the thing up lengthwise, stick toothpicks in it, and then start cutting. Yesterday I made a total of 24 rolls - 2 packages of 6 flatbreats, and 3 packages of 4 flatbreads. Each was about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch thick. And we ended up with about 90% of them leftover. So that went poorly. Ann also spent the afternoon baking - a bunch of cakes (including some mini bundt cakes), mini quiches (much easier than you'd think - phyllo dough shells with a spoonful of pour-a-quiche mixture, some bacon bits, and a little cheese melted on top), two cheesecakes (one amaretto flavored, one chocolate chip), and other stuff, I'm sure. I also horked up the mini-weenies and meatballs stuff by overfilling the old crock pot (I'd planned on using the new one, my wife directed otherwise), and then forgetting to add the honey to the BBQ sauce mixture. But they were eaten, anyway. And so with all of that done, we had about four inches of snow on the ground. This was much more disconcerting to Lily than to Daisy, because Jack went and made a snowman out in our front yard. He used charcoal for the eyes, and had some leftover celery (no, it doesn't get used in this house except for stuffing) which became his arms and nose. Said snowman was most definitely a threat to our hearth and home, decided Lily, who immediately hopped up on the couch and commenced to bark and growl at the beast in the front yard. This led us to tremendous gales of laughter, and so we ended up taking Lily outside to meet the despicable snowman - of whom Lily was positively terrified. Until she removed his celery nose. Once that terror was confronted, we loaded the van, kennelled Lily, and headed 3 minutes away to friends of ours, where their new year's eve party was starting (and we'd promised to help with the food). Far, far too much food, far, far too much weird behavior (one kid was walking around with his athletic cup on, whacking himself in the cup with a full-sized baseball bat - which led his father to say "balls of steel - brains of BBs". In the end, said child obviously did not have the cup in it's proper holder, because the thing shifted, he thumped himself, and pinched several soft squishy bits. Heck of a way to ring in the new year). So we came home from that party about 1 am, let Lily out to play for an hour, and got to bed at 2 am. Lily slept until 9 am, which is positively late for her. So now we're up, facing a new year and new challenges, and ... well, I'm gonna go take a nap. It seems to be the smartest move I could make right now.
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