Christmas 2007 (Part I)

In case there was any confusion on my sister's part, I am clearly The Favorite. Now, my sister will make the claim that her ornament bearing the words "Oldest Child (Mom's Favorite)" proves her place in my mother's heart is at the top, but I can offer conclusive proof to the opposite.

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The Proof

Well, the ornament my sister has bears the words "Oldest Child" and then makes the claim that she's the favorite. Well, the Oldest Child was at one point the Only Child, so she would have been the favorite by default. Along comes the second cuter, more zestful and clearly more charming child into the brood. Since there were no more children to follow, it stands that the loving parents had finally hit the jackpot and did not need to try again to get that child they always wanted. The first was a dud, but the second was the bees knees (Burt's Bees Knees).

At this point it would have been in bad taste to take back the ornament informing the eldest of her "status", so they superseded it with an ornament for the youngest, as shown above.

I'd also like to offer into evidence the fact that my Ornamente de Favoritude (as the French call it), has been placed on the tree covering an ornament bearing my sister's picture. Oh, how embarrassing for her.

The defense rests.

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Better You than Me

I was preparing for my Monday morning, Christmas Eve run when my mother called to inform me that they were experiencing some bad weather. Now, if anyone else told me that it was snowing in Buffalo I would have ignored him but coming from a long-time Buffalo resident I gave her the appropriate attention.

After my run, I checked with the weather sites, the NYS Thruway Authority and so on, and determined that if I left now they'd have the roads cleared. I started getting my stuff together, set the kittens up with enough food and water for two weeks (which is undoubtedly eaten already) and hit the road.

Due to traffic, I couldn't back out of my driveway in the direction I wanted to go, so I went the other way. No sooner had my tires hit the road did I notice there were fire trucks a-plenty at the end of the street. There's a fire station there, so it's pretty common to see them coming from or going to an emergency.

As I rolled up to the corner, it became very apparent that the corner was not only the home of the fire station, but the destination of their rescue effort. There was a car rolled onto its side on a snowbank. Keep in mind that it wasn't snowy or icy where I live, so this was just the result of jackassery. What's a good citizen to do when he comes across a potentially dangerous accident? Yup, I pulled out the camera and fired off pictures as fast as I could.



Unfortunately I didn't upload the picture all that large, but you can see the car well enough. This next picture just seemed kind of neat. The blurred background gives it a feeling of urgency that I'm sure no one was feeling at that moment. In fact, everything seemed under control and they were probably just waiting for the flatbed to come and take the car away.

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But What About the Drive?

As usual, I had my notebook with me to jot down my thoughts and observations of the drive. I won't get into those until my next installment, but I will leave you with this...

There was no snow or ice the entire way! Despite the Doomsday predictions my mother made over the phone, the first snow my tires touched was one block from their house, and it was probably an inch deep. There was grass visible all along the Thruway and the tarmac was at worst damp. It was in fact smooth sailing.

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Over and Out,
Old Coot