Yuck, Yuck...

Well, both Pam and I have the flu or some type of yucky bug. We both got flu shots a couple of weeks ago, weird hugh...

Tuesday was my weekly 8-ball league. I was starting to feel really bad, but thought it was just the high level of smoke and warm air in this little bar that was behind my feeling so poor. My eyes were burning and I couldn't focus very well. Then, on top of all that fun, my TEP (the little one way valve in my throat that I use to talk) started leaking and that always makes things go bad. Your lungs can only take so much liquid, especially 'bar liquid', before I start really feeling weird. Anyway, the end result was that I lost 4 of my 5 games to very marginal players and felt like total crap - mentally and physically. It was almost a relief to figure out that I had the flu to justify my very poor performance playing pool.

The weather has been nasty, with lots of rain and high winds. The power kept going on and off all last night, just like in Moss Beach. I am done writing as I feel horrible. Not a good time here in DaHo...

Pam's Girl's

Just wanted to show everyone what beautiful girls Pam has.

Great Ho Christmas...

After days of frenzy and planning and running around, Christmas happened and happened well. The pile of gifts seemed to grow daily as Christmas neared. Then, along the way was my birthday - which just adds to the whole season of events.

I am now 59 and doing well. If I would have been able to see how I would be doing at 59, looking forward over the past few years since the throat cancer, I would have, and do, love it.

I continue to receive all sorts of Turkey oriented gifts - a curse of being the son of the creator of the modern turkey. You can never have ALL of the possible turkey gift opportunities that can be conceived... Though, I must say that I did receive some great ones this year - those being a turkey boot scraper (seen above) by son Aaron and family, a turkey candle by nephew Michael and family, a dancing turkey from friend Storm, and a turkey picture framed in genuine cactus wood and 'fly' for 'fishing' from Pam.

I did finally see the vascular surgeon about the results of the Ultrasound scan I had done a couple of months ago. He said some rather concerning stuff, but that nothing needed to be done now. He said that we should rescan it in four months and see how its doing. At this point, we don't know if this is something relatively new or has been there for decades.

Due to Christmas schedule, both pool leagues didn't play last week. Tomorrow's league does play, and should be fun, but that's all for this week. Well, no news is not bad news, I guess...

It heated up and rained a couple of days ago melting all the snow, that has been around for a month, or so. Now we have lots of large puddles of 'liquid' snow all over.

We had a great Christmas dinner with Pam's mother, Flora, and sister Birdie and friend Vic. We had another great Prime Rib and Ham dinner with all sorts of great food.

Everybody got great gifts and had big fun. We were all done by early afternoon and it was all downhill from there... Another great celebration here in DaHo...

Snow and Ice...

At the Thursday night pool league games, my female team member was proposed to and accepted. It was quite an event at our 'home' bar. The owners knew all about it and had a cake all ready for them and the crowd. Nice folks. The more I am around there, the more I like it and them. We did pretty well, but nothing to brag about. Well, I only won 3 of my 6 games, which really sucks, but who's counting... ... ...

This weekend I did a Saturday night dinner for some neighbors. We had a great prime rib, brandied mushrooms, bacon wrapped bundles of fresh green beans, baked Ho potatoes, blue cheese wedge salads and fresh baked French baggettes. I used a Paula Dean recipe from FoodNetwork.com to do the roast, schrooms and beans.

This roast recipe takes 5 hours, but always comes out perfect. You cook it for an hour, then you turn the oven off for three hours, and then back on for 40 mins - without opening the oven during the process. Then you take it out and let it sit for 20 min and carve it. Great stuff.

We took some thank you gifts over to the neighbor's house that cleaned off our driveway a couple of weeks ago. He was out in his driveway, trying to remove his Christmas tree from the 5 gallon bucket of water he had put it in, inside his garage - frozen solid...

All weekend it was very cold, as it has been for weeks. Then today, we woke up to 2-3" of new snow and it was much warmer. Most of the day has been in the 33-35 deg range and has been raining most of the afternoon. Tonight, it will get cold and should freeze all the day's rain into really nasty and slippery ice.

Ho Ice...

Here are some pics of the ice formations on the Snake River and on the canyon walls.

The canyon walls and waterfall are really beautiful. Much more so than these pictures show. The base of the formations are 2-3 feet thick in most places and vary in shades of clear blue.





The Snake River is mostly frozen over, as you can see, where the water is slower moving. The snow covered land on both sides of the river are two golf courses, but I don't see any golfers...

Ho, Ho, Ho - Part 2...

Here are some 'Christmas' pictures here in DaHouse...

The top picture shows DaCat playing with her now favorite 'toy'. She loves to russle through the paper and lay on it. We buy her beds and she won't go near them, but throw down a pile of old paper and she is on it like stink on... Well you get the idea...

The middle picture shows DaHerd up in the DaPine forest. These are fake, but we have had some real ones around the house. Pam opened the garage door one morning and saw one right on the driveway. After a little while it pranced (or whatever they do) off down the road and through the fields.

The last picture shows DaTree and some other Christmas decorations in DaLiving Room. DaTree is over 9 feet tall, so its quite an impressive sight. I am going down to the DaBridge and take some pics of the Snake River freezing over and will post them soon.

Well, that's all for now from DaHo...

Ho, Ho, Ho...

A local business had this special "Holiday Decoration" here in Jerome. Except for this, we don't do "The Holidays" here in DaHo, We do Christmas...

As you can probably tell from this picture, its been cold here. That snow is the same snow that arrived over two weeks ago. The daily low temps have been in the 0 to 10 degree range while the highs have been in the teens and 20s most of the time. It has not been above freezing since the snow. I noticed when driving over the bridge, that the Snake River is freezing over - something I have not seen before.

There are BIG piles of snow all over town in the parking lots - like ten feet high. You really have to watch walking around as there are patches of ice all over the place and they get real slippery.

We have been doing Christmas shopping. Then Pam does lots of present wrapping and then I do lots of packing, hauling and shipping.

The Jeep had developed an annoying bang when going over bumps in the road. I checked it out and found a worn out shock in the rear where the accident happened a few months ago. So, I got some new rear shocks and installed them. Its really cold to be doing that type of stuff.

Pool went well this week. Well, not as well as usual, but not too bad. I think we are still second or so in both leagues and I am in the top 5 in the personal standings. Not too bad in freezing weather here in DaHo...

Burrrrrrrrr...

It's been very cold here. Temps have been freezing most of the time. We still have snow on the ground - the longest accumulation we have experienced here.

The other day, we noticed that our driveway was totally void of snow after a trip away to town for a few hours. We figured it was our friend Boyd that was behind it. But, we found out throught the 'grapevine' that it was our neighbor that cleaned it. We would have never known if we didn't figure it out. Nice people here in DaHo...

A few weeks ago, I posted that I was having a diagnostic ultrasonic scan done. The results indicated that I have some type of 'issue' that will require some additional testing. I will keep the results posted here as they become available.

All the Christmas decorations are up and automated and looking great. This is the 4th year for the 9' Costco artificial tree and I am again impressed with its great looks and ease of use. It has 1,000 lights installed on it and really looks great with the high ceilings. It also looked great in the Moss Beach house with the high roof. We originally got it from the Twice as Nice store in Half Moon Bay, CA for $75. We really miss Twice as Nice...

Calicat loves the tree and thinks we put it up for her, I am sure. She sits under it and keeps track of her kingdom. She has totally recovered from her claw job and we have along with her. It was hard on us all during her recovery time...

We sure love the color laser printer donated by nephew Michael during our last trip to SoCal. It took us a while to get use to it, but really enjoy it at this point. Good stuff. Our friend, Boyd, mentioned above, looks just like an older Michael - amazing.

Speaking of amazing, we got the recently acquired $29 wireless network up and running and it is good. It's a Super G version that does 108 MBS and is much quicker than the wired network. The old HP laptop continues to 'style' with its recent 60GB disk and now the high-speed wireless network. I think I am going to get some GPS and very high resolution USGS map software for it and take it along when I am finding new places to fish and explore here in DaHo...

Tomorrow, is the weekly 8-ball league and hopefully we will continue to do well. Last week, one of our team members, Bruce, had a lady friend with him. She was nice and was telling us all how Bruce had taken her along to a bordello in Wells, NV, about 100 miles from here, to service one of his coin-op pool tables he has installed there. It was quite a story...

Studs...

We ended up getting about 6" of snow. This was the largest one we have experienced here in DaHo. The roads were crazy to drive and the rear wheel drive Lincoln LS was not doing well. Pam drove it to work and couldn't get it out of the parking stall. So, I went down and had 4 studded snow tires put on it at Costco - They work MUCH better. I also got a bunch of snow stuff (shovels, de-icer, scrapers, etc.) It took over 3 hours to get the tires put on. Amazingly, I wasn't the only one that decided to get snow tires at Costco...

Last night was our weekly 9-ball league. As a team, we won with 10 games out of 18. But, I won 5 out of my 6 games, which is good. I haven't seen the league statistics for a few weeks, but should be doing well overall.

This weekend, we are doing all the Christmas decorations. Pam has been getting them out and ready for days. Storm is going to help us get the tree out of storage and put up. Being 9' tall makes it quite a 'challenge' for us invalids to deal with on our own. I got a new 8' step ladder today to help with the decorations. Having 10' ceilings makes having a taller ladder a requirement for safety. When Pam gets them all up and I get them all automated, it should be looking good here in DaHo...