I plumb forgot to wish ya’ll the best seasons greetings and all that jazz…so best seasons greetings and all that jazz.

Yep.

Yessiree…dodged the proverbial bullet we did.

It didn’t snow last night.

Ima guessing the weather guessers were on some of that wacky tobacky or other recreational pharmaceuticals but they actually predicted a 1% chance of snow overnight in Lee County where we live. The low was forecast to be 38 and I don’t know where that or the current reported temps are taken but at our house up near the Charlotte County line it’s normally 5-7 degrees warmer than whatever they claim it will be and we got down to just 44.

Now I’m only a bear and didn’t get no 4 year college degree…but even I know that it ain’t gonna snow at 44 and really ain’t gonna snow at 38 either…and as expected we got nada, buckus, zippo.

What we did get was some serious north winds at 12-14 and Neil headed out on his last bike ride for the year about 0930. Going south was pretty nice but coming back north (and despite the many routes he takes the first 3 miles are always south and the last 3 always north because roads) pretty much consisted of suckage. He averaged almost 3 miles an hour slower coming home than going out. He finished the month with 238 miles (best month ever by 10) and the year with 2,234 (150 more than his previous best year) and that included taking almost 3 weeks off for the Botswana trip and another 10 days off for our leaf peeping trip in October.

We’re having a nice holiday season…Neil smoked and then grilled a spatchcocked chicken (that means you cut the backbone out and press it flat so it cooks better) for Christmas along with a tartiflette…which is the French dish that scalloped potatoes descend from…and I gotta tell ya the French version is way, way, way better. Instead of raw potatoes you use Yukon Gold or similar cut into 1/2 inch slices and boiled until mostly done then in another pot you cook some chopped bacon (he used pancetta which is non smoked Italian pork belly…like bacon but better) and then saute some onions until soft and add some butter. Then toss the potatoes with that and put into a baking dish into which you add a mix of sour cream/onion dip, white wine, and cream. Then cover it with (in the French version) some of that stinky gooey cheese…but we don’t like that so he used Fontina which melts and does the gooey thing quite nicely but isn’t stinky, then topped that with some Gruyere cheese for that nice almost burned cheese topping that tastes so good. Into the oven until hot and the cheese is that almost burned cheese consistency (golden brown and delicious as Alton Brown would say) then let it set awhile so it gets down below the molten lava stage before eating it.

Tomorrow we’l have ham with mustard/brown sugar/cloves sauce along with a sweet potato, onion, and apple casserole we had a month or so back and really liked. Add in a nice bottle of Pinotage red wine (It’s Pinot Noir and some other grape grown in South Africa) and all will be well. 

The college football playoffs start today with Miami facing Ohio State and they continue with the other 3 quarterfinals tomorrow including Alabama and Indiana. We saw a note earlier in the week that of the 8 coaches remaining in the playoffs…5 of them are from the Nick Saban coaching tree…his former assistants have spread far and wide and mostly have introduced “The Process” at their current jobs although none of them use quite the same name. The Process consists of doing your job each and every play, not worrying about stats or wins because if you do your job those other things will follow. In the first round a week or so back…the two Group of Five colleges both got blown out and we witnessed…once again…that defense wins as both Miami and Alabama won largely based on excellent defenses.

Connie starts up her Mastersingers rehearsals in a week or two…they’ve got to start working on the piece commissioned for them…the Civil War Cantata which basically took some diary entries from the director’s great (or maybe 2 greats, dunno) grandfather during the Civil War and set them to music. Time will tell whether it’s a good piece or too modern but the director thinks it won’t be a modern sounding piece as he picked a composer that didn’t follow that trend and the director wanted more Civil War period appropriate music. Later on they’re going to do the Faure Requiem again but she might skip that as she wants to do a trip to see some of Mississippi (that we missed back during the RV days) and New Orleans again.

We’ve got a couple of trips (Wichita Falls TX and Chicago) to hear the Saint Séans Organ Symphony along with our usual season tickets to the Sarasota Philharmonic…and this year we added 2 more series that are local in the Fort Myers area. 

She’s also got some Elks stuff and meetings and we’re going to go to the Elks RV Rally up in Umatilla in the spring…we don’t have an RV any more as you know but one of the local dealers there brings in some rental units for the weekend.

So…other than that not much else to report. I don’t have any more Botswana images to post yet since he’s been busy since my last post with holiday things.

Cyas.