Merry Christmas 2006

You never know how the year it going to end. I have been looking forward to the Christmas break that I will have this week. I was suppose to be off work last Friday and not have to be back until 3rd. Well, because of the work load I agreed to work Friday and Saturday. It wasn't a big deal, more money for us and I will still be getting a pretty long vacation span of 10 days.

The plan today was to head to Riverside Casino around 4:30 and meet a couple of friends , have dinner, gamble a little and then head back to Cedar Rapids. Then we would stop at one of the local gay bars for a drink and then head for Midnight Mass. I have been doing the gay bar stop, Mass thing for the last five years.

The day was kind of changed when last night around 9:30. Daryl started heaving his guts out because he has the flu. I wasn't sure he was that sick until this morning around 4:30 when I got up and went down stairs to check on him. He had slept in the basement last night on the couch. He wanted some 7up so I made a run to the store to get him a couple of cases. After that I headed for bed again. Four thirty is way too early to be up on a vacation day unless your just heading for bed!

Later on this morning around 9 Am I got up and started doing laundry. I wanted to get the bedding cleaned and the rest of the house cleaned. If the dreaded flu was lurking around our house, I wanted to wipe it out before it decided to jump on me.

Then around 10 we got a phone call from Daryl's mom, the family was heading for the hospital as his brother-in-law had just had a heart attack and they were flying him to St. Luke's Hospital for surgery. Man, and I thought having the flu on Christmas eve was bad! I stopped by the hospital and Checked on Mike this afternoon and visited with the family. The surgery had worked and Mike is on his way to recovery with his artery's opened up again. Thankfully, it looks like he will be just fine.

Christmas Eve is always a time when I reflect on the past year. I'm very thankful that I have had another year with the people I love. Once again, the year has gone by very fast. We never seem to have enough time to see everyone we want. God willing, I will have this next year to touch base with everyone and spend some more time with them.

Merry Christmas!