As I sit here beginning another update, I’m trying to remember the three or so things I’ve thought about today that caused me to say “hmm, I should blog about that”. I can’t remember any of them, so far.

Today was a busier day. We got home from church, and my dad decided that it was a good time to take down the Christmas lights. So he and I went out and took them down. We have an arbor that we built over the summer (actually, I helped a bit, but most of the work was done after I left for college), and we had some rope lights on that, so I started there taking them off. By the time I took them off, my fingers were frozen, and I had to go get gloves before I could take off the lights on the front of the house. We have Icicles, and some of the larger, glass-bulbed sets. (C-7, I think they’re called). I just took them down as one long string, and carried them into the house to untangle and box. We actually put all the sets back into their boxes. That really used to be a pain for the icicles, but about 3 years ago, we bought some new ones, and I paid very close attention to how they were packed in the box. Now, at least the box closes properly.

After we took down the lights, determined which sets still worked, and boxed them up, the whole family tackled the rest of the house. The trees came down, the nativity set is wrapped in tissue paper, and almost all the rest of the decorations are packed in boxes in the middle of the garage, or sitting on the floor of the front room (what we’ve always called the living room upstairs. The one downstairs is the Family room.) The only thing still up is garland. We have it going down the stairs and in the hall downstairs, in three places in the front room, on the beam in the family room, and in the upstairs hall.

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My dad returns to work tomorrow (now today) and my sister returns to high school. I have another week of vacation, and will likely end up finishing the un-decorating tomorrow, with my mom. I suspect the garland is my job, as I can actually reach the ceiling. (I’m about 10 inches taller than my mom.)

I was also planning on re-installing Windows on the family computer. It’s just gotten a whole lot slower since we got it (3 years ago), and now it tends to drop the dial-up connection a lot, or never get connected in the first place. I know it’s not the ISP, because my laptop can connect the first try almost every time, and never once get disconnected over a 2-3 hour late-night internet session. Plus, I installed a bunch of programs on the computer that I won’t use anymore, as I now have my laptop. Some of those programs just never quite un-install, including the last remnants of my experience with Morpheus. (I used it for 5 minutes, wasn’t satisfied, and gave up. I read later that it had spyware included, and have since swept the computer several times, removing everything but the un-installer, which no longer works.) I’m going to begin with the data backup tomorrow, and see about the re-format. I’ll definitely get to that soon, so I have time to fix anything that goes wrong before I go back to school next Sunday.

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New years was a quiet affair, just the four of us. We played board games till about 11:30, then watched the “Rockin’ Eve” entertainers, and the ball drop. We started another game, and finished about 1:00, at which time they all went to bed. I got online, and did a site-update. 🙂 Wasn’t sleepy yet, probably due to the amounts of fudge that I ate while we were playing games. We always set out some of our Christmas baking, and as a personal tradition, I always eat a lot, usually about 3 items after my mom tells me to quit eating, and WAY more than I really should eat. Not that I’m really counting calories or anything (yet), but I must have eaten a dozen pieces of fudge, and several other goodies, plus chips and cheetos.

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I think I mentioned before that my dad’s family came out to our house for Christmas. They’ve always had the family get-together after Christmas, sometimes even after New Years. It makes things easier, knowing that we don’t have to go to that side on Christmas. Two of my uncles came out, Ron and Gordon, with their wives, and Elaine (my only aunt) came with her husband. Dave and family live in Boise, and couldn’t make it. We also had 3 cousins, and one girlfriend of a cousin. All the married cousins stayed at home, and the last unaccounted cousin is currently on a foreign exchange program in Florence, Italy, but decided to visit Thailand with a group of students for the break. I’m not sure how the tsunami impacted their visit, but I know they are ok.

One topic of discussion at the retreat was the recurring topic of changing the family name. When my great-grandfather came to the US, from Italy, his last name was Oliverio. My grandpa has Oliverio on his birth certificate, but the family name was shortened to Oliver to sound less Italian, as at the time, Italians were treated much like migrant Hispanics are today. Every few years we talk about changing the name back. We discovered this time that there are only four male Olivers in my generation, none of us (yet) married. Two of them are all for a name change, except for the legal hassles (court fees, new drivers license, passport, etc.). One favors it, but doesn’t seem so enthusiastic. I’m completely mixed on the issue. I like the sentiment of changing back to the original name, and now people would know for sure that my first name isn’t Oliver, but when I think about changing MY name, I have hangups. It just seems strange. We’ll see how (if) this progresses.

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Well, that post turned out long enough, lacking any reason to write it, and thinking about it, I’ve covered at least two things I thought of today. Until later,

–Nathan

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