Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  I vividly recall walking in to one of the bedrooms in our house back in Ohio. It was an older home, and at the time the registers to transfer heat upstairs were on either side of the walls opposite each other, one in each bedroom. There were metal vents that could be opened or closed so that you could heat one room, but not the other, if you so desired.   I must have been around two or three years old, and for some reason I had awakened early, before my folks were up. I knew that there was a Santa Claus doll filled with sand in the bottom drawer of a dresser in the room I came in to. I had been told in the past not to play with it because the doll had a small hole in it, and the sand would leak out.   When you're a little kid, Santa is like a hero. He's never crabby, doesn't make you eat broccoli, and even if you're sometimes bad, he seems to have forgotten all that by the time Christmas rolls around, because he's brought you a bunch of toys. He never gives you so...

 Check out those shish-ka-bobs folks. Let me tell you, they were tasty. My daughter Autumn brought a pineapple home with her. I'm not sure why, but not wanting it to go to waste, I cut it up and skewered it with some peppers,onions and a zucchini, and of course some tasty venison that I shot earlier this year. I found a great marinade recipe for the meat so I let it soak all day and by evening it was ready to barbecue. Oh my that was delightful. As you can see, there was a little table top ping pong tournament being played out in the dining room last night. I don't know why I even attempt to try and watch a movie while so much noise is being created in the adjacent room. Jen brought over some jalapeno poppers and some potato skins, and I provided the beer, so we just celebrated the new year at home. It was pretty uneventful, except for trying to eat some of those poppers. They can be deceiving. The outer coating is pleasantly warm, one might even say invit...