A Delayed Auld Lang Syne

Somewhat wacky shot of a bunch of wacky people in hot tub

Ms. B. and I had planned to spend New Year's Eve with friends Terry and Beth in Winston-Salem (see "What Year Is This?"—Jan. 1, 2018), but things didn't work out due to illness. So this weekend, we got together for a slightly delayed celebration. I had Geocaching planned for today, so Ms. B. and I drove over separately on yesterday. As she ended up having to stop for a wine emergency on the way, I expected her to be late, but Terry had failed to leave me a map from the driveway to the back door, and I blundered about in broad daylight for some time. Thus, Brugger got into the house before I did, and I suppose I shall not hear the end of it, for she is mean that way.

Saturday turned into a day of wine tasting, shopping, and redneck tapas (visiting the sample tables at Costco). Come dinner time, we settled on a couple of appealing options, only to find the establishments in question closed for various reasons. Disheartened but determined, we decided to hit Di Lisio's, an Italian restaurant Terry and Beth are fond of, and now Kimberly and I are fond of it as well. She had baked ziti that was bigger than all of Napoli, and I had shrimp veggie, which was a concoction of shrimp, olives, lemon, garlic, red pepper, and capers over angel hair. And the wine was fine.

Back at Chez Nelson, we shed our clothes for bathing apparel, and moved ourselves to the outdoor hot tub. Now, I'm going to tell you, it was f'ing cold last night—low twenties, with a nice, constant breeze—but the scalding hot water, along with a nice bourbon-barrel red blend, kept us comfy for a good hour and half. Naturally, come time to return indoors, the scene became an intricately choreographed ballet of frenzied screaming, scrambling, and cursing, with the deck covered in black ice and certain of us shy of a towel because we are old and forget things. But survive we did, and once again happily ensconced indoors, we put on Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke to warm us up. I hadn't seen that movie in thirty years or more, and Brugger had never seen it, so we had ourselves a good chuckle or two. Ahh, nostalgia.

This morning, we (or, more specifically, Terry) had a job separating our frozen bathing apparel from the deck, since we'd left it strewn around the place during our hurried egress last night. After a satisfying breakfast, we parted ways, and I made for Horizons Park, just a few miles north of their place, to get in some caching. As I anticipated, it was a cold, cold couple of miles of hiking, but as the trails are not what one would call flat, I worked up a good sweat. Most invigorating, and I picked up three nice caches for my effort (bringing my total find count to 9,792). As my regular blog followers may have been able to deduce, I love me some geocaching. In fact, it was ten years ago Friday that I found my first cache—"Groundhog Lane" (GCNCNX, now archived), and I've been an addict ever since.

Got a deadline, so now it's time to write. Write, write, write!

Always nice to hear some Dark Shadows on Sirius XM while in transit

A steamy hot tub scene, featuring Dr. Werner von Schwartztotten and sexy lady

Terry attempts to separate our frozen bathing apparel from the deck. It took time and ingenuity.

Frozen but happy Damned Rodan at Horizons Park