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Day’s Verse:
Behold, God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid;
For the LORD GOD is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation.
Isaiah 12:2
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I’ve been having Internet problems the last few days and the aggravation of attempting to get online is simply not worth the meager benefits. Fortunately, that seems to have gotten sorted out — for now — so here we are, back again. Since I posted last, I came down with a nice little cold. It followed the usual pattern: Sore throat, where the germies landed, progressing up towards the nasal passages, followed by several days of runny nose and then another few days of hacking up phlegm. Mmm. Delightful that Day 1 of the actual cold (not the pre-cold sore throat) hit right on Thanksgiving. Even so, I valiantly went and infected two separate households, one (the Alfords, long-time family friends; their daughter Kallie is my parents’ god-daughter) for dinner in the afternoon and one (the Slovers; Ian’s aunt and uncle’s family) for dessert in the evening. By the time I dragged in at like 9:20 I was totally wiped.

Fortunately, I perked back up the next day (one of the runny nose days) for a 40-mile bike ride around Mercer Island with Mom and Dad. It was a beautiful day on Friday, one of the first sunny ones all month. Based on that, Dad and I decided to go up to Mallardy Ridge, near Verlot, and hunt a wild Christmas tree yesterday. As it turns out, although it never rained in Kirkland, a steady and drenching drizzlepour afflicted us the entire time we were in the mountains. We wore Gore-Tex and snowshoes after the snow got too deep for Dad’s Outback and slogged almost 3 miles, and one of those we dragged the tree behind us. It wasn’t the greatest Christmas tree hunting ever, but we did get a cute little tree, so we deemed it a success. Then yesterday evening we joined the Alfords in Kirkland to see their Christmas Tree lighting. Due to some miscommunication (ahem), we thought the lighting was at 5:00, when really it was at 6:00 or so. However, they had activities from 4:00 to 8:00, so we poked around a bit and I took this picture.

During that time I also finished the massive Leon Uris book Trinity. Nothing like some slightly fictionalized Irish history to remind you how depressing life really is.