Year in Review (4)

November and December, then:  busy months, though the events of the year wound down fairly nicely.  The major happening in November was the trip to Niagara Falls for a tournament.

Who you gonna call...for November entertainment?

The tournament itself was a mixed bag with poorly controlled fighting (seriously, it's advanced tag folks).  There were some good practitioners, some folks who could really tough it out (broken hands, bad knees, crappy customs officials, et c.), and a few bright points.  But in general, it wasn't as much fun as I would've liked.  I decided not to fight after a kid got taken to the hospital on a stretcher.

L was able to go with, though, and we spent the drive pleasantly, enjoying good weather and Cheaper by the Dozen as an audio book.  By Jingo.  While it wasn't a very restful trip, it was nice to go together.  D's folks put together a birthday party for L complete with a quickly-melting ice cream cake mercilessly turned into a quivering mass of strawberry-beggared neapolitan by yours truly.

Thanksgiving came and went with family and friends, and I anticipated a bit of a reprieve through December.  It was not to be.

Mom and Dad found that the Messiah was being performed locally early in the month.  It was enjoyable.  Messiah is one of the few pieces I know well enough to get the feeling behind different performances.  Despite the occasional hiccups that attend volunteer performances, it was fun, and we enjoyed some food afterward together.

Next day, I was doing the Unsu jump:



and messed up my toe fairly well.  I think it was a partial tendon tear more than a break, but the end result is the same:  no real planting or movement (yesterday was the first sweating I've done in karate for awhile) and plenty of tape.

The weekend following was an impromptu under-17 tournament; our people did fairly well and represented nicely.  Judging was okay.  One of the competitors' coaches was an exceptionally poor loser who claimed that some of the people were paid to judge.  I actually paid to judge that day and was not a little annoyed by his comment.

Then it was preparing for Christmas.  We visited with L's grandfather on Christmas Eve, saying hello and keeping him company with some of the other family.  The afternoon and evening plans were disrupted by an unfortunate accident involving Mom's wrist and some ice skates. Dad was appointed Associate (to the) Director of Fun and had scheduled this as an activity we could all enjoy.  It turned into a trip to urgent care and the ER with a break of the distal radius.  Successful surgery was last week to put a plate in.  Recovery is 2–4 weeks splinted and another 2–3 months PT.

The events helped to derail some schedules, but otherwise really didn't have too much impact on the way that everything went.  L had already made some baked ziti for Christmas lunch so that Mom wouldn't have to do everything anyway, and we were able to enjoy Christmas morning with her Dad's side and Christmas afternoon with mine.

Christmas was a fun time.  Some exciting updates to Logos for Dad, a macro lens for me, CDs and other things all around, fuzzy socks, tea, and the like.  It was fairly sedate after the excitement of Christmas Eve, and we enjoyed it.

The holiday week was spent working and spending time with family—a couple trips east and back, some sleepovers, and a tight neck.  It was a great time, although I've been ready for a vacation for awhile.  But tournament will be coming up in a few weeks and the schedule looks like it's going to be a bit busy.  But hopefully I'll make some progress on scheduling in some down time in the coming year.  Happy 2012, everyone.

(This is me amending to note that we spent part of our time over the holidays at Winterthur, one of the Dupont estates.   Some shots with the macro below at close-up and regular ranges:

All in all, a fun trip, although near the end we were pretty pooped.)