Forty-six years old today. Thank you to Uncle Larry for risking the fire hazard to make sure that number truly sunk in. The fried seafood smorgasbord was excellent, and that is a home made chocolate angel food cake which we had for the first and I hope not last time.

Car

It was an emotional day. My car, my car since I graduated, through a timing belt and we were coming to terms with finally having to give up on it after 290,000 miles. The mechanic said the engine was ruined. The engine specialist said they don't make a replacement engine for it. So it looked like risking a lot of money on junkyard replacement or donating it to the VA were my options. With the VA already on their way to claim it, Mayette convinced me to hold off. I took it to another mechanic and it turns out, all it needed was the timing belt because there was no engine damage. It's fixed now and runs like new. I don't even have the engine noise or vibration I was experiencing before. I couldn't be happier about it!

Christmas Lights

We spent our anniversary shopping and eating and on our way back stopped by the local Christmas light spectacle. This time we decided to get out of the car and admire it up close. Maybe I'll be inspired to put some lights up one of these years.

Christmas Dinner

Our first year hosting Christmas for what is left of the east coast Gatti family. We really enjoyed having it. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to come all the way down to celebrate the holiday with us.

Ravioli

Mayette and I worked together to make our first home made ravioli Christmas dinner. Manny lessons learned this year. First, don't make quite so much. By that I mean 120 is waaaay too much. Second, use corn starch to keep the ravioli from sticking to the wax paper. You might think that it's wax paper.. so stuff should stick to it because that is the point of the wax.. but no.. you need the corn starch. Seriously. Finally, I probably should have thinned out the dough a little more, it was a little to heavy. But I think we all enjoyed it despite all that, and we have an even better batch to look forward to next year.

Tree

We got a lot of help with the tree this year in the form of a never ending parade of Lenox ornaments that just really helped balance out our look. This year I went with the multicolored LED lights my mother was so happy with on her tree in her memory.