Vacation's over and I'll be heading back into the office tomorrow. We had a full weekend, mostly full of "damn this wind!" and "I'm heading downstairs for more firewood."

Saturday, we took one of our infrequent trips to Luray [wikipedia.org] to see my cousins. The girls got to feed the cows and eat cheeseburgers and that, my friends, makes them very happy. I don't think they really make the mental connection of the brown-eyed cow and his unwilling involvement in becoming their cheeseburger, but that's ok.

It was 12F when we crossed the mountain homebound at Thornton Gap [wikipedia.org] amidst some vicious winds. Thank you Honda for the heated seats.

Today, I waffled a bit in the morning on sending the Christmas cards, but I'd already had 60 copies of a picture of the girls printed and in hand, so I settled down and wrote them, and they'll go into the mail tomorrow. Late, yes, but I'm glad I did it. With the blogs and Facebook, it seems a little pointless, since we're all socially-networked, but the list had a solid number of older folks and such that don't use them. Plus, you can't hang a Facebook picture on your fridge door.

Tomorrow's back to school for the kids and I'm grinning now imagining the scowls to be seen round the breakfast table at 7:00 am tomorrow.

I'm in now from watching the operations of Potomac Consolidated TRACON, which, in less tortured *cough* prose, means sitting on the deck watching the planes to/fro Dulles airport. It's a fine night, clear, cool and a little wind after a perfect Spring day.

The junebug (there's only one, so far) and I had a nice time. He beat against the window panes and flopped drunkenly on the deck floor, while I sipped a nice South American Cab. Three satellites tonight and two last night. I suppose I should get interested enough to consult the Internets, which knows everything, to find the exact name, route, schedule, launch date, weight, and model of the satellites, then write a breathless post on how I'm recording them in my Moleskine and lament that climate change will rob me of their sight one day. But that might scuff the wonder of slinging a static-sensitive, gold-encased hunk of computing into Earth orbit, so I won't.

Twas a fine day, with meetings and technical puzzles and a modicum of success in both realms. Haircut and Walmart, post-work, for several items that I'll be returning. Because I love making two trips.

Here's your Thursday time-waster, a little early: Live Air Traffic - From Their Headsets To You

We're heading below freezing tonight here in Virginia. It's 33F now, but the woodstove is a trusted old friend, sitting idly by for the summer, but now running for the first time this season.

We're toasty now, a handful of hickory logs doing the work. But come February, when daily wood-toting is mandatory and gritty ash and bits of bark under foot are commonplace, we'll wish it away.

For now though, we're feeling a little festive, and hopeful about those winter heating bills.

This makes sense, but I'd never considered that hurricane names may be retired.

The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the committee (called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it.

Carla, Agnes, Hugo, Andrew, and of course, Katrina are part of the list.

pblog is caught up with photos from Thanksgiving and from our outing yesterday to get the Christmas tree.

Stewart's Key Lime shouldn't be legal. It's that good.

The epic has been consumed.

The Pine Blogger vents some suburban rage for all of us:

I look forward to everything about Christmas-except getting my kids toys out of the boxes. It is inevitable that something will either be bleeding or broken by the time I'm finished. My thoughts while opening the packages are that the people/machines who wrapped them in a factory in some Asian communist country represent the purest form of evil.

We've taken to opening the hot gifts and removing all the crap first, including the dozen or more metal twisties that hold everything *just so* in the box.

But hey, at least I'm not digging a ditch.