Had our official Christmas dinner today with the whole extended family, German-Texan style. Vegetarians beware, even the vegetables had meat in them. My heart hurts. Unfortunately, Aunt Anne, who turned 90 a couple of weeks ago, could not make it, as she has recently had a bout with skin cancer. She is just coming out of a morphine haze and is only now becoming lucid again. Hopefully, I'll get to talk to her later this week.

I've been passing the time here in Jolly, Texas by scanning in more family photographs, and am now in a depressing state of nostalgia. Tomorrow we are going to Archer City to visit Larry McMurtry's bookstore. I have not been there for a couple of years, and I'm mainly hoping he might happen to have a series on Canadian history I have been looking for. I'll call Adam in a couple of days and see what the possibilities are concerning New Orleans.

I arrived in Texas just in time for a north wind, which comes down the Great Plains straight from the Arctic. It has warmed up since then, but we still have some snow on the ground here. Not enough to scoop into a snowball and wallop that girl you really like up the back of the head, but snow nonetheless.