We passed New Year's Eve watching old movies and enjoying a bottle of Martini & Rossi Asti served up with too much smoked Gouda cheese and crackers. The Asti was excellent — so light and delicious and (for better or worse) with seemingly very little "kick." The cheese was good, but a little too old, and we ate too much of it. The movies were excellent and we had a fine night waiting for the end of the year to arrive. She managed to stay awake which is unusual in itself but She not only stayed awake 'til midnight, She stayed up 'til 1:00 AM and would have stayed awake even longer if Yours Truly hadn't shut off everything around her and toddled off to bed by Himself!
New Year's Day felt like a Sunday. It was quiet, cold, and windy. Late in the morning we visited Mom-in-Law and, whilst She tended to her mother's needs, I headed to the attic to swap out the antenna installed a few weeks ago for a much larger model wa already owned. The larger antenna supplied critical signal strength to Mom-in-Law's living room TV to give her solid reception on a couple of formerly weak stations. She'll enjoy that. We'll install the smaller model at our house — we live within sight of the local TV broadcast towers so don't need much antenna.
Then we did a big loop tour of points south, just to get out, on a beautiful winter's day. We some looking around to see how and whether the fortunes of an outlet mall { Lodi Station Outlets } had changed since its renaming and the addition of an amusement passenger railroad around and through the property. The train, which was running, looked great but the shopping center looked like its decline is unchecked. There are lots of dark stores and "closing" signs on a couple of others. It will be interesting to see if it survives another year. I think its troubles started well before the ongoing sag in our economy began: it was supposed to be an outlet center implying low-low prices on name-brand merchandise. In reality, few bargains were to be had and its remote location made the trip not worth the effort. The recession may well do it in as, apparently, happened to a neighboring automobile dealership. That's my opinion, anyway. We do love the countryside out in Wayne County, however, and very much enjoyed the day's travels.
Um, the title of this article? As we arrived back in our driveway on January 1, 2009, the odometer on my car read 111,111. The miles are really piling up on the 2002 Honda. I like seeing the number patterns develop on the odometer and all ones is nifty. Alright, it's maybe not as big as celebrating the arrival of 2009 in Times Square, New York City, but I think 111111 on 01-01-09 is most excellent. Or kinda sad.
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