The Rolex 24

If you thought I was excited about the Barrett Jackson auction last weekend... you should be at my house this weekend. This weekend it is the Rolex 24 race. What does the 24 stand for? That's right, 24 hours! I love it! Fox and Speed TV broadcast about 18 hours of it and I have watched most of it. It's the unofficial start to the race season. There are somewhere around 60 cars and each car has three or four drivers that rotate throughout the 24 hours. In the end, the winners get a Rolex

As opposed to last weekend, I am feeling much better so I have done lots of of other things (like reorganizing closets and my guest bedrooms) while the race was on... but I can still pay enough attention to the race to enjoy it. I have actually been to the Rolex 24. My parents and I went in 2001 for my birthday present that year. It was my first sports car race to attend and we didn't know what we were doing, but I really wanted to go because Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were racing with the Corvette team. The weather was absolutely miserable and my mom caught pneumonia while we were sitting out in the cold and rain all night. That's right.. we sat out in the rain all night... like I said, we didn't know what we were doing. Now when we go to sports car races, we camp in a tent... and mom stays home.

But I was still very excited to be there. I didn't get to meet any of the drivers like we do now when we go to the races, but I was glad to have been there. The #2 Corvette won the whole thing and the Dale Jr #3 Corvette team came in second in class and fourth over all! It was also one of the last races that Dale Earnhardt was in before he was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500. That year for my birthday I also got a die cast car just like this one.

My dad ordered it before the race but the production was delayed and so it didn't come in until after the race. Because Dale Earnhardt died just a few weeks later, it is a pretty collectible item and I am very glad to have it. For now, it sits in a box in my closet but one day I can hopefully display it somewhere.

The race technically just ended but I have not seen the end yet. Since I was at church this morning and didn't get up at 5 AM or whenever the coverage started back, I have about seven hours of coverage on my Tivo waiting for me. Yes I know I need a life... no need to e-mail me and tell me that. :-)

Fun Stuff This Week

I've had a chance to hang out with some of my favorite people this week, so I thought I would share with everyone. On Thursday, I took off of work at noon and headed up the road an hour or so to take care of a few things and do some errand type things.

As a part of my day, I made a stop in to see Amberly and her family. I had not seen them since before Christmas so we exchanged Christmas and birthday gifts. Since I had seen them, I had a birthday, Sarah had a birthday and Abby Grace had had a birthday. So between the Christmas and Birthday gifts, we turned Amberly's house from clean to chaos in about two minutes flat! I think that the kids all liked the presents... Abby Grace in particular. :-) They got me a beautiful picture frame that has a quote about friendship. I can't wait to get a picture of all of us to put in it.

I ate dinner with them and Amberly prepared some of Sarah's favorites that we were supposed to have last Saturday but didn't get to because of the "snow." Everything was delicious and I might even have to try making the Pioneer Woman Mashed Potatoes sometime myself. I had a great time with them on Thursday but I had to head home before it got too late.

On Friday, Leslie called to tell me that her Wii had come in! We weren't expecting it until next week but it surprisingly arrived via UPS on Friday afternoon. Around 7:30 last night I headed over to her house to experience Wii for the first time for myself. I had heard great things about it and it was all true! We had a lot of fun playing tennis, bowling, attempting to play baseball (not very successfully) and a bunch of other stuff. I was surprising how tired it makes you and I think I threw out my shoulder playing tennis. :-) Just kidding... but you do make all of the motions just like you would if you were really playing one of the sports.

Today Brun and I are taking it easy at the house. We made a trip to the vet this morning for a nail trim and got to meet another Labradoodle!! I was much more excited about it than Brun was but it was cool to meet another Labradoodle in town.

Snow?

For at least a week they have been predicting we would have snow this weekend. Sometime Thursday I really started believing them and got my hopes up that we would have a Winter Wonderland on Saturday morning!

Ppphhew!!! It was lame! Brun woke me up at 3:30 AM (as usual) and I saw rain... no snow. That didn't surprise me since it wasn't supposed to turn into snow until around sunrise. I woke up again at 7 AM and saw this:

I was not particularly impressed and neither was Brun. There was snow on the wicker rocker and the patio chairs but nothing on the grass and nothing falling out of the sky. But it seemed like it was going to snow more and wall to wall coverage on the local news indicated that more was coming. So we went back to bed until about 8:30.

This time when we got up it was finally snowing!! Really snowing... well sort of.

Here is Brun being brave in the blizzard. Trust me... it seemed like a blizzard to him.

It actually kept snowing for quite awhile... really picking up at times and starting to stick to the grass.

Here it was at about the maximum accumulation of snow. It wasn't enough to make a snowman or even a snowball really.

It really built up on the fence for a little bit so I guess I could have scraped off enough snow to make a snowball but I opted to just look at it and take its picture instead.

It probably stopped by around 11ish and was melted by about 12:30. They say we got half an inch but I think it is pushing it to say that we got that much at my house.

It was certainly far from the winter wonderland I was hoping for. It was just enough to get everyones hopes up and to derail the plans for Sarah and Abby Grace's birthday party. When it came time to make a final decision about driving a little over an hour to the party, the snow was really coming down and they were talking about icing starting on some elevated roads and bridges. So I assume that some version of the party went on without me but I hate that I missed it. Hopefully I can deliver the presents and visit with them next week.

It doesn't take a lot to get people in Alabama excited about snow. It's been at least six or seven years since I have seen any... hopefully it won't be that long until we see some more.

Barrett-Jackson Auction

I mentioned in my 100th post that some day I would like to go to the Barrett-Jackson auction and buy a car. Well this week is the week for those who, like me, are easily amused and don't have anything else to watch on TV. :-) I also don't have anything to blog about so I am blogging about this.

Tonight Speed TV started their 6 days and 39 hours of coverage. I love it!! :-) I will likely become bored with it in a few days but I have been somewhat sickly since one day last week and have been getting worse as opposed to better. So this is perfect lay on the couch and do nothing TV watching. It doesn't require any brain power and it's fun to watch people spend ridiculous amounts of money on cars. The high dollar cars (like $1 million and up) won't be until this weekend... the ones earlier in the week are much more reasonable.

So if you like cars, have nothing to do (or don't feel like doing a whole lot) and nothing to watch on TV, I highly recommend the Barrett-Jackson auction. I blame Leslie for getting me started watching it. A few years ago she came over to make Valentine's Day wreaths and she asked "Have you been watching this stuff?" At the time I had no idea what she was talking about but now I look forward to watching it every year. I do not know enough about it to be able to predict how much the cars are going to go for... some things that look like pieces of junk will go for more than $50,000 and some that look beautiful will go relatively cheap. It's crazy... but I enjoy it.

I honestly hope that you have more going on this week than I do and don't have time to watch Barrett-Jackson auctions for 39 hours... but just in case... I thought I would throw this out there. :-)

Happy Belated New Year!

Well my "Happy New Year's" post is about six days overdue but I thought I would say it anyways. Not a lot to report from around here. Things have been busy but good since Christmas. I think that 2008 is going to be a busy year, maybe with a few big changes coming... but it's still a little too early to tell exactly what the year holds. Only time will tell. :-)

I don't tend to make New Year's resolutions but I am trying to do better with reading my Bible and getting in shape and staying there this year. Hopefully I can re-resolve to do that every week instead of waiting for the new year to make the resolution again.

This week I had to go back to work after having been off of work since December 21. It was hard to go back but good to return to a more normal schedule. The worst part of the whole thing was that when I got there on Wednesday morning there was NO HEAT!!! The boilers had broken down and the high was less than 30 that day. It was miserable... but since it was the first day back it was busy, busy, so busy that I ended up staying late... but fortunately the day passed pretty quickly. I wore my coat all day and went to Home Depot at lunch to buy a space heater (which really helped).

My former roommate and her husband (that still sounds weird to me) came into town on Wednesday afternoon and it has been good to hang out with them some. Thursday night we went to dinner and then came back to the house and watched the wedding video, watched the Orange Bowl and just talked. Friday night several of us went out to dinner and to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I don't watch a lot of movies and so I actually have not seen the first National Treasure but I really enjoyed the second one. It was good to hang out with all of them and get my mind off of things for a few hours.

Today I have been a slug. All of the weather changing this week has made me feel kind of rotten. While I am glad that it has warmed back up this weekend, I just wish the temperature would regulate. 40 degree temperature swings every few days are doing me in.

I hope everyone is having a good start to their new year!