Justin Thorn

After a very long hiatus I have finally returned to my site to write a blog post. I realize it has been nearly a month since Christmas but I needed to get this one down for the record. I took a couple weeks off over the holidays to relax and mostly stayed off the web. Of course thanks to my extreme tendencies to procrastinate those two weeks quickly grew into nearly a month. The longer I put something off the more difficult it becomes for me to do it and therefore the less likely to be done. It is a vicious cycle of laziness that is often hard to break. At least my occasional status updates filled in the gaps some over the past few weeks. Nevertheless let me quickly recap.

The week before Christmas Lauren and I attended a handbells concert of the Raleigh Ringers with her family. For those not familiar with the Ringers the thought of a concert entirely done with handbells may seem incredibly boring. Quite the opposite actually. This group of volunteer musicians are incredibly gifted and are famous for playing music you never expect to hear on handbells. One great example is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” which offered a sampling of the wider catalog of classic rock songs they know. Since this was a Christmas program they mostly stuck to Christmas music but that was just as good.

Due to our busy schedules at work both Lauren and I ended up working up until Christmas Eve. I usually take a vacation for a week or two and I had days saved up but we were too busy to get away that long. I guess that is a good problem to have in this tough economy. We changed traditions this year for the order we visited family. This year Lauren and I stayed in Greenville through Christmas morning. This gave us an opportunity to visit with my family first. We also got to attend the candlelight service Christmas Eve at our local church. Then shared breakfast and gift exchange with my family on Christmas morning.

We packed up our things and hit the road for Fayetteville around lunch time. Pepper even got to come along for the ride and join us for the visit. We arrived in time to spend Christmas dinner together with Lauren’s family. Her mom and grandma, brother and his wife, aunts and two nieces. Afterwards we all took turns opening our gifts. One of the highlights this year was Lauren’s grandma bought a TomTom GPS device for each and everyone of us to use in our own cars. (Well those of us who are old enough to drive anyway). After the numerous times Lauren and I have gotten lost together this was a true blessing for us. We rarely, if ever argue but when we do it is always when we are lost in traffic in a big city. No longer.  Rock Band 2 was another great hit that I foresee being played for a very long time in 2009. I am also cherishing the huge Steelers blanket that Alan and Rachel got me.

Since we had just visited my Dad and grandparents in WV over Thanksgiving we did not make a trip up there for Christmas. That worked out since they went to stay with the in-laws in Memphis TN that week.

Just as soon as Christmas arrived it was gone. We headed home that weekend and prepared ourselves as best we could to return back to work on Monday. It was not too bad knowing we had another break coming for New Years. We gathered at a friend’s house in town (Johnny and Heather’s) for New Years Eve. Had a great time grilling steaks for dinner followed by an intense session of Rock Band until midnight. After watching the ball drop everyone started filtering home. Most of us had to work New Years Eve day and got up early so we were all tired for the start of 2009. Plus we are all getting older now although I am a night owl so I was feeling fine for a couple more hours of Rock Band once I got home.