Nephew Matt was in town for the weekend, and the Beatles With a little help from my friends came on the radio. That prompted a discussion about weather Joe Cocker's version was better or not, and Sadly the boy didn't even know who Joe Cocker was. What are they teaching in school these days?

So I decided to put together a list of my 15 favorite covers (thanks for the inspiration Matt.) It's a strange variety, there is a little bit of everything. I was trying to put them into some order, but I just can't do it. So here they are in no particular order.... Title, Cover artist and original artist.

2008 is winding down in a hurry, just a few more hours to go. I can't believe another year has flown by. I have to say, I will not be sad to see it go. 2008 certainly will not rank as one of my favorite years. Really, it kind of sucked. So to try to make sure 2009 is better I am putting together a list. This is a list of things I want to do or accomplish in 2009. They are not resolutions, not things I want to change about myself, they are just some things I want to do.

So here goes, the 10 things I want to do / accomplish in 2009, in no particular order:

There it is, laid out in black and white. Maybe putting it out there for all to see will help motivate me to actually get these done. Maybe I will post on my progress as I cross some of these off. I encourage you to make your own list and hold yourself to getting some of the things that you want done.

And here's hoping that everyone has a safe and happy new year.

It's Christmas week, Brenda and I are up at the lake. The Christmas music is playing in the background as I am typing this. It is going to be a quiet Christmas with just the 2 of us. It seems like Christmas used to be more special, and more simple all at the same time. I was looking through some old pictures (thank Brenda for scanning all of those old pictures) when I came across an old letter to Santa. I guess after Christmas, Santa must have sent it back to my mother to save.



I guess I must have been very good that year since I also came across these pictures. Looks like I got that TCR set. And isn't that a beautiful tree? Dad always picked out a great tree.



I also found a letter to Santa from Dave, I wonder if Santa's Reindeer enjoyed the "karrots?"

{rokzoom title=|Christmas List| album=|xmas08|}images/stories/xmas-08/p00799.jpg{rokzoom}

Oh to be 7 years old again. I am not sure I would even know what to ask for in a letter to Santa now?

We are back to normal. Well as normal as we get. After being without heat or electricity for 60 hours, everything finally came back on Sunday afternoon. YAY!

The northeast ice storm really hit our community hard. The estimates I heard were that 250,000 homes and businesses were without power in just the capital area of NY. It was a little nuts. There are still a lot of people that don't have power (sorry Dave) but hopefully they will be getting theirs back soon.

Of course I snapped a few pictures of the ice in the trees, but these few pictures really just don't do it justice.




We ventured out Friday night for dinner, and again during the day Saturday, and the damage from the storm was amazing. As beautiful as the ice in the trees looked, the extra weight snap branches, and sometimes whole trees like toothpicks.

We managed to survive at home through the whole event. We kept a fire going to stay warm, played cards, and luckily our hot water heater functions without electricity, so we were able to take hot showers. But I have come to the realization that we are technology junkies. We had a battery operated radio, but we were really going stir crazy by Sunday afternoon with no tv, computer, etc. We made popcorn Sunday over the fire, and just before the power came back on we reheated our leftover Chinese food over the fire.

I think once everyone starts to forget about this weekend a little, I will shop around for a small generator. At least enough to power the furnace so we have heat if this ever happens again. And we are going to get some more games to keep in the house. There has to be some non electronic entertainment other than rummy.