Merry Christmas

I don't remember the last time it snowed on Christmas morning. So not only do we get a white Christmas this year, but one that could have come straight from a movie! Couldn't have planned it better.

This year I was more creative than usual in my gift-giving. I did the normal gifts for my parents/siblings that I bought at stores, but I also took on a time-consuming project of scanning old pictures and assembling them into slide shows and burning them all onto DVD. All told it was about 500 pictures, and even then most of the kids were severely underrepresented for their slide shows. I also put these pictures onto 2 GB flash drives and put them on digital photo frames for my parents.

I also made the mistake of wrapping these gifts myself. I am convinced that I am the least-skilled gift-wrapper in the history of mankind. I had trouble wrapping even the individual DVD's in their cases. On some of the bigger gifts the paper would actually start tearing as I was trying to wrap it around the gift. I soon discovered that, contrary to what I had thought, no amount of scotch tape can fix a bad wrapping job. Most gifts looked like someone had opened the present early and then sloppily attempted to cover up the crime. I think I went through like a roll and a half of wrapping paper just on gifts for my fam (8 in all). Ah well, it's what's on the inside that counts, right? See? It was just an object lesson. All part of the plan.

Another reason my phone is superior to yours

So my car is all packed, I fill up the tank and buy a couple rockstars. It's raining really bad but I figure I can drive safe and it won't be a big deal. Thus I embark on my trip to Utah, for the holidays. As I drive on the freeway, I see signs saying the "junction" to the I-15 from the 215 (this is near San Bernardino) is closed. "Huh, that sucks for people trying to get on from the 215," I think to myself. As I near this closed junction, I remember that the 15 goes up into the mountains. Something clicks. I whip out my trusty iPhone, pull up the maps application (traffic enabled), and see that the 15 is marked in red (very congested) for miles and miles in both directions of the 15/215 junction.

I quickly exit, flip the radio to AM 1070, and discover that pretty much every major freeway coming out of southern California, that goes into mountains, has been closed due to heavy snow. Disaster averted! I could have gotten stuck in a parking lot on the freeway and had to spend the night in my car (as many people have done for the past two days). Instead, I took a nice 2+ hour drive around Riverside county and came home. Now I'm waiting for two-day's worth of backed up traffic to clear up before hitting the road. But not before I buy some chains and a survival kit.