The rituals of December

This is a picture of an ornament on the Christmas tree at Casa Collins, which is still up as 2007 comes to a close. Back when I was delivering newspapers every morning (1994-2004), I was always surprised by how many people had their tree by the side of the road on December 26. Perhaps they just needed to get the house cleared out to put up the Memorial Day ornaments early.

We have a fake tree now, so there's no rush to take it down, and I think it's wrong to take down a Christmas tree before New Year's anyway. In fact, I favor the second or third week in January approach.

This week, my sister, Cheryl, and my brother-in-law, Willie, were in town visiting Willie's niece over in St. Paul, so we got together on Thursday, and Patrick joined us for lunch. After that we stopped by MPR and Sean gave us a tour (I've seen it before, by the way). It's really a great experience.

Here's a picture of Patrick, Cheryl, and me that Willie took as I dropped them off in St. Paul.
A little earlier than this, I showed them the hangar I have at Fleming Field in South St. Paul. Playing with the wheel pants was the order of the day, I guess.
Cheryl and Willie left early Friday morning with a connection in Chicago, heading back to Boston. She called today to tell me their flight in Chicago was canceled and they had to wait seven hours for another flight.

I don't know of any other industry that treats its customers as poorly as the airlines and rewards its chief executives with millions and millions of dollars in bonuses for doing so.

When my RV airplane is finished, I won't miss them a bit.