Late December Sunday

A day like this, I feel too scattered to pull together a decent blog entry, so it's just going to be a bit of this and that. I indicated yesterday that I was going to write a follow-up entry, but that's not happening right now.

I woke up this morning in the Cleveland area, and I type this at the end of the day back home in Indiana. I woke up this morning with my wife and daughters (including our canine daughter), but I'll be going to sleep with just my 4-legged girl. I traveled in a car loaded down and packed full of all the Christmas loot; I'll pick up the rest of the family tomorrow morning as they head west by train.

After getting things packed up, I went to watch "my" NFL team win its final game of the season as Cincinnati beat Baltimore. This is the first time in a long time that they've gone into the playoffs with a win, but it was an ugly win. There was some hope that they could snag the second seed and get a first-round bye, but it wasn't to be as the Patriots won their game. We do at least get one home game, and the Bengals have been devastating at home this season (undefeated, with the offense really showing up--the defense pretty much always shows up this season).

I've been listening to the audiobook of Dune, which I've read at least once or twice before, though not in many years. There's going to be a bookclub discussion of the book, so I wanted to refamiliarize myself with it. I remembered a lot... and I forgot a lot. Plus I'm just at a very different place in my life (I first read it in my early 20s, almost 15 years ago).

On the way home, I stopped at the Walmart in Mishawaka to pick up a Christmas present that my mom gave--or tried to give--us: a mobile internet hotspot. We bought one near my mom's house, but as we were driving home and Lauren tried to activate it, there was some kind of problem. Apparently, someone else had already registered our number. Which I guess either means that someone put in the wrong number or it was returned improperly, or something. Since it didn't seem convenient to go back to that same store, we went to another... which didn't carry the mobile hotspot. So we tried again in the Cleveland area, where they took our return and indicated they had it... but didn't. So we did return it and get a refund for my Mom, but we didn't come away with a mobile hotspot. So we looked at ordering on-line, and the price appeared to be $30 less than what we'd paid. But it wasn't available at the Walmart that's local to us. Oooh! But it was at the South Bend Walmart. We ordered... and a half hour later got notification that they did not, in fact, have it. So we went back to the drawing board, tried to get it through the Mishawaka store... and it worked. So there we go--except that I haven't actually activated it yet, so it's still possible that we're not going to have a working hotspot, but here's hoping.