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jenny celebrated her new year’s eve birthday with very little fanfare this year. normally we go to the gibson’s house & watch dick clark’s new year’s rockin’ eve on their TV. this year the gibson family actually went to new york city to see it for real. we stayed home, and had a quiet evening. and that was just fine.

sara, andrew, jane, and mary lynn threw caution to the wind, and sat precariously on a ledge that was part of a 1930′s work project. it’s in the walter woods conservation area just a few miles from mom & jim’s house. this is the same building pictured in the post holiday downshift post.

you don’t have to be a human to celebrate christmas in joplin. the cradler is my niece, mary lynn. the cradlee is my cousin’s dog, PJ. there are so many things that can be said about this pic, so many captions– bring on the comments!

don’t look now, but motel mancini is coming back in a few weeks! cheer up & get yourself to homer’s coffeehouse on january 18 (friday). that’s where chris, clay, and i will reassemble to play all your favorite tunes from 7:30-9:30, or until someone calls to complain about the noise.

i’m not sure if the last 10 days of christmas flew by me or shoved past me like a guy cutting in line– either way it’s time for jenny & i to slow down and take life a little easier… just like rodney allen rippy! whoa, the last time i typed his name on this blog was 8 years ago when jack in the box brought 50 cent tacos back to kansas city. they cost 75 cents now. i guess time does fly by. anyway, we had a great time with family in joplin this christmas weekend:starting at the left and going clockwise that’s mom, jane, warren, hugo, PJ, jenny, marylynn, andrew, me, smokey, and sara.

i never saw the 1975 movie, mahogany, but that doesn’t stop me from singing the theme song when i can’t figure something out. the lyrics are:
do you know, where you’re going to?
do you like the things that life is showing you?
where are you going to?
do you know?
when max (our cat) jumped on the computer desk this morning, and clawed at something invisible on the wall, i sang these words like diana ross:
do you know, what you’re looking at?
what do you see on the wall you crazy cat?
is it some kind of gnat?
do you know?
…and then i looked up the chords and played it on my guitar.

last week i paid my property taxes in downtown olathe. i parked a block away to get my exercise, and walked by the old doughnut shop where i used to be the delivery guy– except now it’s a new pastry shop! park street pastry to be exact! they have their own facebook page and everything!i talked with the new owner, bought a granola bar, and snapped a few pics before heading over to the county office.

i don’t know what real silence is. there is never an absence of sound because a brushy electronic white noise static hum is always going on in my head. it’s something i’ve gotten used to, and i hardly notice it most of the time– but i REALLY became aware of it during our last trip to jenny’s hometown in rural nebraska. her brother steve drove us out to a bridge one night that was miles away from everything. we got out of the truck to look at the moon and the stars, and jenny said “listen to the silence!” everyone got quiet. no one said anything for a minute, but i could still hear the sound of a paused cassette player with the volume all the way up.

“DON’T COMPROMISE WITH SOCIETY. CHANGE.” this is what happens when two guys react to a ton of inspirational posters that say the same upbeat predictable things like Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement or Make your life a masterpiece. Peder Jorgensen and Jesper Sundnes made something original when they created Inspirobot. this artificial intelligence resembles HAL 9000, and combines stock photos with random “inspirational” quotes.

vic sage posted this banana splits pic on facebook earlier this morning. he’s a regular contributor to the retroist blog. if there’s an old commercial for this 1969 kid’s game, i couldn’t find it. it reminded me of some other cool games that my folks got me over the years though: