Ayla

Ayla just wanted to say hi to everyone! Yeah, Van Winkle pets like to do that.... according to my Mom's emails.
For those of you who haven't heard the story, Ayla was a puppy when I got her from a pet adoption group in Nashville. She was very cute and loveable, except for the fact that she didn't sleep at night and chewed everything she could get her teeth on. My parents still had our first dog, Logan at the time. After I brought Ayla home for Christmas (she chewed off one of the door handles in the back seat) she never came back to Tennessee. My parents needed help destroying the place before doing some remodeling, so Ayla was perfect for that.

Anyway, Kelly took this picture on Christmas Eve. She is now a very good dog and sadly is the only pet in the house these days.

Another fun game - you win bonus friend points if you know where the name Ayla came from :)

Great websites

In honor of the upcoming holidays and the fact that if you are reading this you already have some free time on your hands, check out some of these great websites I have stumbled on. (I installed "stumble" on my firefox browser) Anyway, I hope you enjoy!!!

For the engineers:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm

Random:
http://www.iiiiiiii.com/
http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/waterproof.html
http://www.virtualstapler.com/

Pictures:
http://selfdestruct.net/misc/geneve.jpg
http://www.asa100.com/
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/flash/cntower_timelapse.swf
http://www.younggalleryphoto.com/photography/brandt/brandt.html

This just in.......

So, after I posted this morning I got another update from Mom.....the 'rents just bought another Buick Rendezvous. That makes 2 in 1 year. Yeah, I live in that family. One is white, the other is "cappuccino" according to the email.... I asked them where my Rendezvous was....no response yet.

Snow tracker.....still here!

Ah yeah, do you like the new coffee colored blog? While I'm working on my image with a new hair cut and continuing to seek out new arctic condition survival apparel (sweaters) I thought I'd splash some new colors on the blog - brown is definitely the new pink...

News from the Van Winkle household:
My dad has a new cool job at the college of Lake County. I don't know what this means, but I guess he has a big office....go Dad!
My mom really likes her job, but unfortunately the office is moving and does not wish to commute so she is deciding what to do next.
Kelly is still a skin farmer in Madison.

Last night I received a late 16th birthday present from my parents. So its a little over 11 years late, it is still very cool. They bought it when I was born intending to give it to me when I turned 16 and forgot about it until they found it recently...

Lets see what else...today is the Christmas party at Lazarus house so I'll be celebrating Christmas in the 'hood with about 80 kids running around. My bible study small group spent a few hours (with no heat) clearing out the gym there to get ready for this. It is very exciting to see God working in Racine - hopefully I'll get a chance to post some pictures soon!

"Near blizzard conditions"

That was the term we heard all morning as we stayed nicely sheltered while our cars were growing back their thick white covering everyone had fought to remove to get to work. I also read that they were calling this "heart-attack" snow because it was so heavy it could give people shovelling it a heart attack. I understood this a little better when I got home and to my joy discovered that my place was a perfect backstop for the storm and there were snow drifts 2' deep in places on my driveway.....yeah....plus a plow hadn't come down our road, there was only one lane cleared from people driving through so I had no place to put my car until I could shovel the driveway, so I drove it into the snow. The walk into my place was when I discovered the snow drifts as snow came up to my knees in spots (and I still wasn't close to hitting ground). I then spent the next hour shovelling a spot for my car, then shovelling my way out of the spot I had chosen to drive my car into. Ah, good times....at least it wasn't too cold - although the warmer air is what made the snow so heavy (I'll probably be hurting tomorrow) so maybe cold wouldn't have been so bad....hmmmm.....Oh, and they did let us leave work early today so that everyone could get home before it got dark. And I guess they couldn't call it a true blizzard because winds did not sustain above 35 mph, it was closer to 30 with gusts up to 40. OK, thats enough about the snow.

Well, I saw that 38,000 people in Knoxville lost power this morning - I hope all of you down there have your power back if you lost it! Have a good weekend!