New Year - kicking 2005 to the curb, and good riddance!

Just got home from today's travels, and finished feeding hungry dogs, so now I can write.

In my family, New Year's Day has always had special meaning.

My paternal grandfather's birthday is 1 January.

So is my Father's.

I was less than two weeks away from it - close, but no cigar, to being three generations of first-born Neals born on 1 January.

Anyway, we have normal New Year's stuff, plus Happy Birthday for Daddy and Granddaddy.

Today was the first time New Year's Day didn't include Daddy, for me and Jenni, and my Uncle Alex, and my Aunts Susan and Liz - and the first time in 60 years that Granny and Granddaddy couldn't include their first son.

It was tough for all of us. Susan and Liz have a tradition they've created of putting pink flamingos in people's front yards on their birthdays... they did that to Daddy about 5 years ago, IIRC, and he bitched them out about climbing his gate to do so. So they didn't do that anymore for him.

Well, he can't bitch about it anymore... so Susan put tiny pink flamingos around his headstone sometime late last night or early this morning. :)

I shared a beer with Daddy the day after Christmas, and was going to do the same today, as well as clean his and Taylor's headstones off (dirt tends to collect between the letters, and in the crannies and crevaces) - and when L and I got to the memorial garden, there was an open beer sitting on Daddy's headstone. Based on the brand, I said, "Uncle Alex has been here earlier today", and smiled :)

So I had a cigarette and a beer, and shared mine and the already opened one with him, and cleaned off the headstones while I talked to my Dad and my Son, and to L, and she talked to both of them also.

Then we went to visit Granny, and had a nice time there, and then visited Granddaddy, and had a nice visit there too. Also visited with both my Aunts, and ate black-eyed peas for luck, visited with Uncle Alex and his wife Gail, and spent quite a lot of time there. I talked a LOT with Alex... he looked up to his big brother about as much as I looked up to my Daddy, and we both miss him REAL bad. It's kinda funny... when Daddy would get to talking about serious stuff with either of us, and was thinking more about the topic than who he was talking to, he'd call Alex Aaron, and he'd call me Alex, if he wasn't paying close attention. Alex and I both consider that a compliment.

Next week, Alex will be with me at Dad's Garage, (the source of the name for this blog), helping evaluate all the tools Daddy left me, so my sister J can have a fair dollar equivalent. That should be fun.

And I got to exercise my soldering skills, helping my cousin's friend work on a tiny motor in an RC car... apparently, these things are highly customisable, but require a fair bit of detail work. Nate had gotten to the point where looking at little parts had his eyes crossing... so I finished it up for him. That was kinda cool.

I don't feel like it right now, but later I'll figure out how to post pics here, and show the pink flamingos :)

Hey, I just started blogging - cut me a LITTLE slack, willya?!?!


UPDATE: Pic added. Thanks for the advice, commenters!