Posted 7:15 AM by Mike
Wow....just realized is been overe a month since my last post! Absolutely no time. I'll try and recap:

Well, my mom is still in the hospital in Duluth. A combination of her sores and a pretty nasty infection has led to this extended stay. She officially is having surgery on her wounds on Wednesday or Thursday this week. Then she has to stay there for a week after the surgery and then six weeks for recovery at a nursing home. I know she is sick of being there, but she doesn't have much choice. Dad, God bless him, has been making the trek to Duluth almost everyday to see her. That's over three hours round trip. I've told him to make sure he takes some days off because I don't want him to wear himself out.

This pretty much makes Christmas a bust. When we thought mom was going to be home I was getting all revved up about Christmas. Kristin and I were going to make a big meal and have a good ol'fashion Christmas with my family. Well, stratch that as we will be spending Christmas in a nursing home more than likely. Now I really am not in the mood for Christmas. Life has a way of smacking you right in the face every now and then. Because of this, I told Kristin she should just go to Rochester for Christmas. Her family always has a big Christmas get together that is pretty fun. I would rather see her have fun at Christmas than have to ride in the car all the time going back an forth to Duluth. Plus her cousin from Utah will be home for Christmas so she will get to see her.

School has pretty much taken up most of my time. My second term ends this week. Thank god! It's going pretty well, but very busy. I'll have three more terms after this one plus my thesis in the summer. So I'm almost halfway done!

At 2:00pm this Friday, my 17 day vacation will start. I've been planning for this since April when I decided I was going to go to school. I know I would have two weeks off from school so I figured I would take it off from work as well. It's been pretty rough, but the finish line is almost in sight. I haven't had a full week off from work since May of 2003, so I'm definately ready! After Christmas up north, I'm going to head down to my uncle's house in Iowa. He has the week off so were going to get it done.

Hockey is still on life support. The union and league met last week and are meeting again tomorrow. Although I'm skeptical, I think there might be a chance. The league didn't flat our reject the union's offer, although they are expected to counter it tomorrow. So we'll see what happens. I haven't missed it as much as I thought since I'm busy with school, but I would definately welcome it!

That's it for now. I promise to keep updating regualarly until school revs up again on Jan 5th.