Merry Christmas from Arizona!

Last year for the first time since I was born, I was forced to spend X-mas at home alone, without family or friends. No undue complaining here, since there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of us across the USA who likely had to do the same; I blogged about it at the time and made the best of it. However, you can bet I wasn’t about to do that again.

Nope, this time I was going to go see my family, and so I did, hi-tailing it off to northern Arizona where my mom and my younger brother and his wife live. I got to see my bro’s cool new house, had a wonderful dinner with new family on X-mas Eve, meeting his new mother and sisters-in-law and some of their friends as well, and everyone’s numerous neuroses seemed to be at a minimum, so overall it was a wonderful trip. I even managed to throw in 3 days in Phoenix to live it up and party down.

So, where is the relevance to a blog about Thunderjet slot cars, you may ask? Well, although I was naturally away from my tracks for 2 weeks, I am happy to report that some new additions were added to the fleets as part of my X-mas day gift haul! My sister and her husband and my mom all did an awesome job picking out the kind of things I love, including some terrific new diorama pieces I’m looking forward to putting around the track as I begin the 2022 project of partial dismantlement in order to focus on landscaping, contouring, ground cover and foliage, that part of the diorama that I have most neglected up to this point!

Just look at all this great loot!

In spite of how much I loved all the Hot Wheels, Matchboxes, and Slot Cars, its possible that the best gift I received was something completely unexpected that my mom picked up for me, a much-needed cuddle buddy! Now I had someone to keep me warm and snuggly while I was visiting that also made a great travel companion for the expectedly rough trip back home! We decided to name him Henry!

There was, of course, a price to be paid for all of this, beyond the $500 plane tickets and the $600 for 3 days in a Phoenix hotel and a rental car, but like I said, it was a risk I was willing to take because you can’t live in fear the rest of your life no matter how many petty little tyrants insist we spend the rest of our lives walking around with diapers on our faces. So, I paid my price and got through it, and have some great memories to keep me warm during future X-mases that promise to be even lonelier, as the inexorable effects of time continue to take their toll on everything.