Christmas Battery Minder

Man what a vacation holiday season this has been. I've been off since Christmas eve and a whole lot has happened in those days. On my way home from work Christmas eve my alternator went out on my truck. Had to wait until the twenty sixth to get it fixed for a couple hundred dollars I'd planned on using for tires.
We got some bad news that yet another family member passed away on the twenty fourth of December morning. This was sad as she left behind two college aged children and a cool husband.

We had a dinner party to attend Christmas Eve and it went nice and smooth. Then it was Christmas morning before we knew it and we opened up our presents - which one of them for me was a battery minder - and my son gave me the one for the bike. Been wanting to get one of these for awhile to keep those expensive batteries nice and charged up. The unit he got me will do up to five batteries at one time. After doing the gift deal we headed over to the Mother in-laws for breakfast and more exchanging of the packages . Looks like everyone got something they could use this year without all the extra things that never get used.
Then the next day is when I got the alternator replaced and Saturday was slated for new tires on the truck. Luckily we had received some cash which we could use for these and have money left over to get some things done on the wife's car too. Whoops! While getting the tires done the guy comes out and wants me to take a look at something. Wholly crap, my brake pads on the front are almost gone. This was not what I expected to hear and it dug into the cash so nothing is left to do anything to the car with, well , not without getting into our own piggy bank. But those babies where worn down to about the thickness of a nickel and a few more miles I would have been into the rotors which would have been ba ba ba baad. The rear brakes still have some life left in them, perhaps ten thousand miles. It's a good thing I decided to go ahead and get the tires when I did because we were going to the mountains to Boone North Carolina and then over to the Blueridge parkway. Had I waited on the tire bit, the brakes would not have been known to be that far gone. Being in the mountains on the parkway far away from anything would not have been the time to find out the brakes were shot.
Monday came around and the trip was a nice slow pace in which we stopped at Mast General store that has been around since 1800 something. Very cool place to visit but don't plan on buying a coat there unless your a skier. The coats were something like four hundred on up.
More days come and go and my brother and his family finally make it all the way from Switzerland. One of my other brothers came down and we got to feed them all before sitting down to a little guitar playing. I dusted off my old Bass and one of my amps and we had a good time. My brother from Switzerland and I had played together in the past but my brother from Eden and I, for some reason, had never played together before. Weird huh? Maybe it's because our music tastes were different way back when.
All in all this has been a good vacation but then I got one more surprise for the New Year I did not want ... a summons for jury duty on Monday ... again.