Shelly Gillen and Tom Becka
We got another fresh batch of snow on Wednesday morning, which made for a slow, slippery drive to work. It hadn’t been cleaned up entirely by evening, and I nearly got stuck on a side street on my way to see Tom Becka’s second live show at the Pizza Shoppe.
Among the topics of the day, which included complaining about the snow, was a bill to legalize medicinal marijuana before the legislature. Tom’s special guest of the evening was Shelly Gillen, whose son has a disabling disease that causes a couple dozen seizures a day. She wants to be able to treat him with hemp oil and is trying to get a law passed so she can treat her son with it legally in Nebraska. The primary roadblock seems to be fear that it will lead to recreational use to marijuana, as doctors in other states seem to be able to write a prescription for it for just about any reason at all.
We had a sudden warmth for the rest of the week, with temperatures shooting to the mid-50s, which made for perfect snowman-building weather. Vivian took Hannah outside Friday afternoon to try to roll together a snowman or two in our front yard, but she seemed a bit more interested in eating the snow rather than building anything fun with it.
One of our friends seemed to be in a snowman-building mood as well. Vivian went out to check the recycling bin when she was greeted with a rather creepy visitor standing behind my Ford Taurus. I guess we were asking for it when we left the garage door open a bit too long.
On Saturday night, we hosted our fourth bi-annual Cheese Party. We hosted our biggest crowd yet as a couple dozen friends stopped by to sample wine and cheese with us for an evening that was almost classy. Our defending champion, Mark, retained his crown and narrowly won with his Baltic Porter Bella Vitano. His prize was a set of cheese knives that handles that somewhat resemble swiss cheese. Merinda took home a set of decorative wine-stoppers for her 2014 Australian Moscato, and Ole won the prize for Cheesiest Joke with the one about a lady praying for groceries on her porch.
It was a great evening with a diverse group of friends, and I’m always amazed at how we can have a great time together with nothing more than some wine, cheese, and a few jokes.
