The Rat Pack "Tweens" 2013

I like to call the time between Christmas and New Year the "Tweens."  It's a holiday of sorts since little business gets done and nobody really wants to work.  It's a good time for visiting that didn't get done on the actual holidays, chores etc.

Sunday night, the Rat Pack met at the Freeway Diner.  The Freeway Diner is a great place to eat in a bad neighborhood.  I regularly run across the President of one of Tulsa's best known manufacturing companies there.  It is a hangout for north Tulsa's fast car folks. You may seen anyone from a millionaire in camo to a street vet eating there. It is quickly becoming the Pack's go to place for comfort food.

Maddy and Roger were full of tales from their recent cruise to the Caribbean.  Mike and Jodi are gearing up for their cruise to Hawaii in a couple of weeks.  We missed the Caribbean this year because we had to babysit our grandson, Little Ben, while our daughter and son in law took a belated honeymoon ... on the same ship Maddy and Roger took a week later!

We all agreed to do another cruise together in January, 2015.  Maddy came up with a savings plan where

you put one dollar in the bank the first week, two the second week, etc. for a year.  At the end of the year, you have enough money for a modest cabin for two on a seven day cruise.  We don't all need to save that way for a vacation but the plan should be fun and if it is followed, it should allow a couple or two that we would like to come along but normally couldn't to participate.

As we were leaving, an odd thing happened.  Sheila got a terrible cramp in her leg and had to lie down on the bench by the door as we were leaving.  Maddy, who is an experienced RN as well as a professor of nursing at one of the local colleges, immediately got on her knees, isolated the cramped muscle and massaged it back to normal within seconds.  The whole place was looking on open mouthed.  Maddy shrugged it off.  Said she had done too many shifts in a dialysis ward where that kind of cramp was an everyday occurrence.

After dinner, we took the guided tour of Mike and Jodi's son Josh's new  house.  His place was torched in a revenge attack by the neighborhood drug dealers.  To the best of our knowldge they are now behind bars. Mike and Jodi served as the defacto general contractors over the insurance repairs and I have to say that Josh's place is about as nice a small home as you are ever going to find.  Josh is about as far from a metrosexual as you are ever going to find but his house would make one proud.  Mike is a retired electronics specialist/engineer.  While the drywall was being replaced, he wired the place for just about everything including state of the art video security.  The place is impressive.

It was just a quiet evening with friends but that is a good thing at our time in life.  A good time was had by all.