Finishing up 2015 (finally) - Monday, January 11, 2016

Christmas Day we slept in, then checked to see what was in our stockings. There was a new luggage tag for our new luggage, movie candy, gift card to the Red Lobster, lottery tickets, tangerines, apples, and chocolate. As I was finding the gifts in my stocking, I asked "Here's a luggage tag, where are we going?" and when I found the movie candy I asked where the gift cards were for the movie theaters. LOL. I knew the answer. We didn't have room for a tree and our big gift this year was the cruise to Cozumel, Belize and Honduras.

I cooked yams for our RV park's Christmas Dinner, and we took a can of jellied cranberry sauce. The park provided turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, coffee, iced tea and water. The rest of the meal was potluck. Everything was wonderful. There was an abundance of food and fellowship.

The Christmas dinner buffet line

Lydia, Pam and Paul

Sue, Dick, Clari, Tony, Lyle, Norena, and Shirley

My dinner! Mmm.

Bob was ready to dig in.

Margaret, Steve, John, Pat, Stan, Lanora, Fran

The Neville's

Peter and Rene

A very Merry Christmas, indeed.

Sunday, December 27, we went to see "Spotlight," a movie about the Boston Globe's Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalism team known as Spotlight. Stars are: Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, and Billy Crudup.

The movie starts with the team trying to decide what their next major exposé should be. As they toss around ideas, a new editor starts working there. The new editor (Liev Schreiber) suggests re-opening a story from years before about Roman Catholic priests abusing young children in Boston. Much ado is made about how the Catholic Church will sue the Boston Globe if they try to publish the story.

As the reporters on the team look into prior allegations against priests, they find more and more priests who had been involved only to have their transgressions covered up by the Catholic Church. Priests were being re-assigned and their records showed they were on leave, sick, and other vague classifications of their status.

As the reporters delved deeper into the investigation, they interviewed some of the victims, searched archives and met many dead ends in trying to get information from the Church, lawyers and government officials. Public records were missing. The Spotlight team suspected the Cardinal knew what was happening but did nothing to punish the priests.

We loved this movie. The acting was excellent. The story was maddening. The facts during the closing credits were appalling. How could these atrocious acts go on for so long? Why did the Catholic Church cover up/hide the abuse of power against children? Very good movie.

Thursday, December 31: We both worked today. For New Year's Eve we decided to listen to Arrowhead, our favorite rock 'n' roll band in San Antonio. They were playing at Tonic the Bar, a place we hadn't been before. The vibe was odd there. There weren't many tables but there was a huge dance floor. As the band played, we sat and listened, loved the music, but no one was dancing. I think one couple danced. Then a lady danced by herself. We finally got up and danced one dance by ourselves, but mostly people just drank and listened.

One lady who had been sitting at the bar was totally drunk and decided we were her best friends. She came over and was talking to us. We could barely hear a word she said because of the band. She came over on our side of the table and was hugging on me.

We left the bar at 11:50 p.m. As we were driving home, we saw so many fireworks all throughout San Antonio. The big fireworks show was going on over the Tower of the Americas. We pulled over on the side of the freeway to watch with a bunch of other people until a police cruiser went by blasting something on their loudspeaker. We couldn't hear what they were saying, but figured we'd better move on. We were up on an elevated freeway so we had a great view of thousands of neighborhood fireworks. Wow!

Happy New Year!