Whilst inhaling my turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and hashwi with pomegranate pips, I heard a story that I just couldn't bear not to share.

Cousin George has recently become Firefighter/EMT George, having joined the Sandown, NH, Volunteer Fire-Rescue Department. He and the boys responded to a call the other day that brought them to the scene of a flipped van full of mentally-disabled people. The van overturned by the side of the river--teetering on the banks and threatening to fall in. By the time the rescue squad arrived at the scene, all but one of the people in the van had escaped unscathed. The remaining individual was a forty-year-old man with down syndrome, hysterical and crying.

He wasn't hurt. The rescue team couldn't get to him to pull him out, nor could they coax him out on his own. They determined, after several precious minutes, that this poor man was distraught because when the van flipped, he lost his jelly donut. He was screaming for his donut. He would not come out until he had recovered the donut, meanwhile he was dangerously close to going into the river with the vehicle. So the squad wrapped chains around the van as a temporary hold while two of the EMT's, sirens blaring, roared up the street at ninety miles an hour to the Dunkin' Donuts.

"Jelly donut, right quick!"

Jelly donut in hand, they sped back to the scene. One of the emt's held it up for the hysterical man to see, and sure enough, he ceased his blubbering and wriggled himself out of the van to "reclaim" his morsel. As he took his first bites, the temporary rigging failed and the van tumbled into the river.

George said afterward that it was moments like those that made the job so amazing.

In other news, a new PR for the Feaster Five Mile run in Andover even though it was snowing like crazy and runners were slipping all over the sidewalk--and Matt Damon didn't run this year! And Wolfie, the crazy f@#ker decided to run the 5K without having run a race since high school. He threw up in his mouth at the end and he is sore as all get out right now, but he's still alive--and since it was a family affair--all four of us finished, including my mother who ran across the finish line!!!--we took four apple pies to my aunt and uncle's house, bringing the grand total of apple pies to five at tonight's dessert.

And now I shall pass out.