Every year, I seem to have plenty of vacation left over affording me the opportunity maximize the vacation the last week of the year.
My company usually gets 2 days off for Christmas and 2 days for New Years. This year, for example, using 4 days of vacation, I haven't been to work since last Thursday and don't go back until next Wednesday.
Not to complain too much, but this vacation ends up being more stressful then it needs to be. First off, I love the build up to Christmas, the food is fabulous and its nice to see relatives I haven't seen since last year. The problem? We have 3 family functions to go to. We end up driving from our home to a family get together an hour a way on 3 separate days. I end up driving each trip. Did I mention that all of them are in the same town? Ugg.
The hustle and bussel of Christmas can just be a bit much.
Christmas went well. I'm pretty sure everyone got what the needed and wanted for Christmas. Over at my photography blog, you can see what I got. I'm really excited for the new lens. I can't wait to see what I can do with it.
We must be getting old. We have no plans for New Years Eve. Nada. We even have a babysitter. What are we thinking?
There is a contest for a blog makeover contest at the Chronicles of a SAHM. NapWarden is offering to use her special powers with Photoshop to provide a complete blog transformation. We have just a few days left in the contest and I'm proud to admit they have perfect attendance. I've submitted my comment every day since it started. I've also got one of the longest comments in the contest. You really need to go over and read it. It's a new twist on the classic poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas".
Me and the girls have been going a little stir crazy this week. We've been pretty much inside our home since Christmas day. We went out to the mall tonight for a little while. That was nice, but it's been too cold and snowy to venture out to much.
One particularly cool thing that happened this week was I won my first somewhat major poker tournament. I actually have 3 blogs. I did this to separate the 3 facets of my life and allow me to write about each part in their own context. Plus, each blog has a different audience. Some of overlap and others really don't care about poker. Last week I played in first blogger tournament. Yes, poker bloggers have their own subculture and tournaments. The Mookie is one the major blogger poker tournaments held every Wednesday night. Most of the major poker bloggers participate in this tournament every week. Well the big news is a played it this week and won it! It was one of the most exciting poker tournament of my life. The highlights are over at my poker blog.
Coming soon...my New Years Resolutions! Any suggestions?
Friday, December 28, 2007
Vacation isn't always what you hope it is
Monday, December 24, 2007
Merry Christmas Everyone!
A quick post before we start this big day.
Merry Christmas to all! May all your dreams come true
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
I love modern electronics!
I'm at the mall. Christmas shopping. I've got my iphone to blog on.
And headphones in my ears to block out the insanity.
The truly greatest thing. No one bothers you when you are wearing
headphones!
Tim Walsh
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
DN4 - Could it be?
Back in the day, I was a huge fan of Duke Nuk'em. Probably the greatest video game...ever. Well, that might be a stretch, but my brother and I used to play it for hours at a time. We loved it!
I have been patiently waiting for the most ridiculed piece of vaporware in history. Duke Nuk'em Forever has taken FOREVER to get to market. Just released is a new teaser trailer for the game. Keeping the myth alive!
PS. I'm still working on the post from the High School Musical on Ice. Seems I was a bit click happy and took close to 400 pictures that day. oops. ALL the girls had a blast. I've been to far worse shows. The Wiggles were probably a bit tougher to take.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
We made it!
And Ash is just watching so good. In case you are interested, you've
never seen so many preteen girls wearing pink in one place. Holy cow.
I'd swear there 12:1 girls to guys here! No wait for the men's room!
On our way to High School Musical on Ice
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
K - Is this one funnier?
This is a new one too...is this one funnier for you K? In case you are wondering, this type of humor is called "Satire". It is meant to be both funny and informative.
Evangeline Lilly Wins 'Best Wet T-Shirt Fight Scene' At Strong Women In TV Awards
Monday, December 10, 2007
It's the God Damn Waterbuffalos!
Back to the Onion we go! This card carrying carnivore found this one to be some of the best political parody ever!
Make sure you stay with it all the way to the end...tempers fly!
Should Animals Be Doing More For The Animal Rights Movement?
Sunday, December 09, 2007
The tree is up, and for once its not snowing
We finally got the tree up and decorated. I had gotten it down from the garage 2 weeks ago, but life has been more hectic than we'd prefer.
The girls had fun decorating the tree, but B and I were not quite having as much fun. While they liked taking all the pretty ornaments out of their boxes, neither really liked to put the packing stuff back in the box. Ugg.
For the most part, the weekend was pretty nice. B didn't work, so much hometime was had by all. Grandpa J was down on Saturday. He helped me with a bunch of minor electrical problems with the house. Funny, a house that is one 3 years old would have problems.
Oh how I hate places that take advantage of the mathematically challenged. Our government can pass laws making it illegal for ANYONE to play poker because the might "bet the house" and lose it, but if you want to practice usury, that's fine.
Hopefully, we can help her get to the bottom of this mess in a way that she will actually learn her lessons. Family stuff sucks.
We have had a bit of trouble trying to figure out what to do with a relative of ours. She's found a way to really get into more trouble than anyone should be able to get into.
She's figured out how reproduction works. Which I don't think anyone is truly shocked about. But to make matters worse, she also found a way to make almost every financial mistake possible for someone that makes $10/hour.
She has some trouble with impulse control. She REALLY wanted a car. She had an opportunity to buy a decent car really cheap, but took financial advice from the wrong people. They suggested she not buy the really cheap car. So, she does what any self-disrespecting person with little to no math skills would do. She bought a car and car dealer that specializes in loans to people that can't do math or research.
On the brighter side, B has almost finished this term in graduate school. One final this week and few more things to take care of and then we get her back for a couple of weeks. I can't wait.
She tells me that this term will be the worse. I hope she's right.
Ash has learned the joys of shoveling! Too bad she's 4 and doesn't like it enough to do the whole driveway clean, but she tries and it's really cute.
Over at my poker blog, you can read about my shot at a World Poker Tour title. Well, that's reaching a bit, but I've found myself going into the final week the league champion. If I can stay in the top two, I'll go directly to state!
It's really starting to feel like Christmas around here.
My new lens will be here soon and hopefully, I'll get back into the swing of taking pictures again. I miss it, but I just can't get into the mood. All of this fresh snow is helping!
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
I like these tests.
Not bad for not having a science class in about 7 years! I think some of the questions were a bit misleading too.
More Geek Funnies
As some of you know, I got my Computer Science degree in 2000. Just before the bubble go pop! I was working in the software industry before that as an intern. This video is really quite funny!
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Can I get one more day this weekend?
What a busy weekend. Friday night, we took took the girls to go see "Enchanted." Here's a little review of the movie, keeping in mind that I tend to review family movies as they pertain to FAMILY movies.
The girls loved this movie! If you have a bunch of boys to take to a movie, this may not be for them. It was definitely a princess movie. Many of the jokes and gags in this move are references to other princesses. So be sure you know who they are! This movie was a musical. Giselle, played by Amy Adams, does a fantastic job of singing and embodying all of the princesses of the past. She does most of the singing in the movie. I usually can't stand musicals. Moulin Rouge! is without a doubt, the worst movie ever made. But I enjoyed this one. The music wasn't great, but the girls liked singing along, so that made me happy.
We saw this movie at the new Wehrenberg Theater on the south side of Rochester. I gotta tell ya, I was impressed. This place was nice AND they had food! We love this cause we can take the kids to the early movie and eat while we watch the movie. Granted...it's not cheap or healthy, but it's a ton of fun! This theater features a lot of digital projection...WOW, does that make a difference. We will be going back.
So we get home from the movie, everyone is singing and happy and ready for bed. Both girls fell asleep on the way home. I get everyone tucked into bed and go to fire up my laptop and start blogging all this stuff, and what's this? The Internet? We AIN'T GOT IT! I've had broadband Internet since Charter Communications started having it 7 years ago. I hate it not being there. So to the phones we go.
I connect to level 1 support and find out that...we've been suspended for abuse. Huh? What the hell does that mean? The give me another number to call. I call the next number. And they tell me the same thing. OK, but do you have any details? No. I need to call this other number (which is the same one Level 1 gave me. These other people work 8 to 5, M-F. WTF! I will have no Internet until Monday morning, and no one knows why? After working my way up the food chain, I'm finally told it's because I get too much spam. Huh? Why is that my problem? And why not just shut down my email address? Again, I'm to call these other people that don't work til Monday. I'm officially steaming now.
I try calling back to see if I got another person that might have English as a top 5 language. This time, I genuinely think they are trying to help me, but to no avail. But he's at least honest and says he really doesn't know why. I should try calling back in the morning after 8. The day people have more access to the info.
I called back right away at 8 am and man this person was right on the ball. We were disconnected because they think we have a virus on one of our computers that's attacking their servers. OK! I know how to fix that, but DAMN couldn't you just call me? They restored the Internet and all of its glory!
But now I need to run virus scanners on all of my computers...and make it to a Pamper Chef party by 10:30 with the girls. Sorry Kt, a friend of mine was having it, it was fun, but we held off ordering a lot of stuff to order from you.
By the time this gets done, the winter storm ravaging the state Minnesota is turning from snow to sleet. We hobble our way over to Home Depot and then to Target to buy supplies. for the rest of the weekend. At this moment I also had a fun idea for supper. We were definitely eating at home tonight, so I thought making homemade pizza sounded like a lot of fun! And it was. I made some pizza crusts and then we let the girls "decorate" their own sections of the pies. It was totally cool! After dinner, we shoveled some of the driveway, but the ice layer totally sucked so much of the driveway has been abandoned. We got done with that and settled in for a little family time watching Christmas specials and then all to bed. I did crank out a post for the poker blog last night...that was way over due as well.
Almost forgot to mention, this is Brenda's weekend to work. We miss mommy...it's been a long time since we had her home on the weekend.
Sunday arrives, Brenda is home, but she's almost done with the worse term of her graduate classes. It's thesis time, so today was spent researching and writing a paper. The weather sucks, the roads suck, so me and the girls are stuck at home trying to stay out of Mommy's hair long enough for her to get something done. We really can't wait for her to be past all this. It'll be worth it in the end, but we miss her, even when she is home.
We got the Christmas tree up. It's not decorated yet, but is up.
I miss my camera. I mean I still have it, but I just haven't been able to take any pictures lately. I need to find the books I bought a couple of weeks ago. One was a book of inspirational ideas. The creative kind, not the religious kind.
This about the longest post I've ever had here. And to think, it only covered the last 36 hours. I really can't wait to get back to work. Peace and quiet at last.
Night all!
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Ain't winter fun!
glass. I think we will be staying home tonight.
