Yes, I know. It's been awhile. But I have a good reason!

I use...or actually, used to use Greymatter for my blogging needs. Unfortunately, there appears to be a bug in the code that allows a program called phpshell to be dropped into my archives directory, which in turn, allows the twit who uses it access to my site. Thankfully my brother, who hosts this site, caught it in time and locked everything down. Naturally, this meant my blog was locked down and I was unable to post. In fact, I am typing this in manually, as it were, instead of using the Greymatter interface.

As of now, I'm not using anything but plain HTML. I'm currently writing a PHP based journal script, that I hope I can eventually use as a blog tool. I'm not especially talented at coding however, so this might take awhile.

In the meantime, I guess it's back to coding by hand!

I spent this past weekend in Cleveland, working. A coworker and I had to update a bunch of Internet Appliances that we support, that are all located in the luxury suites of the Cleveland Browns football stadium. So Friday morning I was up 3:30a.m., to catch a 7a.m. flight out of BWI. I say I was up at 3:30: Actually, my dumb dogs had started barking about 1:30 and as a result, I never really got back to sleep.

So the alarm goes off at 3:30a.m. I head for the shower, cursing the dogs for my lack of sleep the entire time. Get myself out the door and on the road in good time. Make it to BWI just before 5, only to realize that there is absolutely no parking. For some reason it never occurred to me to check on parking. Yeah, sure, I know this is the busiest travel weekend of the year. But do you think I stopped to wonder what all those people did with their cars while they were flying? Apparently I assumed they were magically transported back to their homes, leaving me plenty of parking.

Well, obviously not.

I think this is the first Thanksgiving I've ever spent on my own. Due to a last minute change in plans, Gail and the kids went down to see my folks in North Carolina. I'm flying out from BWI at 7am tomorrow morning to go to Cleveland for work related reasons.

Gail and I also celebrated our 10th Anniversary yesterday. Seems like it should be a big milestone, and I guess it is. We didn't celebrate it like it was one though. We exchanged cards, and then she left to go to NC. I spent my anniversary evening alone as well. How weird.

We have a gift certificate for Maggiano's though, given to us by a friend for our anniversary, and she's even going to watch the kids. So sometime this next week, month, whenever we find the time, Gail and I will sneak out and spend a quiet evening eating some very good food. It sure doesn't seem like it's been 10 years. I mean, that's almost a whole third of my life. It sure doesn't seem that long. I can't imagine my life without Gail, and I imagine if we weren't together, I'd be that much poorer. Not financially speaking, can't get much more broke than we are now. But I'd be so much less of a person. She's definitely become my better half, and I'm much better off with her with me. I love you Gail!

I had to go to the school last night to take a couple of tests for my Student Development class. One was called "Choices" and was basically a career placement test, telling me what I'd be good at. Seems I should be a writer, journalist or screenplay type, or maybe an educator. I think helicopter pilot was in there as well as financial advisor.

I think that test is full of prunes. Financial advisor? HA!

The other test was a personality test called "Please Understand Me" and after asking a ton of questions, it printed out this long report of myself, which, scarily enough, I found to be mostly true.

Go figure.

I had to run to Sam's Club last night to get some moose food for the perpetually hungry moose in our house. It was probably one of the more comical visits to Sam's Club I've had.

First off, don't go at night, or on weekdays. You really should visit Sam's Club (or Price Club/Costco) during the day on the weekend end. Yes, it's crowded. Yes, the checkout lines are long. Yes, parking sucks. But! There's a much better variety of free samples during weekends, and you can practically feed the whole family a well-balanced meal just by going through the different isles.