It's snowing.

Hard.

According to the weather reports yesterday, we were supposed to get a "dusting". There's about 2 inches on the ground now, with a forecast of 2-4 inches by this afternoon. Since when is 2 inches a dusting? You normally won't hear me say this, but I am tired of the snow. I want Spring. I want the trees to bloom, I want the grass to need cutting, I want to ride my bike on nice weekends. Hell, I'll even take the seasonal allergies that accompany Spring. I am just so tired of the snow.

Gail and I took the kids and Sarah's friend, Olivia, to breakfast this morning. Cody was asking me what the vents were above the cook's area, and that led to a discussion of how hot the ovens at the pizza place where Gail and I met used to get. I told Cody that not only is that where I met Gail, but where I got a crush on her as well. He said "Oh...so you used to body slam her?"

I choked on my breakfast, and I could see Gail hide the smile that was threatening to become an out right laugh. After coughing for a few minutes, I asked Cody if he knew what I meant by "crush". He shook his head, and I explained it to him.

I tell ya, kids sure can be funny without meaning to be.

Cody and I went to Whitetail yesterday with our Indian Guides group to do some snow tubing. In getting ready, I discovered that I didn't have a hat or gloves. As we were meeting everyone in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, I figured that I'd just pick up a new hat and some gloves there.

Well, silly me, I forgot that it's February. I mean, geez, apparently Spring is just around the corner (mind you, as I type this there's 5 inches of snow on the ground left over from last week, and it's snowing now). They had all their tank tops and flip flops out. When asked about ski caps and gloves, they looked at me as if I was silly and said "No, we don't have any of those". I was almost stunned. Wal-Mart, not HAVE something? sheesh

So Cody and I went hat-less, but the day was nice and neither of us was too bothered by it. We had a good time. I managed to find a tube that had a plastic bottom instead of a vinyl one. Got myself a good running start, belly-flopped down onto it, zoomed down the hill, crashed into the hay bails at the end and went through. It was awesome!

Also went and saw the new Jackie Chan movie, Shanghai Knights, this weekend. Oh man, I laughed my butt off. Hopefully, I'll get a review of it up and stuck in my movies section. I've let that part slack off a bit, but I'd like to get it up and running again, along with the Gallery script for picture management. Time will tell.

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!