Damn it's been a busy week. It's only Thursday morning, but I've already put in 40+ hours. Nothing like a deadline at work to make everyone nuts, eh?

The Commercialization Train that is known as Christmas keeps moving on, and is unstoppable. And I know this isn't a lot of segue here, but have you ever gotten really frustrated when writing something down, and you have a specific word in mind, but you can't spell it correctly, so you attempt to look it up in the dictionary, but because you can't spell it correctly, you can't find it?

Anyhow...

Christmas is coming, and I'm so woefully unprepared. I haven't even started my Xmas shopping. Gail and the kids took care of the tree...it looks great!. I've been working too much lately, so I haven't even seen my kids, let alone go out and shop for them. I think sometime next week, I'm gonna take some time from work and go shopping at the mall. That, or whip out the credit card and go shopping online. Woooo...that can be so dangerous.

And speaking of dangerous (now there's a nice segue. My dad would be so proud :), check out the link to the article below. I think the most dangerous thing on this planet is stupid people. 'nuff said about that! 2022 Edit: Link removed from dead site.

Took my brother to the train station last night. He's off to "the big city"...New York City that is. He's finally got all his crap together and moved up there. Gonna miss him. But he'll be back for Christmas, and it's only a 3 hour train ride up there. I'll make it up there to see him sooner or later.

During the day we cleaned his car, because he had to sell it. He said all the change I found, I could keep and put in my chrome jar. I bet I walked away with over 5 bucks in change. He's worse than I am.

We took his car to Carmax to sell. I have to say, I was impressed with the place. Next time I go buy a car (hopefully soon. The poor little Honda's on it's last legs) I'll be going there.

Yet another Thanksgiving, come and gone.

We had a nice day. My brother came over, my mother in law and Gail cooked all day, we ate, played some board games, ate s'more. Generally, stuffed our faces.

Interesting weekend. Saturday morning, at about 1:30 am, I was awaken by a boom outside. I sat up and said "What the hell was that?" and it must've woken Gail up too, 'cause she answered me with "It came from outside. And I hear voices too." So I got up, and peeked out the window. Took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing was the neighbors car on fire across the street. Naturally, I had to get up and go outside to watch. The fire department wasn't even there yet, so just to make sure, Gail called 911. The next day, the car was just this slag, looks like it's gonna take a putty knife to get all the melted fiberglass off the driveway. At least no one was hurt.

Saw a couple of movies over the long weekend. First one was Unbreakable. The second was the X-Men which we rented. That rocked. As a comic book and X-Men fan, I thought they did a good job.

Not much happening. Tomorrow's Turkey Day. Or, as it seems all the sitcoms seem fond of pointing out, "The Rape Of The Native American" Day. I've seen no less than three shows that mention how poorly the white man has treated Native Americans. Geezus, we're still doing it now. Gail was telling me of a tribe that the government won't recognize. Without government recognition, they cannot open a casino on their reservation. And heaven forbid they find a way to support themselves.

sheesh

/rant

OK, sorry about that. Personally, I'm looking forward to stuffing my face full of food tomorrow. And I plan on enjoying it too!!!

The weather's finally getting cold here. Lit a fire in the fireplace for the first time (well, since we've owned the house anyways). Happy to report I didn't burn the place down.

Cody had his birthday party this Saturday. It was actually a lot of fun, even if some of the kids were on the hyper side. Gail organized a treasure hunt of sorts, with the treasure being the kids goody bags. Cody's party was set to a Harry Potter theme, so Gail made the treasure hunt go into rooms the book had. Cody's was Gryffendor Tower, or something like that. The final stop on the hunt was the "Whomping Willow". Whatever that is in the book, I don't know. But I got to play the part of the Whomping Willow, and as far as I'm concerned, if I get to whomp kids, that's fine by me!