Wow...can you believe there is only 125 days left until Christmas? Ack! Quick!! Start shopping!
Heh. I know the 2 of you that are reading this are probably sittin' there in shorts (unless you're my mom) and thinking "OK, he's off his rocker". Well, OK, yeah, so I probably am. I just happened to be looking ahead in my calendar, figuring out when my classes were in such, when I decided to count the days.
One of things that bothers me about the holiday season (OK, one of many, but I'll wait until it gets closer to talk about them all) is when people ask me what I want. I have a pretty standard answer: Gift Certificates. I love getting gift certificates, because then I get to choose exactly what I want, the person shopping for me doesn't have shop for hours, and everyone is happy. Who wouldn't love getting gift certificates? I love getting gift certificates from Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. Those are probably my favorites of the "Brick and Mortar" crew. I love Amazon gift certificates as well.
However, there are some people who just aren't happy with buying gift certificates. Those people aren't content unless they spend hours shopping for the person in question. I think it must be a gene or something. My mother-in-law is one of these types, and I think my wife is following in her footsteps. So, for those that absolutely must shop, I've created "wish lists", at both Harley-Davidson and Amazon.com. If you get me something off of one of these lists, I'm guaranteed to love it. So no worries about me not liking anything.
These lists, or more specifically, the Harley-Davidson one, serve a dual-purpose. Aside from those who want to actually buy something, it's a good way to keep track of what I want to get for my bike/HD collection. Too many times I've seen something and thought, "Oh, that'd be cool", only to be thinking "What was that again?" just a few days later. I didn't want you guys thinking I was just making lists so people could by me stuff. I mean, c'mon, I'm not THAT materialistic.
I was up late last night, watching The Green Mile and folding laundry. Folding laundry is a task I can do with minimal fuss, as long as I can watch the TV while doing it. So I usually get to fold the laundry. And I'm happy to do it, as long as there's something worth watching on. But I digress...
Anyways, I'm sitting there watching the movie and folding laundry at about 11 p.m. last night when I hear Cody get out of bed. He comes out of his room, and without really seeing me, he starts heading downstairs. I asked him where he was going, and he said he was getting some water for the clams. He stood there at the top of the stairs for a minute, while I held my silence waiting to see what he would do. When he didn't do anything for a minute or two, I told him to go back to bed. He simply turned around and climbed back into bed without any fuss.
At least he didn't feel the need to go to the store to get the dogs some dog food or anything.
My weekend was very unproductive, and goal-less. Well, I take that back; I did have one goal that I wanted to accomplish, and that was staying barefoot for all day on Sunday. And I accomplished it! Hooray for me. Other than that, I worked on the forums for my Harleyroads site, and I went to a friends house on Friday night. Taught them how to play Asshole, got them pretty torqued, and managed to get home around 3:30 in the morning. It was a lot of fun though.
OK, that was odd. I took a quick run down to the bathroom to, well, to do what you do in the bathroom. I was standing at one urinal, and guy who is on my team was standing at the other. He'd just gotten back from vacation (lucky bastard) so I welcomed him back and asked how the beach was. He said it was nice, but that he'd actually gotten back last week. Then I remembered it was a different guy on our team who was back today. By this time, we'd both zipped up and were washing our hands, when this voice came from the stalls and said "Oh, is he back?" It was our boss in the stall, doing what guys do in stalls. It was a strange moment to be sure.
Bathroom etiquette is simply odd. I mean, EVERYONE has to pee or poop at some point in their lives. Yet, whenever we're in the bathroom (at least men...I don't know if women do it any differently), it's like there's this "No Talking" sign posted. Some people abide by that sign as if it were written law, while others seem to go out of their way to flaunt their disregard for such silliness. Personally, I fall into the latter category. The people that crack me up the most are the guys that sit in the stall, and flush every time they're going to make some noise (i.e. fart). Every thirty seconds, they'll flush the toilet. C'mon, we all know you're not going THAT much. And if you are, perhaps you should see a doctor!
Well, this entry certainly did get a bit off track. Ah well. At least I didn't talk about work :)
While waiting for my pathetically slow Windows machine to build, I decided to write this entry. I did a quick bit of upkeep on the front page, namely taking off the hoopty cool fade on the buttons. As I've been using Mozilla more often, and it doesn't support that sort of thing, I found it more annoying than cool, so I did away with it.
I've also been using my Powerbook G3 a lot more. I could really get to like OS X. And at work, I burned out the video card on my older Mac desktop, so they gave me a new "Quicksilver" model. Woo...damn sexy beast of a machine. I love it! I might seriously consider getting a Mac for my next home computer. Who knows, maybe you'll see me on a "Switch" commercial.
My thoughts have been on home more than usual lately. Home being Arizona of course. I may have lived out here in Virginia for almost 4 years now, but AZ will always be my home. After this summer, I would gladly go back to 110 degree heat, as long as it meant not having to deal with 80% humidity on top of it. It's one thing to be 100 degrees. It's another to be 100 degrees with 95% humidity. I don't know how people stand it. Aside from a few short days last week, it's been like that all summer. Ugh. So yeah, give me the dry heat of the desert, or better yet, the cool air of the mountains. Man, I miss home.
I refuse to let July slip by with only one entry, such as June did. Makes it seem pointless to have a journal with only one entry a month. On the other hand, it seems pointless to have a journal whose entries lately consist of "I've been working", "I've been busy at work", and "Geez, it's been reallllly busy at work!"
So hopefully the rest of this journal entry will be everything BUT work.
How pathetic. I sat here for at least half an hour trying to think of something to write about other than work. I can write about kids, they're doing fine. Cody's physical therapy is coming along well. Gail's been teaching Sarah how to swim, and apparently she can swim underwater very well. Now we just have to get her to swim on top of the water.
But other than the occasional game of Starcraft or a new one, Stronghold, over at Jeff's, it's been nothing but work mostly. We did finally manage to get the dark blue wallpaper out of the master bath, so it's much brighter in there. Now, we need to get new sinks, cabinets, and light fixture. Oh, and new shower doors. I found some at Home Depot that I really like.
I also think I might like to add some more color to this site when things cool off at work. Then again, perhaps not. I kind of like the simplicity of it. Thoughts?
Our 4th of July weekend was a blast. Gail's parents came out from Tucson, and we took them out to Ida Lee park in Leesburg, where we've gone every time since we came out to the East Coast. We keep meaning to get into D.C. to see the National fireworks, but something always precludes us from going. Aside from the extra tight security and terrorist threats, there was the heat to contend with. And truthfully, I think I was more concerned with the heat than the other stuff. Besides, Ida Lee usually puts on a fantastic show. They had several moon-bounce things for the kids, vendors selling your typical carnival food, and a live band, The Fabulous Hubcaps. We had a great time, and the fireworks were probably some of the best I've seen.
Other than that, it's just been work. Work, work, and more work. We have a huge project, and the launch date was moved up by almost a whole month, so everyone is scrambling like mad. Truthfully, I shouldn't even be writing this. I should be trying to figure out why my stuff doesn't work like it should. But I've been working 70 and 80 hour weeks, so I thought I'd take 15 minutes to update my journal. Poor thing probably feels neglected. :)
At work, we are currently working on getting the client for China working. For the longest time, my main job didn't have anything to do with the client itself. Instead, I worked on getting our Internet Appliances out the door to different people around the company. Not a real demanding job, rather a boring, and degrading one to some extent.
Well, last week, my boss called me into his office and said that he wanted me to handle the address book for the China client. This is a HUGE task, and I get to do it. gulp While it's cool that he trusts me with this, I haven't done any of the sort of coding required for this for almost 3 years. And what I did before hand was piddly stuff. This is huge, major, push it out the door code...eeeep
So anyway, I'm in major panic mode. Guess we'll see what comes of it.
If you've never camped in a zoo, I suggest trying it. The Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo up in Maryland offers a package where you get to camp in the zoo overnight, they feed you both dinner and breakfast, and you get a twilight tour of the zoo, as well as some entertainment on their stage. It was a lot of fun, and Cody and I really enjoyed it. The zoo itself is fairly nice, and they have a good selection of animals. I tell ya, there is nothing like being awaken by lemurs hootin' and hollerin' at 4:30 in the morning. They get LOUD.
It was a fairly busy weekend overall. Cody had a ball game Saturday afternoon, then we had to bust our asses up to Maryland to make it to the zoo by 6. On the way there, we had the first of what I imagine will be a few "sex" talks. After I explained the basics to him, he was silent a moment, then went "EEEEEWWWWW!!!! I am NEVER getting married!!" I just had to laugh. So after a few minutes, and some more explanation, I told him that if he had any questions about any of this stuff, that I wanted him to come to his mother or I, and we would do our best to answer him honestly and fairly. Then I asked if he had any questions and he said yes. So I braced myself for my first related sex question and he said:
"What I want to know, is what you think the most ferocious dinosaur is after the Tyrannosaurs Rex."
Okie Dokie then. Not exactly what I expected, but for some reason, it didn't really surprise me either.
Sunday I went to my friend Jon's to start work on his new website. He's going to do the graphics, and I'm going to help with the coding of it. I'm pretty excited about it. Jon's very talented when it comes to that stuff, and I like working with him. After about 2 hours of working, we decided to go see a movie, so went and saw the new Star Wars film. I have to say, I liked it a lot.
After that it was home to relieve Gail of a frustrating afternoon of dealing with barking dogs. We really need to get a fence.
I've implemented a curse jar in our house. Gail has a toilet mouth, so now every time she curses, she has to pay a quarter to it. This includes crap, damn(it), and Gail's favorite, dumb-ass. Within half an hour of my setting it up, there was a buck in there.
She was in bed reading, after having made her first deposit to the curse jar. She was reading an article about how some guy in California is cryogenically freezing hair so that when a cure for baldness is absolute, men can get their hair out of storage, and have it grafted (or whatever) back on to their head. She then said "Only in California would they come up with this bullshit...oh Crap! Oh DAMMIT!" At this point, she shoved a Kleenex in her mouth to keep from cursing more. Needless to say, she almost double the amount of money in the curse jar within about 10 seconds.
It was an enjoyable weekend. Cody had a game on Saturday, which they actually won. It's the first game this year that they've won, which had everybody pretty jazzed. The coach even did this high-step thing through the dugout when they got the last out. I ended up having to leave early, and go to my bosses office to get a standing table and bring it back to work. A standing table is for paraplegics (My boss is in a wheelchair), and allows them to stand up for periods of time. It'll be kinda weird to have him standing up when I go in there.
Sunday, we went to Camden Yards and watch the Orioles beat the Kansas City Royals. It was a good game, made better by the fact that I didn't get any more sunburned than I already was. Camden Yards is a neat ballpark, and we had pretty decent seats down the third-base line. I'd like to go more often, I just wish it wasn't so far away.
Afterwards, we came back, picked up Sarah (she spent the day over at Marcia's for Olivia's birthday party...another fact which probably added to my enjoyment of the game) and then got the kids home, got them fed, got them washed and got them to bed (Ugh...so many 'gots'...my dad would be horrified). Gail and I spent the rest of the evening watching Bull Durham, a movie she hadn't seen.
It was a pretty decent weekend. Too bad it had to be spoiled by Monday :\
Yes, it's true. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel called Spring Semester. One more class (English) to go, and I can call it quits for the summer.
After spending about 2 weeks on my presentation for my business class, it turned out that we simply didn't have the time. Half the class didn't get to give their presentations. Personally, I was kind of put out. I would have liked to present my nifty-keen Power Point presentation on Harley-Davidson. As it is, I made the teacher watch my intro anyways. Ah well, she seemed to like it. After that, we graded our finals. She had us trade with one another and then we grade that paper. Right off the bat, everyone got 5 points because this was an older quiz she hadn't had time to update, so some of the questions weren't in the chapters covered. Then after the grading, we discussed some of the questions. In all, she gave everyone an extra 8 points. So my grade on the final? Out of a possible 100, I got 106.
Go figure.
I'm 99.99% certain that I have an A in my Business class. My English class, which I have my final in this Monday, I'm not so certain. I'm thinking I'll have a B...which, in reality, isn't a big deal, and might even be better if I DID get a B. I think it's cool having a 4.0 and all, but I don't want to kill myself just trying to get a 4.0. I just want that piece of paper that says "I'm Smart! S-M-R-T that spells Smart!" As long as I earn my degree, I'm not going to worry if I have a 4.0 or not.
For some reason, "Classical Gas", that catchy guitar piece by Mason Williams has been in my WinAmp player a lot lately. I have versions done by Chet Atkins, California Guitar Trio, and The Boston Pops. I just can't get enough of this song at the moment.
Spent the weekend either riding or cleaning. And getting my butt whooped at Starcraft. I packed the bike and did a quick 100 mile run, getting the kinks outta the packing job. Don't want to have a load shift on me as I'm doing 70mph down a freeway somewhere. That wouldn't be good!!
Countdown - 2 days, 21 hours, 35minutes.
And it'll probably seem like 2 days, 21 hours, and 350000 minutes.