I've been pretty quiet lately so I figured I'd pipe up and let y'all know what's current.

Monday was our seventh wedding anniversary. I took Lovely Wife to the newly opened Georgia Aquarium. Highlights included skipping the 2 hour wait for security by taking advantage of some severely harried guards, smuggling in contraband and drinking beer with lunch. No, those last two aren't related - they sell beer at the aquarium café. Unfortunately they don't sell fish there. They could make a killing if they sold some fish fry. After looking at fish for a couple of hours I was dying to eat one.

Dinner didn't work out as planned. We were out of the aquarium earlier than we expected so we went Christmas shopping. Our travels ended up putting us quite a distance from our target restaurant when the hunger finally hit. We opted for a shorter journey to a different restaurant that we'd been meaning to try. We hunted for it, finally surrendered and called 411 to find it, arrived and found it closed. Closed as in "out of business" closed. That was a bummer. We ended up at our family favorite restaurant.

I'm currently reading A Feast for Crows, a Christmas present from Helen. Helen continues to kick ass in a seriously hardcore way. Thanks, Helen! :-)

My desktop:

I continue to despise taking a crap at work. My bowels tell me that I'll be doing so a bit later this morning. Feh.

The boys visited the dentist. Bear has an extra set of teeth up top that'll need to be removed. He also had two adult teeth coming in but trapped behind a couple of baby teeth that refused to relinquish occupancy. Tooth extraction was scheduled. Over the weekend I offered him $5 if could remove one (it was wiggly) before the big day. He took the challenge, earned himself $5 and saved us $80. The other tooth turned wiggly too so we cancelled the extraction and will let nature take it's course.

Work continues to be demanding. I'm taking over four projects from a coworker who's a bit overloaded. Oddly enough, two of them are ones she took over from me several months ago when my mega project became too demanding.

After Friday I'm off for 10 days in a row. Ten days in a row? Damn, I haven't seen that since high school. To be specific, ten days off and then having a job at the end of it hasn't been seen. Ten days off due to job loss has happened a couple of times.

Dopple-G and his fiance came over last night bearing gifts. The boys were thrilled with their presents and spent the better part of an hour finding plastic toys and bottle caps to wrap up in order to return the favor.

That's about it for the moment. More later. But probably not today.

Posted by: Jim at 08:31 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Last night I found this true story about the worst Christmas party I ever attended. In the end I triumphed. Sort of. It was dated December 2003 and IÂ’ve no idea if I ever posted it or not. Reflecting back on those days, a case could certainly be made that I was an asshole. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:30 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Just finished putting the Christmas decorations up!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:56 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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ItÂ’s that time of year again. In order to make things easy on you, and insure that I get exactly what I want, I offer the following shopping guide:

I need some decent earphones for the iPod. The stock earphones are uncomfortable and lack the required dynamic range for maximum enjoyment.

Sony Fontopia MDR-EX70LP Earphones
Price: $49.99

These are available online from many retailers so order now to avoid an uncomfortable wait on my part.

IÂ’d also like something to help me wind down from a hard day at work. ThereÂ’s an add-on to Rome Total War, the video game I have driven into the ground. ItÂ’s called Barbarian Invasion Expansion Pack, $24.99 on Amazon.

If you could make these two happen IÂ’d be happy.

Aside from that, you could always make a deposit into my ‘special account’ at the bank, you know the account number.

Last, but certainly not least, can we just buy this damned thing and get it over with? I swear by all that is holy that you can drive it on Saturdays.

Please have the courtesy to make a similar list for me. We donÂ’t want a replay of the shoe incident, do we?

True Story (from my original blog):

The womenÂ’s shoe store. We were Christmas shopping together and she took me in and pointed them out. I looked down at them.

"Look closely."

"Okay," I said.

"Do you see the heel?" she asked.

"Yes, I see it."

"And the toe? See the difference?" She held up another shoe.

"Don't worry. I understand."

We left the mall. Several days later I went Christmas shopping alone. I had bought her every gift on her list. Only the shoes remained. I went back to the store, back to the exact spot where the shoes were. But they all looked the same.

Granted, I tend to tune out when people talk to me. I'm in my own world most of the time. I guess I wasn't paying attention. And now I'm looking down at these shoes and every pair looks the same. I tried to guess the exact spot I was standing in when she showed them to me, thinking I might find the right ones by dead reckoning, but I had no distinct landmarks. Meanwhile, it's a few days before Christmas and the place was packed. These things were flying out of there. Women were grabbing shoes and holding them up over their heads yelling sizes. I had been at the mall for a long time. I was hungry. I was tired. I had no hope. I picked a pair and bought them. I was certain I had narrowed it down to two pair and I chose one.

Fast-forward to Christmas day. All the presents opened except for one box. She opened the box and took out a shoe. Not only was it the wrong one, but it was the one she used as example of what she specifically did not want. She went berserker. I thought at one point that she would actually beat me with the shoe.

That was about five years ago. She still reminds me of it constantly. She uses it as an example when she points things out in stores now. And every time she brings it up, it is with the same intensity as that first time when she opened the box.

You really can't imagine.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:43 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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1 Man my wife does the same thing. They just don't know when to let go. I still hear about the time I was drunk in college and crawled in bed with the wife's roommate. Really it was an honest mistake. I took a left at the top of the stairs instead of a right. Yet every time I go our drinking, it's "you'd best not go crawling in someone else's bed". yap, yap, yap.... It's been at least seven years sense that little event.

Posted by: phin at December 09, 2005 10:09 AM (Xvpen)

2 THEY? Ok...time for a beating....

Posted by: The Brat at December 09, 2005 10:50 AM (oqu5j)

3 Hey Phin, if your wife crawled in bed with some dude, she'd still be on house arrest to this day. Yada yada say what you want, you know it's true. As for you Paul, the shoe incident lives on only in your warped little brain. I had forgotten that you had even ever bought me a fucking pair of shoes. I have no requests for Christmas. Give me nothing. Even you should be able to handle that.

Posted by: Quality Lady at December 09, 2005 11:43 AM (fz+XU)

4 I still get nervous around shoe stores and holidays and that's a fact. Look, let's not get all crazy. Especially in a public forum. I'm begging you here...please make a Christmas list.

Posted by: Paul at December 09, 2005 11:50 AM (vbP6L)

5 Ewwww. This is an ugly situation. Best left to private conversation... don't drag the ugliness of a bad shoe purchase into the lime light.

Posted by: Wendy at December 09, 2005 12:53 PM (A6nHr)

6 Hell no......I'll stick my nose into it any time.Someone just HAS to beat up these damn idiots. Ok.........time to hide....

Posted by: The Brat at December 09, 2005 01:21 PM (oqu5j)

7 That is why I buy my own shoes. Well...one of the reasons the other is that I buy shoes on a weekly basis. I have a thing for them.

Posted by: Tiffani at December 09, 2005 01:37 PM (KE4Gu)

8 Pretty sad anyways if you want others to buy them for ya and then ungratefully bitch if they are not the right ones.LOL THAT fact right there would me never ever give that person a damn single thing ever again/

Posted by: The Brat at December 09, 2005 02:05 PM (oqu5j)

9 I'd like a big bottle of gin, the world's largest lime, and a highball glass. Merry fucking christmas. Hahaha, j/k. All the shit I want for christmas is on the wedding registries (BB&B and Amazon). But the thing I REALLY want is this motor swap. Damn that shit's gonna be sweet.

Posted by: shank at December 09, 2005 04:22 PM (jfEhX)

10 Someone is actually willing to marry you? I am impressed.*applauding* Ahum.....sorry.....Gin,eh? Any brand preferences?Wouldn't want you to be all disapointed and stuff,ya know...

Posted by: The Brat at December 09, 2005 04:48 PM (oqu5j)

11 Bombay Saphire > All

Posted by: shank at December 09, 2005 05:50 PM (jfEhX)

12 Did you really think I would give you anything fro Christmas???????????????????

Posted by: The Brat at December 10, 2005 01:16 AM (oqu5j)

13 You need a cell phone that takes pictures for Christmas.

Posted by: CanuckFlash at December 13, 2005 02:28 PM (SVlYg)

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The best thing about Wednesday is that there's usually no turds waiting to greet me in my toilet when I get home. Two out of the three boys have "flushing issues" (guess which ones). On Wednesdays my Lovely Wife takes the kids to a neighborhood homeschooling thing so they're not in the house much. Plus, the chief perpetrator (guess which one) makes it a point to poop over there.

Robitussin messes my shit up. I've got a bit of a chest cold and took some before bed last night. The objective was to prevent coughing so I could sleep. Wrongo. It worked on the coughing but I journeyed through the evening in and out of sleep, coming out of and back in to a seriously freaky dream about linear scaling and druidic ceremonies.

My biggest project is losing its chief architect. The guy who designed the entire system that it's being built on. Just as it's starting to get built. The guy who's taking over is very good too, but doesn't have nine months invested in crafting the application. If that isn't enough to bother me there's the fact that today is his last day and I found out about it yesterday. From my client. I'm finding new levels of pissedoffedness to master.

I had six days off in a row (Thanksgiving through Tuesday). Out of a "to do" list a half yard long I accomplished...nothing. Curiously, that gave me a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

It's "World Aids Day". How are you planning to celebrate?

Yeah, that was pretty cold of me. I just lost all respect for these things when they added "Pretzel Appreciation Day", "Hotrod Month" and "Give NAMBLA a Try Week".

Posted by: Jim at 08:05 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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