Category: Misc

It's been a very busy weekend. We've done lots of stuff. We went to Kites on Ice. It was a lot of fun. You go out on the frozen lake (I'd never done that before!) and watch all of these internationally known kiters do their stuff. The kites are massive and some of them can do really cool stuff with their kites. It's fun to see all of the little kids and the various puppies that are there. There was a gorgeous Husky. Matt and I realized too late that we should have brought May. But it was probably for the best. She would have had to walk a lot and she doesn't like that so much these days.

We had a nice V-day dinner too. We cooked lobster, which came out very nicely. And we cooked some amaretto tarts that wer excellent.

As part of our V-day festivities, we re-purposed our coffee-table. It got damaged when we moved and it's never been quite right since then. So we took off the top and put the two ends on top of each other to make a very nice bookcase. Then we put up our new coffee table this morning. It looks darn good and we didn't lose any storage space.

We also danced for about an hour today. We're getting way better at it. Now we can do Light Mode stuff without too much trouble. We're still quite white though.

I found the most wonderful thing at Target today … Apple Sour Altoids! They're in one of the sour-type tins, but it's got red on it. They're very very tasty. Even better than the citrus variety.

I also made Matt his Valentines day present. He's already opened it because we're celebrating this weekend. So I don't mind sharing what it is … It's a jar with some of our pictures facing outward all around. Its filled with candy, so the picture gets pushed to the outer-most bit of the jar. It turned out very well if I do say so myself. Matt gets a few cute pictures for his almost-barren cube and some lovely Valentine's Day candy. Everybody wins!

I'm ready for a normal day today. I just want to do my normal stuff and not have to spend time on the phone with tech support or anything like that. All I want to do is get some work done and clean up the place a little.

I need to run some errands too, but I'm not sure I can persuade myself. It's freezing cold outside and my car is burried under about 5″ of new snow. And since I can run them tomorrow, I may just beg off that.

We're going to try to go to Kites on Ice tomorrow. We'll go for sure if it's a nice day. But if it's not, we may wait 'til Sunday. According to The Weather Channel, Sunday actually looks like a better day. Well we'll see.

My precious computer is back to the land of the living and it's actually functioning better than before. This sort of thing always makes you want to re-examine your backup strategy. I backup once a week, but there's always some stuff I'd lose. I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Obviously, I'm in an excellent mood.

Your morning should never start out with a “Blue Screen of Death.” It just does not bode well. Yes, folks, sadly, that is what awaited me this morning on the pretty little laptop when I got up. A big ol' uninviting blue screen with aliased text and threatening language full of hexadecimal codes and warnings. It said that something was wrong with my computer. Now, 1.5 hours later, I still don't know exactly what. It seemed to be a hard drive failure. But my Indian friends at Dell seem to think Windows screwed itself up (a likely cause, I'll admit). And so now, I'm waiting while the computer does the check disk operation. Hopefully my hard drive is OK. I mean, I backed up last week, but a lot can happen in a week.

I'm trying to keep a good sense of humor about it. It doesn't really help in these situations to get all fiesty and upset. You just make mistakes and do dumb things. So I'm looking at it as a very good anecdote. Positive Positive Positive.

Ok, naming your kids after yourself is sure way to guarantee your kid will be in counseling later in life, but this kid is going to have real problems. According to Fox News, Jon Blake Cusack decided to name his kid Jon Blake Cusack 2.0. He probably though it was a cute idea or some way he or his kid could be different. Unfortunately, on the playground, being just means you get you get your ass kicked. Moreover, when you name your kid after yourself, everyone including the kid gets the impression that the jr. is supposed be the little copy of the dad. When picks his own path, everyone’s disappointed. Not only is this kid going to be expected to follow in his father’s foot steps, he’s really going to be expected to be a little geek. Can you imagine what would happen when this kid worked for a law firm, what would his cards say. Running for public office is totally going to be out of the question. “Yes, I’m version 2.0 and I want to be your next congress man!” Doesn’t really work now does it?

Why can’t we just give our kids their own name. If you want to name your kid after yourself, fine, just don’t make him a laughing stock in the processes. What sounds cute now when PCs are relatively new is going to sound really stupid when this kid turns 50.

Tammy: Good morning is Matthew there?
Me: No. And he's never here during week days, he works. And you keep calling, sometimes 3 times a day. So can you PLEASE stop calling? Please take him off your list.
Tammy (sounding a bit taken aback): Yes, sure. We can umm take you off the list for a period of umm twelve months. Is there umm anything else I can do for you?
Me: Can you make it any longer?
Tammy: Umm yes. We will put you on our no call list. This may take 30 days to process.
Me: Can you make it shorter?
Tammy: ……

is snow! And it's finally snowing today. I probably shouldn't be so glad about it since it's going to make running errands and being productive kind of hard, but snow makes everything so pretty! But since I don't really feel like going out in it, I'm postponing my errands 'til tomorrow and I'm going to stay home, look at how beautiful it is, and get work done! It'll be good.

Currently, it's -6 out. With a windchill of -25. And Matt still holds hopes of going skiing in this frigid climate. Ha! Taking the dog out 3x/day has become really really hard. Especially since Ms. Puppy clearly does not feel the cold like we do. Yesterday she had me outside in the wind for a good 10 minutes while she did her business. Usually it's closer to 5. But who can be mad at the puppy?

And of course, I must wish you a happy Chinese New Year. It's the year of the monkey! Just like it was when Matt and I were born. In honor, Google has decorated their banner with a couple of monkeys.

Happy New Year!

It's awful. We totally managed to trash this apartment over the weekend. So congratulations to us. I guess it was a successful weekend. I will, of course, be cleaning up today. But not that much … our vacuum is in the shop for its yearly checkup. Hopefully it will come back tomorrow and I can rid our floor of all the dog hair that has accumulated. It's quite gross.

It's absolutely freezing here … still. We got up early this morning to go visit a travel agent. She was not very nice and absolutely no help (quoted us about $300 worse than what we could do!) and we had to get up way early. Anyhow, when we were in Matt's car, the thermometer was reading 5 degrees. Brrr!