The last hours of Xmas vacation

01.04.2009

Tomorrow morning it'll be time to go back to work. I was last at work for the majority of the work day on Dec 18, 2008. Yes, I am well aware of the intricacies of the workings of "the system" and how to use them to my advantage, so don't hate the playa.

I've enjoyed my vacation time. In years past, I was ready to go back to work after a week or so off. Now that I'm 39¾ I find that I could pretty much stay on vacation 24/7 if I were fiscally able. In fact, there's loads of things I wanted to get done over the past 2 weeks that I just didn't have enough time to get done. With the holidays, there was plenty of traveling to visit relatives, quality times with miscellaneous loved ones, and digesting (yeah, time to get serious on that diet again - *brrrp*).

The weather has worked against me more than I thought it would. One of my little projects was to clean out the garage and use the storage building that I've got in the back yard. The ground has been abnormally soft in the back yard, probably due to having dirt hauled in to fill my little sink hole along with the planting of extra grass in October. When I walk across portions of the yard I sink a little (I'm a good dirt compactor). There's been a lot of rain and I don't know how well a damp yard would hold up to me scurrying back and forth with loads of garage crap. Over the past 2 weeks, the yard hasn't dried out enough for me to not sink a little when I take a step, so the garage has not gotten cleaned out.

I had hoped to make more progress on my Torque learning, but a combination of my brain not wanting to cooperate along with finding other excuses has gotten me behind. At least I have 2 clean bathrooms to make up for it!

I really felt like Xmas vacation was over Friday at 4:00 - that's when I normally would take off from work and begin the weekend. To tell the truth, I was a little down when I realized that. I felt like I was a kid again and it was time to go back to school when I'd much rather stay home and play with my toys. Maybe that's what I should do for the rest of the day?

Hmmm, where's that wrestling ring Evil Matt & Rynn got me for Xmas?

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New Years Resolve

12.30.2008

The majority of people make their New Years resolutions to lose weight or get fit it seems. Last year I made a couple of realistic resolutions - get the leaky roof fixed and to clean out the room of junk that had been getting populated over the last 2 (or maybe 3) years. I was realistic in my timeline of how long these things would take, since neither is something I would just get up and do. There's scheduling, finding better things to do, being in the right mood, etc.

The leaky roof was fixed by a contractor. Since I'm a firm believer in getting something fun when something else is needed, I also got him to tear down the old deck, pour a patio, and haul in a storage building. After 6 months of contracting, he's finally wrapped everything up (and is bringing me the last bill sometime today). The best part is it feels like it's been raining for about the past month, and I don't have a leaky roof!

Cleaning out my room of junk could have taken 3 hours. I did it in a month. I took my time, but I also timed it to where the above mentioned contractor would haul off the crap I didn't need/want. That worked out pretty well, as after he hauled it away from where I stacked everything in the garage, there was now room to pull in the garage and park once again!

So now I'm looking at what I want to get done in 2009. Sure, there's always losing weight, but that's an easy one to put on the list that doesn't have a real timeframe to tackle outside of setting weight loss goals and times. Not to belittle that approach, but I've got other things I want to make sure I accomplish, too. So in hopes of getting crap done next year, here's my first pass at my list (Jerry would be so proud):

• Paint the room formerly full of junk (this entails cleaning the craptastic paint job in which I tried to learn how to paint first).
• Clean out the garage/Use the storage building
• Continue learning to use the Torque Game Engine (now in week 3!) and get the first version of my game together.
• Make a flight simulator cockpit (may have more details on this one later)
• Go to Jamaica. Hopefully come back, too.

There's more stuff to do if you get down to the day-to-day level, but those are my overall large goals for the year. For the normal person, everything there seems easily doable over the coarse of a couple of weekends. I, however, see that as a person who likes to take it easy and believes in the value of a good break, will readily admit that this short list easily fills up whatever free time I may have in a year.

Now I'm going to go lay down and take a nap.

Permalink renovation/remodelling

Not A Mancrush, I Think

12.27.2008

I just got off the Facebook after chatting with my good close personal friend Jason for the past hour and a half, god bless the interweb and Al Gore for creating it.

I haven't actually seen Jason since the last Raw show came to the VBC in 2004. I still call him annually and have gotten to where I'll text snide comments about wrestlers while Raw is on, but I always feel like I'm bugging him at work.

Jason reminds me of my cool cousin from when I was growing up. I wanted to hang out and talk and be cool, but I was always a little afraid of being to nerdy and abrasive. With Jason, I know what he does at work and what all's going on with the WWE so I can actually have a conversation about his job and keep up, but I don't want to force him to talk about work all the time! I've had people that knew I made websites so all they wanted to talk about was websites - not the most interesting of conversations!

But he puts up with me, along with my nerdy abrasiveness that I try to subdue. Along with my observations on JBLs man-titties

Permalink random wrestling

New Tradition?

12.24.2008

I've managed to only watch about 10 minutes of A Christmas Story so far this season. TBS seems to be showing a lot more commercials than I remember. I'm not really in the mood to watch it, though, so it seems like a good excuse to start a new Xmas Eve tradition for myself.

This afternoon I played a whole lot of Lego Star Wars on the old Xbox 360. Tonight I'm going to follow it up with some Jeff Dunham Christmas Special.

Maybe I'll fix myself some hot chocolate, too.

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After 39¾ years...

12.22.2008

I've always bragged, been smug, about having never locked myself out of either my house or my car.

I can't say that anymore.

This morning I went out and about to run some errands. The first stop was the gas station, as I was under ¼ tank and have some driving to do this week. After filling up the tank, I went across the street to the bank to deposit various amounts of moolah that had been coming in over the past couple of weeks. From there I went to the post office to drop off 3 bills in the post office parcel receptacle box. That's where things went wrong.

I drove up to the post office and had to get out to walk the 15 feet to the box. It was 20° and I hadn't driven very far from the gas station and bank, and it was going to take all of 30 seconds to drop off the mail, so I decided to leave the car running (don't get ahead!). I hop out, close the door, drop off the mail, and go back to the car. I pull on the handle. Nothing. Just in case anybody's looking I try it 2 more times. I look down, realizing the car door is locked. The motor is running. My wallet and cell phone are sitting inside the car. There's a touchpad combination lock on the door I've never touched, much less memorized the number for.

Shit.

I go inside the post office, mainly because I don't know what else to do. This is a small post office, and as such the woman working leaves at 11:00 for lunch. I walk in at 10:59. There are 3 of us in line and she looks at me and asks if there's anything I need (evidently I was looking pretty pitiful). "I've managed to lock my keys in the car with the motor running and I have no idea what to do." You can see the mix of sympathy and suppression of a chuckle as she tells me she doesn't know what to do either, but there's a mechanic next door that might have a slim-jim they can use to open the door. I thank her and head to the mechanic next door to repeat my story. It sounds like they've heard this story plenty of times, and soon the girl behind the counter grabs a bag of tools and we go back to my car.

As she starts to perform her magic, a woman in a van pulls up to drop off her mail and notices my predicament. "Locked out? Oh, and your motor's still running! At least the gas prices have come down some." She starts to get back in her van. Her door won't open. She walks around and tries the other doors, but they're all locked. "I don't believe it." She locked herself out, too. None of us could help it, but we all started to laugh a little. She was able to call her husband to come bring the spare set of keys, so she didn't need my lock picking maiden.

After about 20 minutes, she was able to get my door open and I was able to get back inside to my keys, cell phone, wallet, and everything else that makes me a member of modern society. She didn't charge me anything, but I slipped her a $20 out of thanks and relief. The other woman's husband showed up with the spare key and undoubtedly got to hear the story from his wife.

Now I'm going to go lookup my keypad combination, although I may never let go of those keys again.

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