Third Quarter New Year Resolution Status Report

Just remembered that I made some New Years Resolutions. Let's check in and see how they are going....


1. Finish that window I half rebuilt last summer
Status: Complete.
Report: It looks like a window. It doesn't leak (it hasn't rained either)

2. Take a vacation
Status: Complete. ...twice in fact.
Taylor at Silver Falls State Park:







Crater Lake National Park in Southern Oregon:











Taylor with Family (nephews, neice, mom) at Crater Lake--Justin, Jared, Taylor, Katie, Claris


3. Don't give the cat a haircut

Status: Failed.

Scruffy sez: I'm COLD now!


Hey, there's a funny animal in the trash. It smells kinda like....me!

POOF!

Reinterpretting the Volume in the Glass

Question: Is your glass half full or half empty?
Motivation: Some kind of personality test.
New discoveries: Scientists have recently uncovered more potential responses. Four out of five scientists agree, there are more than two ways to address the perplexing mystery of the level of matter in the glass recepticle.
Answers:
1. Half Full -- optimist
2. Half Empty -- pessimist
3. Somebody stole the other half of my glass -- paranoid schizophrenic (or playground nerd)
4. The glass is too big -- spin doctor
5. I spilled the other half -- toddler
6. I ordered a SKINNY and this is a SKIMPY. Take this back! -- Spoiled starbucks customer
7. That half glass will be $900 and comes with a free toilet seat. -- govt contractor
8. You only fill it halfway with scotch, anyway. -- Responsible drinker
9. Keep it comin! -- Alcoholic
10. That's way more polonium 210 than you could possibly need. -- KGB
11. The nurse said to fill it halfway and give it to the attendant. -- Drug suspect
12. Yummy! -- Pollyanna

My Dream House

Last night I dreamed I was with a realtor looking at houses.

<...fade into dream scene...>

Realtor: "Here's one that is very affordable. Only 275."
Me: "275 thousand?"
Realtor: "No, just $275. You can get it out of your ATM."
Me: "HEY, that's not a house, you just painted trim and windows onto a port-a-john!"
Realtor: "It's cozy and cheap to heat."

The Best Revenge

Taylor and I went on a cruise to... it doesn't really matter where, does it? Then we came home and I bought a convertible. Is it a midlife crisis? No way. It's THE BEST REVENGE!

The cruise was wonderful. I recommend a cruise to anybody who wants to spend $1000 a day in a hotel that rocks (figuratively and literally) and comes with folded towel animals. Contrary to predictions, we did NOT overindulge (often). We sipped on champagne and thought up many toasts, our favorite of which: "The best revenge!" It may bear saying that we don't really have anybody on whom to get revenge, but if we did....take THAT!

Some pics thinly disguised as attempts to make everybody jealous...(there it is, the revenge part)

Snazzy dress-ups
The room.

New Friend.
New ride.

Take your child to work day

This Thursday is "Take your child to work day". I am pondering the concept. I can see a couple of problems right off the bat. First, I hear plenty of whining and crying on days when no children are at work. Second, many people seem strongly opposed to children at work. Just ask Nike and Kathy Lee Gifford. Finally, and most significantly for me, my entire job revolves around conference calls, computer console screens and emails. Any kid that comes to work with me will decide to drop out of school and give up on life.

Now I see that the day has been renamed to "Take our Daughters and Sons to work day". I didn't catch the reasoning behind the renaming. Maybe you can take them even if they are no longer children. I don't have any children, so I decided to observe "Take your inner child to work day." My inner child, code named ICK for Inner Child-Kid, hasn't seen much action since Dr Phil's "get over it and take some responsibility" style took over pop psychology.

The very first thing ICK noted: "Your office is boring! There are no toys." So I made ICK take my first conference call of the week whilst letting my outer adult go down for more coffee and the paper. Oddly, nobody seemed to notice this switch. After the call, with ICK getting fidgety again, I decided to allow her to assist in some actual work, called: "playing with scotch tape." This involves printing out my car insurance cards and "laminating" them with about 50 yards of scotch tape. Admit it, everybody (I mean everybody's inner child) loves to play with scotch tape.

After that, all facets of my personality got tired of trying to come up with amusing things to say about "Take Your Child to Work Day" and started thinking of other days that we can dedicate to specific child-centered activities, such as:
1. Teach your child some manners day (one day a year would be more than most kids in my neighborhood currently get)
2. Lock your child in the basement with a box of cheerios Day
3. Make your child sleep in a cage day (this is more of a night activity)
4. Lose your child to child services day (sometimes follows cage day)
5. Let your child play with a plastic bag day
6. DON'T take your noisy child to a restaurant day
7. Act like a child at work day (certain co-workers observe this day all year)

I'm sure there must be enough days to fill up an entire year, if not a whole decade.

People who should NOT take their children to work:
1. Strippers
2. Airline pilots
3. Proctologists
4. Me
5. ...

It's a record

Two posts in one day? It can't be! Ok, you're right. That first post today is one I started last August and finally got around to finishing. But this one is new. Let's see how long this takes to write.

I got a couple of inquiries regarding a post from some months back where I mentioned my plan to attend a college reunion. Yes, I did go. No, it wasn't awful. It wasn't even terribly awkward. The Messiah College (jesus christ, what the hell kind of name is that for a college? I digress) class of 1991's 15 year reunion set a record for the highest 15 year reunion attendence in the history of 15 year reunion attendance taking. I saw a bunch of old friends. It was great fun. Everybody looks GREAT. Well, The women all look great...thin, fit and no gray hair (bitches). The men have aged a little more unevenly, from "you look exactly the same" to "omigod! Who's the grandfather over there". There were two of us (hi Cathy!) who were brave enough not to dye our hair. I'm on to the rest of you girls, I KNOW your hair can't possibly be as grey-free as you are putting on. I developed a theory about reunions and looks. The reason everybody looked so great there (and made me feel dowdy) is because the ones who haven't preserved as well don't show up. I'm convinced of my theory and will be writing for research grants as soon as I can figure out what foundation would want to research this.

I have no pictures of this reunion. Why not? Because I left my camera in the car. Why? Because I wore tight jeans that make me look as slim as possible and twarn't room for a camera in them pockets. Twaren't room for a single sheet of note paper in them pockets. Maybe I should have stayed home with the other, normally proportioned classmates. Too late.

Embrace Flatulence

You can't resist, can you? You just have to read an article entitled "Embrace Flatulence". I know how you are. If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't resist either. There it was in my "bulk mail" folder, where all the spam gets dropped. There sat the email with subject line: Embrace Flatulence. After looking past thousands of spams over the last few years to find the three important emails that ended up in there, I have determined that spammers use some kind of random text generator for these headings. And, like the million monkeys with their million typewriters, eventually they came up with something good. So I opened it to see what the spammer had to say about celebrating the wind.

The message was a "hot stock tip" which I didn't even read. But the text at the end of the message caught my eye. Another trick spammers use to get past spam filters is nonsense writing that can't easily be classified by automated methods. The text read like the novels in my dreams. Do you have these literate dreams? I dream I am reading, and there are real words and they almost make sense until I concentrate and then all meaning evaporates (how post modern). Eventually, in my dreams and in my spams, I give up.

What do you think? Can you make sense of this?

"The finished work of art still depends on Ray and other scientists believe that some electronic creatures In medicine and academic research, information technology can be avant-garde will continually rear its unusual head where it's association. The dream to achieve machine intelligence that is imagination. It is the dimension of place in the world that computer programs distribute it world-wide if I so choose. "

I guess if one likes spam, one best learn to embrace flatulence.

New Year Resolutions

Happy new year, non existant readers. You may notice that I changed my blog url. Or maybe you won't.

The new year morning started off pleasantly. Taylor and I sat on the couch congratulating ourselves for a good 2006 and thinking of what we'd like 2007 to hold.

2006 was a good year for us. My work took a turn for excellent. I've been working on a data center standup project as chief Oracle implementer and number one sidekick to the lead data center architect (that comes with no title and many visio diagrams). I had the extreme fortune to spend not one, not two, but THREE weeks in Kansas City in the pursuit of a center of data. Kansas City, for those of you curious coastal types, is pleasant. Gosh darn super duper pleasant without a shred of cynicism, and with lots of malls, strip malls and chain franchises.


Taylor set up a little gym in the basement and took on a few clients. In December, she embraced 40 with gusto, starting with the fanfare of a surprise party. Here's Taylor looking surprised.


Then we had christmas and came up with a little family portrait, minus Pixel, who made a run for it just in time. Scruffy struggled in vain, as you can almost tell. She's just excited to get to her presents.



Now it's 2007, and where were we? Coming up with resolutions. Like many of us who are (none of your business) years old, we don't much bother with resolutions. Besides, we've been exercising, eating (mostly) right, getting enough sleep, putting money in our IRA and flossing. There's not much left to resolve, is there? What we have it more of a to-do list. Here's ours for 2007:

1. Finish that window I half rebuilt last summer
2. Take a vacation
3. Don't give the cat a haircut

And thus begins 2007. Hope you all have a great new year.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, photographic highlights of 2006:

Me and Taylor and the Columbia River Gorge



A day at McMenamins Edgefield

Co-conspirators develop evil golfing plot.









Garden type things









House project type things






Nephews and Niece: Justin, Jared, Katie
Taylor's 40th B Day Party




Kate, Taylor, Diane, Me