Another Good Year

Well, Christmas is over and all went well. Mostly well, but we won't discuss the bad. Overall I had a great Christmas and it's finally over. Christmas at my mothers was good, no fighting, and the nieces and nephews actually behaved themselves. Unusual I know, but it was a good thing. My nephews are heathens, especially the youngest. I don't know how my sister deals with him.

By the way, I also turned 40 over the holiday weekend, had a great dinner on my birthday. I went to Landry's Seafood House and enjoyed an excellent seafood dinner.

I got the entire week off, so I will be upgrading my system to Windows Vista, just to see how everything looks and feels. With the upgraded video card, I should have no problems. I'll let you know how it works out. I already use IE 7, Media Player 11, and have some of the Vista features on my XP machine, so I anticipate a smooth transition.

Fantasy Football Champion

Well, the regular season for football is over. This means that the Fantasy Football season is over and the championships for my league are complete. This year I won the championship. My season record was 10-4, I barely squeeked by the first round of the playoffs, but tore up my opponent for the championship. I love this game.

The Highlanders are the Champs and now to start my legacy and research for next years start to the Highlander dynasty.

Something Cool

I was sent these photos not too long ago and thought they were pretty cool. I'm sure that you've seen ice sculptures before, but check these out.

Early Christmas

Christmas came early, to our house, this year. Our oldest son's job is shift work, so he would be working on Christmas weekend. We decided to have christmas a week early, and what a good Christmas it was. There weren't that many gifts under the tree, but what was there rocked.

We really had a good time, and all turned out well. I got my wife some jewelry, diamond braclet and matching earings. She also got a new coat. I got a kick ass monitor, 19" HD widescreen LCD. I love it. Kudos to the wife who got me that. My youngest son got me a new GeForce 6200 video card. We got our oldest son a home theater system, and the youngest a new digital camera.

Yeah, overall a very good Christmas indeed. But wait, there's more to come. We still have to travel to my mother's home this weekend, for the family Christmas. Wonder what we'll get there.

It won't be all Christmas at Mom's though. I have to reinstall her OS and update all of her drivers. The system that she has is a Dell L800. It's an old machine, that came with Windows ME. It's never had any issues, so I'm also performing some upgrades for her. She will get some additional memory, so that when I install Windows XP on it there won't be any problems.

Old Actors

Ya know, I like Sylvester Stallone movies as much as the next guy. A great actor he's not, but I enjoy most of his movies. To do another Rocky movie at his age though I think is ridiculous. I have also read that he is making a new Rambo movie as well. Come on Sly, don't you think that the action hero in you is about done. Really look at him in the picture.

It's over Rock!

Thanksgiving

Thank God, that Thanksgiving is over. Although the holiday turned out better than expected, it was still a mad house. Never again will I have that many people in my small apartment.

The turkey turned out great. All the desserts were fantastic. This year I made a pecan pie, an almond pie, a butterscotch cheesecake, lime cheesecake, and a devils food cake with milk chocolate icing. They were all real good. The almond pie was the suprise dessert. It was made from a recipe that I made up. So it was an experiment that turned out phenominal.

Christmas shopping is almost completed. No we didn't go out on Black Friday. My wife and I went out on Saturday, and got almost everything bought that we needed. We still have two more gifts to buy and we are done. I just can't believe how much we are spending this year, it's a small fortune.

Nothing really.

I don't really have much to say today. I'm doing quite a bit of research lately. I'm big into genealogy, and have had recent contact with people searching the same surnames that I research. Just thought that I'd write a little something so that I didn't go another year without posting.

I'm not one of those bloggers who obsesses over their blog. In fact, if I didn't update for a while, it wouldn't bother me. Hell look at my posts. It was a year between two of them.

Television

Have you ever noticed how much television has changed since you were a kid. I have, and I don't like the trend.

I have several shows that I really enjoy, but the networks are making it really hard to enjoy them. I watch Lost on a regular basis, and realized the changing format during it's first season. Have you ever noticed how many commercials they play during the airing of Lost, Heroes and Jericho. As I watched Jericho last night, I noticed it more. Every ten minutes there were at least 2-3 minutes of commercials. At one point they only aired 5 minutes of the show. From 8:35 to 8:40 then more commercials.

In my humble opinion, this is crap. I understand that without commercials, television networks would lose money, and I don't have a problem with selling advertising space. But come on. When I'm really into a show, I don't want to see 10 minutes of it and then 3 minutes of commercials, then 10 minutes more of the show and more commercials. Why can't it be standarized so that 15 minutes is aired, then about 4 minutes of commercials, or even air 30 minutes of the show and have a 10 minute intermission of commercials.

And what's with the Fall Season Finale, what is that crap. Lost went off the air after what 5 episodes, not to return until February. Heroes and Jericho are going to do the same thing. It's garbage, and if enough people say something, then maybe we can change how the networks are dividing up our leisure time.

Write the networks a letter.

http://abc.go.com/site/contactus.html

http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Contact_Us/

http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.shtml

Vacation Blues

Vacations are great! I’m always so excited when it time for a vacation, until the days arrives. Vacations can be as stressful or more that my regular job. There are the travel plans, having to spend all that money, and then the travel home. I like to drive instead of fly. It’s a way for me to get closer to the world I live in. It allows me to see things that I would never get to see from a plane.
My wife and I recently took a week off and traveled to Florida. So the day finally arrived and it was time to go. We got in our SUV, and hit the road. First stop our son’s house to drop off the dog. No big deal you say, our son lives 5 hours from us. So we pack up the car/truck and hit the road Saturday morning. We get to Chris’ house and stay the night, leaving the dog behind the next morning. We drove for about 12 hours, making frequent stops along the way, since we didn’t have to be in Orlando until Tuesday. We stopped at the Visitor center in Mississippi, after driving through New Orleans.
New Orleans still looks bad from I-10. There are abandoned apartment complexes, that look like they belong in a war zone. There were still quite a few buildings with blue tarps on the roofs.
Once through Mississippi, we stopped at the visitor center in Alabama, and drove on to Mobile. We stopped in Mobile and took a tour of the USS Alabama. We then travelled on to Quincy, Florida. We stayed the night there. Monday morning we both awoke early and decided that we still had a day to get to Orlando, that we would drive down to Tampa and go to Busch Gardens.
We arrived in Tampa about 12, and were in the park by 12:30. Fantastic park. Much better than Busch Gardens Williamsburg, in Virginia. My wife and I are amusement park nuts, we love roller coasters. We had a great time at Busch Gardens and got quite a few pictures. Being only an hour from Orlando, we decided that we would drive about halfway and stay the night. We spend Monday night in Plant City.
We drove on to Orlando the next day. Checked in to the visitor center, per our vacation package, extremely early. We then went to the hotel and hoped that they had a room for us and we didn’t have to come back 5 hours later. Luckily, our room was ready, so we checked in and got some rest. Wednesday. The day had finally arrived. We got in the car and drove to Universal Studios. Nice park. It was very clean and we had a great time. Just not enough thrill rides, we thought. We enjoyed Busch Gardens more. We were scheduled to go back to Universal the next day, but realized that our tickets were for only one of the two parks and not both. We had ridden all of the rides and saw all of the attractions the previous day, so we decided to check out and head home.
I drove straight through to our sons house on Thursday and we left early Friday morning. Man it was good to get home. I didn’t do anything for the next couple of days, I was so tired. I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation. Finally it was back to work on Monday.

Who Am I?

Have you ever sat and wondered, what is it about me that makes me who I am. Occasionally that’s exactly what I do. I’ve reached middle age now and look back on my life and wonder what I’ve done, what exactly have I done to make this a better world. Honestly, I can’t think of a single thing that I’ve done that has changed the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some really cool things, but nothing worthy of changing the world except my own.
I spent 10 years in the service of my country. I had a great time, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Hell, I was involved in a war. I was in the U.S. Navy, and served during Desert Storm. Having said that, holidays honoring veterans are very special to me. Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Independence Day are very significant to me. I am very patriotic and am not afraid to voice my patriotism. I recently went to a Veterans Day ceremony, and that is what has led me to this post.
Getting back to the topic at hand, what is it that makes me, me. Sure, my military service has a lot to due with it, but what else. I think that my wife is who makes me who I am, more than anything else. She is supportive of my and all of my endeavors. When I was offered my current job, she packed up and moved with me, not knowing what lay in the future. For all she knew, I could have been employed for temporary purposes and we would have to move again. The thing is that she took the risk with me and because of that I will be forever grateful. She is the one who makes me strive to be a better person. She talked me into going back to school and getting my degree. Because of that, I was offered my current job. So for those of you that wonder what it is about you that makes you, you. Look around, it’s the things that you take for granted, that make you who you are.

Family Can Be Hell

Sometimes family can really be a pain in the ass. This year, my mother decided, without asking, that we would have the family Thanksgiving dinner at my place. Now I live in a 1000 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment. How the hell am I going to get 14 people in there comfortably. I think she did it because my sister recently moved to the same town, where I live. This gives her an excuse to visit me, since I have no kids and my sister has 2.

So now I have to spend buttloads of money to buy all the stuff for dinner that night. Good thing that I finally have a job that pays well.