Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Isla continued her sickness today, and both Owen and Jennifer claimed to be falling victim to the same bug. For the first eight hours or so, I felt pretty good. A friend of mine, Grant, came over to assist me with some computer issues.

As you may know, I volunteer as editor of The Minnesota Atheist, which is the newsletter of, appropriately enough, the Minnesota Atheists. A few days ago, Jennifer updated our computer which has since left it operating better than it has in over two years. The problem, though, is that I need Mac’s Pages to create the newsletter. I thought I had a back-up copy of this program but, if so, I can’t find it. I found a trial version, which I promptly installed. But for some odd reason, I couldn’t paste into Pages from Word. So, I put out an urgent call for assistance, and by 2:00, Grant was here making everything all better.

At 3:20, I went to the dentist’s office for my six-month check-up. It seems like a stupid time to go, I know, but I wanted to get my second cleaning in during this calendar year and, well, this was a good day since I didn’t have to go to work and was able to go whenever they were open.

By 6:00 this evening, I could tell that I was getting sick, too. This should be a great next few days.

Thursday, 27 December 2012

Yep, still sick.

I had a fever that alternately gave me the chills and hot flashes. Jennifer and Owen were also sick, and though Isla appears to be getting better, she’s still firmly rooted in the “sick” camp.

So there’s not much to write about today. I updated this blog, forced myself to work on the newsletter, and read a book for a while. This afternoon, I took a 2+ hour nap.

In the evening, after Isla had fallen asleep, the rest of us started watching the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was actually better than I was expecting. Jennifer lasted to about the halfway point, then decided to turn in for the night. Owen and I stayed up and watched the rest. After that, I asked him if he wanted to go to bed. Typical for our kids, he said no, so I told him to just sit there and relax. I worked on the newsletter a little more and then, about 20 minutes later, told him we were heading off to bed.

Oh, and by the way, here’s the wood robot that was waiting for the kids on Xmas morning…

Friday, 28 December 2012

Another sick day.

On the one hand, this is a great time to be sick, because I’m home from work anyway. On the other hand, it’s a lousy time, because I had all these starry-eyed plans.

For one thing, I planned to brew some root beer during my time off, and at the moment, it looks like that’s not happening. For another thing, Owen and Jennifer had planned a play date yesterday with some friends. That had to be cancelled. And today, Jennifer was going to spend the day at her parents’ house and then leave Owen there for two nights. But that, too, has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, Isla is at about 90%. Which is good, I guess. However…it’s extremely difficult to be in a house with healthy kids when Jennifer and I are sick. They’re not exactly filled with compassion, and they don’t limit their normal non-stop requesting. Isla didn’t even go down for a nap today, and she spent a good chunk of time today thrashing about and crying over extremely trivial things (even for a two-year old). I guess she doesn’t like it when her parents can’t cater to her. I think she’s a bit stir crazy, too.

All in all, a pretty shitty week off of work.

My wish for this holiday season is to get to enjoy the last three days of the year like I want to.

Tuesday, 25 December 2012

Well…Xmas started off pretty good this morning. The kids opened their gifts, and Jennifer and I each got a gift from Owen (scarf and hot chocolate mix for mama, Star Trek glasses for me). Owen ran around the house looking for clues to uncover the Wii, which was ultimately hiding in the coat closet in the foyer.

No sooner did we rip open all the packaging, however, than we noticed Isla was sick. Jennifer took her temperature, and got a reading of 102 (relax, it was Fahrenheit, not Celcius). So, Jennifer volunteered to stay home wiht Isla.

I felt really bad about this, and even offered to stay home instead, but Jennifer pointed out that Isla would probably want to nurse a few times. And I left Thanksgiving early when Isla was sick for that holiday.

So I showed up at Jennifer’s family’s holiday party – I brought the food Jennifer prepared, and I added the wrapped gifts to the appropriate piles for the dice game.

During the dice game, I decided I would keep two or three gifts unopened and just bring them home to Jennifer so she could have the fun of unwrapping something totally unexpected. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very lucky, and only scored three games during the regular play. For the second phase, I was able to steal two more gifts and no one stole any of mine, so I was left with five gifts. I unwrapped three of them, and decided to keep the other two to bring home.

Here’s a funny thing: After a few people had left, Jennifer’s aunt wondered aloud what happened to the purple scarf she had wrapped up. The green scarf went to one of her niece’s, but she didn’t know who got the other one. She even called her other niece (who had just left) to see if she got it. I thought maybe one of my unopened gifts were the scarf, but she said no, those weren’t from her.

Once Owen and I got home, we discovered Owen had scored the scarf. I hadn’t realized this because I won a can of poppycock and, when Owen brought over his gifts to me, I saw he had won a can of the same stuff. Wrong. While my can was, indeed filled with poppycock, Owen’s had the scarf in it. So, if any one in the family is reading this…Owen got the scarf.

Jennifer got to open her two mystery gifts this evening. One gift was a box of Starburst candies, and the other was a wrought iron star with a hook hanging below it (for hanging a coat, or something). Jennifer said it would be good for the mud room. So, her two mystery gifts turned out to be successes. Both her aunt and her grandma, feeling bad that Jennifer wasn’t there to party with the rst of us, also gave Jennifer a couple of gifts, so she got some other stuff, too. 

If you want to read something super funny, it turns out Jennifer’s not the only one who had a lousy Xmas.

Sunday, 23 December 2012

Despite my strong desire not to, we had to pay a visit to the local Target this afternoon.

The first thing I tried to do there was have some prints made of our holiday card. Generally, I think of Target’s photography department as a place where good pictures go to die…but we had stopped at ProEx just minutes earlier, and they were closed. For good.

So I went up to the self-service kiosk and, after waiting about ten minutes for it to become available, I ordered my prints. When I was done, a receipt spit out telling me my total. I then noticed that nowhere at any time was I asked if I wanted glossy or matte. So I muscled my way through the crowd and got the attention of the kid working behind the desk.

ME: Hey, I don’t see on here if I’m getting matte or glossy.

HE: Well we can only do glossy on this machine.

ME: Well I want matte.

HE: Yeah, we can only do glossy on this machine.

ME: Well can you do matte on any other machine?

HE: Yes, if you order from that computer right there.

ME: That’s the computer I was just using. It never asked if I wanted glossy or matte.

HE: You need to select “Prints in Minutes” to get matte.

ME: Oh, well you should make that more obvious. Well, can you just make mine matte for me?

HE: Uh…well we’d have to go back over to that machine and cancel your order and then resubmit it. But you’ll have to wait for the others to be done.

ME: But there’s, like, four other people in line now.

HE: Yeah.

ME (dropping the receipt on the counter): Forget it. I’ll go somewhere else.

Monday, 24 December 2012

Today we spent all day getting ready for the remainder of our Xmas celebrations. Jennifer prepared all sorts of tasty dishes, and I kept up with the dishes for her while she did that. We kept stealing time to finish wrapping presents in our basement. I love it when our house is abuzz with activity, and we were plenty busy all day.

In the evening, we went to Jennifer’s sister’s house for our family Christmas party. My kids swapped gifts with their cousins, and they recieved gifts from their grandparents and great-grandma. I even got a few gifts: a card game and two books!

When we arrived back home tonight, I brought the gifts upstairs and Jennifer arranged them nicely under the tree. She put a few small gifts in our stockings, too. I found time to complete the wood robot, so I stuck a bow on his head and propped him up on a cabinet in our living room. We decided that it would be fun if Owen had to search around the house for his big gift (a Wii), so I wrote out a series of seven cards, and placed them around the house. One, for example, said, “Where do we keep Isla’s bibs?” and then he’ll have to go look in that drawer and there’ll be another card saying, “Where do we take baths?” and then he’ll have to run upstairs and look in the tub. Hopefully he’ll think it’s fun, but you never know with kids.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Today my department at work held their annual holiday party. I got to leave work early and I drove over to a nearby restaurant. We held a gift exchange. Or maybe it’s more of a gift grab, since we all picked numbers and then selected gifts based on our number.

 I arrived with a gift in much the same fashion as last year. Last year, I checked out Google Images until I found a Barnes and Noble coupon and, finding a 30% off coupon, I went and purchased something. The price limit on the gifts is $15, but with a good discount like that, I selected something that sold for $20, but paid less than $15. They also had free gift wrapping there, too.

So…same thing this year. Only I couldn’t find a 30% off coupon, just a 25% off coupon. But that worked out fine.

I left with a gift card to Best Buy (the gift I selected) and a bottle of fancy-schmancy beer provided by my boss. A really big bottle – like the size of a wine bottle.

Today I actually scored two bottles of beer – having earlier been given a bottle of homemade “Apocalypse Ale” from a co-worker – and two gift cards, having finally received my Amazon.com gift card for winning a writing contest at Hamline back in September.

Friday, 21 December 2012

 Happy Solstice! And…surprise…the world didn’t end.

(People have been talking about the coming apocalypse today, but it didn’t happen.)

I think it’s funny that most people go through the day without acknowledging, or maybe even knowing, that it’s the winter solstice, especially since it’s truly the reason for the season. I didn’t hear anyone mention it at work, unless I said something first. I wished a few people “Happy Solstice,” and they gave me that “you’re a weirdo” look. I get that a lot.

It’s better to call it the December Solstice, or Southern Solstice, than to say “Winter Solstice” (like I did, above), since it’s not winter in the southern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice is six months from now.

Here’s an article about all the holidays celebrated on the shortest day of the year, regarless of whether they’re celebrated now or six months from now.

And here’s the latest episode of Atheists Talk that I hosted: “Vegans, Vegetarians, and Atheists.”

If you want something a little lighter to watch…check out Isla singing with her cousin a couple of weeks ago…

Saturday, 22 December 2012

 Today is my first of eleven consecutive days of no work.

I bottled some home-brewed beer this morning. I wanted to have it ready in time for Christmas and…well…it won’t be. But I’m still gonna wrap up a few of them and include the min the dice game we play with Jennifer’s family on Christmas Day. I’ll just have to include a note with them that says something like, “Don’t drink or refrigerate until January 10th (or after).”

I’m also slowly making progress on a wood robot. I’ll post about it later this month, if, indeed, I do have it done by Christmas Day…which is the renewed goal I’ve set for myself.

Our holiday festivities today featured my sister and her husband coming over to our house. We walked to a nearby restaurant that we like and then they came back to our house and we swapped gifts. They had gifts for our kids – including shoes for Isla that she immediately put on and wanted to wear even tonight as she was falling asleep – and a helicopter that really flies for Owen. We gave them some gifts for their dogs. And a home-brewed beer. Not for their dogs.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012
My holiday break began at approximately 12:30 this afternoon. Yes, yes, I still had to finish work today, and there are still two more days of work to go this week, but the tough stuff is all over.

As I mentioned in my last post (see: Last Post), school is done for the semester as of yesterday.  But, as of early this afternoon, I also completed one of the toughest speeches I had to deliver in Toastmasters.

After completing the Competant Communicator book back in May, I needed to select two books from the Advanced Communicator series. One of the books I chose was Interpretive Reading. My hope was that this book would make me a better public reader (which I have done with increasing frequency lately, having had my writing published in a couple of books). But I also figured it would be an easy book to get through, since I wouldn’t have to write any speeches, I would just have to read stuff. And easy is good, since I’m often busy with homework these days.

Well, it started off easy enough; I just had to read a short story. Then there was a poetry reading, which I managed well enough. Well, for speech #3 in the book, I had to recite a monologue.

Okay, first: Recite? Yikes. I can’t memorize entire monologues!

And, second: Monologue? What was I supposed to do, find a Saturday Night Live bit I liked and memorize that? The assignment did say that I could use a stirring speech, but assignment #5 is a recitation of a speech, and I didn’t want to duplicate.

Well… I ended up choosing a speech anyway. I couldn’t find any monologues I liked, so, after posting for suggestions on Facebook, one of my friends suggested Chaplin’s closing speech from his 1940 film The Great Dictator. I actually found this movie kind of boring and overwrought, but the closing speech is among the best five minutes in the history of cinema.

So, after introducing the speech – by drawing attention to Chaplin’s reluctance to move from silent film to talkie, and his desire to draw attention to the plight of citizens in Germany – I recited this: