Damon's Daemon

I woke up this morning to sounds of birds calling in the forest behind my apartment. I hadn’t really noticed their absence over the winter, but when I heard them calling this morning I realized they had been missing all winter long. Welcome back!

Am I the only one who thinks it is one of the great cosmic jokes that snow is white, especially in the springtime?

I mean, it is white. A white color indicates that it is reflecting most of the light frequencies it receives. Doubtlessly, this includes any infrared heat energy.

Just what the poor snow needs in its quest to become water!

Only the real dirty snow, with lots of suspended black yukkiness gets to melt sooner. Why must snow consort with dirty dirt in order to melt quicker?

What a beautiful day today!

Got to take the bike out for a spin this morning. Identified a bunch of stuff I wanna get at the Bikemania Sale at Erik the Bikeman, also need to get the bike in for a general tune-up. There are a bunch of squeeks that weren’t there last fall!

Hopefully will be able to bike commute to work tomorrow…I’m kinda bummed since we lost our shower in the move. I’m definitely open to any ideas as to the best way to continue to commute in the absence of showering facilities. I’ll try it tomorrow and see how it works showering before I leave for work. I’ve read that getting rid of all the germs beforehand makes the situation a bit more managable at the end of the ride. Should also be aided that it shouldn’t be more than 50 degrees tomorrow morning on the ride in, should keep me cool.

I don’t know if I’m entering a new phase of my life or what. For the past few weeks I’ve had this feeling growing inside of me that some big change in my brain’s wiring was about to occur. With each passing day this feeling grows larger and fuller; even lackluster accomplishments like presenting “The Project” seem to fuel this feeling. I haven’t felt this energized to “create” for many, many years.

I can’t concentrate today.

I don’t know if it is the weather outside (absolutely beautiful for October 11th in Minnesnowta) or the weather inside my head (partly cloudy with a chance of showers at times) but I keep on thinking of the weirdest things. Flashbacks to dreams I’ve had, daydreams about future plans. What to do…

I guess I’ll just go back to trying to figure out the beast “The Project” has turned into. I give it identical input, I should get identical output, shouldn’t I? It IS a computer program! I’m guessing it is a timing issue somewhere, but those are notoriously difficult to track down when you’ve got five different things going on at once. (And this time I’m just talking about the code…not including the things in my head)

OK, so now I’ve moved back towards the other way. Only I know why.

For this brief bit while I’m on this side of the pendulum’s swing, the question which came to mind was about laughing.

Do we know why we laugh? I mean, people laugh when they are nervous, when they are happy, when something funny happens…I’ve even seen people laugh when they cry.

I’ve personally seen monkeys and other species laugh. Dolphins seem to laugh, although I don’t know if this is a trained behaviour or a natural one.

I’ve heard reports of elephants mourning their dead. Do they laugh, too?

Investigations forthcoming…

Decided that I needed to try and lick this cold/strep once and for all and stayed home today. Really wouldn’t have helped to go into work anyways, as I can hardly talk. All weekend it fluxuated between getting better and getting worse, I finally broke down last night and took some Nyquil. Funny, I know some people who get knocked out by Nyquil, can hardly make it back to bed before they are deep in slumber. For me, it seems like a mere suggestion - I still had a bit more difficult time than usual falling asleep, and I woke up plenty over the course of the night.

So, today is to be spent resting, not speaking and reading Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein. It is an amazing book, and deserves an entry of its own after I complete it.

I went to bed too early last night I suspect. I was incredibly worn down, but I had these unusual dreams all night long. Not quite nightmares, but I could definitely see and hear that my subconscious was trying to explain something to my conscious. I know I left a lot of unfinished business up in my brain last night - I didn’t get to spend the normal time I do in reflection before drifting off to bed.

It’s been quite a day today at work…time to coast into the weekend and unwind a little. To get the ball rolling, I decided to follow Neil’s quiz.

1. What is your Full Name?
   Damon Curtis Durand
2. What color pants are you wearing right now?
   Yankee blue jeans
3. What are you listening to right now?
   Amsterdam by Guster
4. What was the last thing you ate?
   A Whopper w/Cheese from Burger King for lunch
5. If you were a crayon what color would you be?
   Orange
6. How is the weather right now?
   Unusually humid and warm
7. Last person you talked to on the phone?
   JManDoo
8. First thing you notice about the opposite sex?
   Eyes
9. Do you like the person who sent this to you (or posted it)?
   Sure
10. How are you today?
    Been really on fire today. Everyone’s been pissing me off it seems. Just finally calming down now.
11. Favorite Drink?
    Strawberry Pop
12. Favorite Alcohol?
    Sex with an Alligator
13. Favorite Sports?
    I’m not huge into sports. If I had to say something, I’d pick some esoteric sports like lawnmower racing or trick billiards.
14. Hair Color:
    Blondish/brown (not much of it left!)
15. Eye colo(u)r:
    Depends on what I’m wearing and lighting…moves between blue and green.
16. Do you wear contacts?
    Nope.
17. Siblings:
    My sister, Michelle, 2.5 years younger than me.
18. Favorite Month:
    October
19. Favorite Food:
    My family’s recipe for lasagna
20. Last Movie you watched:
    Team America: World Police
21. Favorite Day of the Year:
    Feburary 29th
22. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
    Sometimes, depends on the woman.
23. Summer or winter?
    Winter. You can always put on more layers, but you can only take so many off!
24. Chocolate or Vanilla?
    Vanilla
25. Do you want your friends to write back?
    Remember to trackback!
26. Favorite card game:
    Slapjack and Go Fish
27. What did you do last night?
    Durand Family Board Meeting
28. Favorite Smells:
    Vanilla, fresh baked bread, right after a rain, fresh-cut grass
29. Can you touch your nose with your tongue?
    Nope, just short.
30. What’s the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?
    Wow, I must have had some exciting dreams!

Spent most of the day today cleaning and picking up the place.

The highlight/biggest chore of the day was the 3.5 hours of work I performed in the kitchen area. As much as I love this apartment, the kitchen is always been a bother. It’s just simply too small. Coming from the Hudson house with its 650 sq. ft. kitchen the apartment’s 250 sq. ft. kitchen simply doesn’t have enough storage nor counter space to hold all of the kitchen gadgets I’ve accumulated over the years, nor enough counter surface to prepare a meal. Couple this with a dishwasher which rarely gets the dishes clean to my satisfaction and things end up piling up pretty quickly into a mess.

Still got a lot of work to do before November 21st, when I’m holding Thanksgiving here at the apartment. (I’ll have the party room, too, but since none of my family has seen the new pad I think it is only proper that I make this place presentable as well!) Still need to work my way through the clutter which is my living room/dining room area, sort through the 1000’s of photos/other memorabilia which came over in Twinkie from my parents’ house and decorate the blank walls a bit.

No lucid dreaming this morning - I woke up with a splitting headache. Must have been dehydrated or something.

Anyway, one of the most wonderful aspects of living in the particular apartment I do is my two sliding glass doors look out to a large wood. During the summer, the entire windowscape is filled with green leaves - as winter approaches the leaves change color, fall down and expose all the barren branches.

You might expect the beauty to disappear at this point until the snow visits us and everything turns white. While certainly the snow is a welcome relief from all the brown, the fun part of this time of year is watching Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel collecting everything they need for the upcoming winter months.

See, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel live in the tree hollow right outside my apartment. I only see them in the summer when they make the trek down the tree trunk to visit the ground. However, in the fall, winter and early spring I see them jumping from tree branch to tree branch performing their daily chores (and hopefully playing a little at the same time).

This morning Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel were busy collecting leaves for their drey (another name for their nest) when they got a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Blue Jay, also frequent visitors to the trees outside my apartment windows. There was a bit of bickering back and forth - doubtlessly Mr. Blue Jay prbly forgot to bring the hot dish Mrs. Blue Jay made as a gift for Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel. Poor Mr. Blue Jay. They quickly left and Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel went back to their day.

Daylight Savings Time
has left us for the winter.
I miss end-day sun.

I got a late start this morning, but still managed to make it to the polling location, my local firestation, by 9am. I’ve voted at this location for the past two years; this was the biggest turnout I’ve ever seen. (Which makes sense, of course, since this is the first presidential election I’ve participated in while in this precinct) The city, thinking ahead, covered all the “No Parking” signs along the main road. But the cars even spilled onto the side street.

I walked inside, expecting a long line, but found only a tiny little line. As I stood in the line to get my ballot (which didn’t take longer than 2 minutes) I noticed 3 people over at the registration table. All of them were younger looking; I’m sure from the looks of things this was the first time they had voted. After I got my ballot I listened to the instructions (I’m sure as bored as I am having to repeat the instructions the exact same way all day long is even worse!) and walked over to my “booth”.

After voting both sides of the ballot, I walked over to the optical scan machine, slid in my ballot, got my sticker and walked off.

Was in and out (including marking the ballot for some 20-odd judgeships) in under 15 minutes.

Yesterday my mood reflected the weather: Overcast, sporadic showers, daily high reached in the morning.

Highlights of my day included:

• Taking three Advil and feeling my headache disappear around quittin’ time.
• NOT needing to give Best Buy my name, address, phone number, social security number and naming rights to my first born when I returned CDs I had only purchased 15 minutes prior. (Borders had much better choices)
• Having a fun exchange with the cute Borders clerk about the silly “Reading Bear” they are offering for $7.95 to customers who spend more than $50 this holiday season.
• Falling asleep blissful, yet aware that today was gonna be a very busy day.

I hope that my day today reflects the weather outside, too. Calm, cool and sunny.

Last Friday, the phrase of the day was, “Lemony Snickets”

Monday it was “Lab Work”

I’m pleased to announce the phrase of the day today is “Binomial Nomenclature”

Spread it far and wide. Announce it from the rooftops. Celebrate its wonderfulness.

A list of the weekend chores:

• Eliminate at least one of the big piles of boxes still taking up space in my apartment.
• Finish all laundry, clearing out the second bathroom for the repair man next week.
• Finalize plans for Durand Family Turkey Day next Sunday and email information to family participants.
• Go grocery shopping to pick up required items for above-mentioned Durand Family Turkey Day.
• Work on the Novel.
• Finish Pokey build for testing next week.
• Line up tire replacement next week.
• Find some time to relax in the midst of all the pressing matters.

I totally accomplished nothing tonight (and have very little to show from the weekend) on my list.

I didn’t finish cleaning the pad.
I didn’t get my iPod resyncing correctly.
I didn’t get the Durand Family Turkey Day shopping done.
I didn’t get the kitchen cleaned.
I didn’t finish building Gumby/Pokey.
I didn’t get anymore words written for my Novel.

I did finish two loads of laundry…but there are at least 5 more loads yet to be done.
I did listen to a bunch of CDs and waste time playing Wings of Fury on my Apple IIe emulator.

Oh well.

Went into the dentist this morning to have my toothache looked at by a professional. I decided to go to the Park Dental in Edina; they had a cancellation so I grabbed a 10:00am appointment with Dr. Berg. I had gone to the Park Dental in Eagan for my crown, so I thought it would be handy to stay within the system so that my records would transfer over.

Got in, had to fill out all the new patient forms anyway. I’m guessing this is just a precaution, as I know they could access my old records so they could call me about the cancellation. (I hadn’t given them my phone number when making the original appointment) Mandy was the assistant who walked me back. A few x-rays later they had pinpointed the cause of my pain…had an infection inside the root of my #7 tooth had spread up and down my jaw and in the soft tissue. They were rather taken aback by how advanced the progress was considering the pain had only started yesterday around noon.

I’ve never really had a lot of dental work done…my teeth are generally in pretty good shape. I had one filling about 10 years ago, another couple of fillings about 4 years ago and then the crown on my rear molar 2.5 years ago. When I heard root canal I began to get a bit concerned…everyone seems to dread them, and considering my pain tolerance being so low I was worried what I had gotten myself into. Dr. Berg had really good chairside manner, explained what he was gonna do, showed me the x-rays and then added in a little humor to relax me a little. The worst pain was the novocain injections…after that it was just listening to the drill and hearing the file sliding against my tooth enamel.

After the root canal was done and the temporary filling in place I still had quite a bit of tenderness in my gums. Dr. Berg decided to slice open the gums to allow the infection to drain a little bit quicker. The taste was awful…luckily, Mandy was ready with her suction and got most of it out before it got too bad. I left with a bunch of gauze rolled up in my mouth where the incision had been made. I took the prescriptions over to Target, picked up some soup and waited for the prescription to be filled.

(Warning, vile details ahead)

On my way out to the car I began to shiver…mostly in my jaw, but my body began to shiver as well. I turned on the heat, warmed myself up and drove to work. Once I got to work, my shivering continued…I realized I needed to get some water and food in me ASAP.

I started telling my story to my coworkers; about how unexpected the root canal was while I cooked up my soup and drank a bunch of water. Got back to my desk, took a sip of the soup and put it to the side. It just didn’t taste right. I swallowed my painkillers and amoxicillin, tho, and tried to get to work.

Had a meeting at 1, which I forced to be moved when I couldn’t make it in this morning. I began preparing for the meeting…when all of a sudden I exploded. This awful brown liquid came shooting out of my mouth, all over the laptop and desk. When the second urge kicked in, I managed to grab the trashcan and direct it in there. Sadly, JManDoo and another coworker got first row tickets to this amazing display. This is the first time in my adult life I’ve thrown up…I hope it is the last time. I wiped down the laptop and desk, packed up and came home. On my way home, I called up the dentist and asked for an alternate antibiotic.

He wasn’t sure if it was an allergy to the antibiotic or if it was because I had swallowed so much blood and infectious material from the gum incision, but he thought getting a second antibiotic would be a good idea nonetheless. I came home, ended up napping for a few hours.

I’m hoping that the pain will subside as the good doctor told me it would over the next few days as the antibiotics kick in. Ouch.

I’m slowly getting better. Replacing gauze every few minutes is starting to get old, but I’d rather do that than taste that awful crap oozing out.

I think I eliminated the amoxicillin as the cause of the throwing up incident earlier, too, as I threw up again on my way to picking up my second type of antibiotics (and hadn’t taken the amoxicillin again since earlier). Managed to get the car pulled over to the side of the road just in time to jump out and let loose all over the road. Let people try and figure out what THAT puddle was from!

I’m gonna head to bed here shortly, as I think the need to replace the gauze has ceased for the time being. Hopefully the doc was right and I’ll be back on my feet happy go lucky tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping!

Woke up every four hours last night, took my vicodin, a glass of water and went back to sleep.

I haven’t been able to keep any food down for the past 2 days or so. I picked up some bananas on my way into work, been eating them here at my desk. So far, so good, they are staying down just fine. I feel a bit of energy returning, too. I’ll have to move up to something with more substance here this afternoon, try and get some food into me so I’m not dragging so much.

Swelling has gone down a good deal, but it is still there. Hopefully the antibiotics (which I’ve also been able to keep down) will help out in that department.

If 10 were perfectly normal, 1 was on my death bed, I’d put myself around a 4 today. (Which is up from a 2 yesterday afternoon)

Well, I made it through the night last night using only ibuprofen instead of the vicodin I had been using. Still not sleeping well, but I have been managing to keep food down and the rest of my digestive system is slowly working again.

I made the call at noon today that I was gonna go forward with the Durand Family Turkey Day tomorrow, so now I’ve got some catching up to do in that regard. Need to do the grocery shopping I was gonna do on Thursday night, get all the food stuffs, defrost the turkey, prepare the cranberry sauces and roux tonight. Then get to bed early so I can get up, brine the turkey and get everything going tomorrow so I can still make it to the movie in the morning while the turkey is cooking.

Be a hectic afternoon and evening, but I’ll be much happier tomorrow when everyone comes together and we get to celebrate together before we have to split up.

‘course, tomorrow night I’ll be busy packing for the trip, since I leave for that on Monday at 4pm. Seems like the weather will be beautiful down in Texas, can prbly get away with wearing shorts most of the time. (Much to the chagrin of my sister, I suspect, since it’ll be obvious I’m from up north when I’m walking around in shorts in 70 degree weather!)

I’ll be writing a bunch of journal entries as I have time and getting them up as soon as possible.

Headlines:

• I’m feeling about a 9 out of 10. Still tender, still feeling a bit rundown.
• Durand Family Turkey Day was a hit. Had issues with the turkey and the cranberry sauce, as well as being disappointed a second time with the gravy.
• Excited to leave for my trip
• Got a lot of crap to do before I leave. 1.5 days of work I missed plus my work today condensed into 6 hours.
• Still need to pack, but everything should be washed and dry by the time I get home.

Finally made it back to work after feeling yukky most of Wednesday afternoon, out almost all of Thursday and half of Friday. We’ve got a new customer turning up on Wednesday night, which considering I was going to be gone after 3 today I knew we had to get sealed before the end of the day. Managed to squeeze in a quiet 30 minute lunch at Noodles with New Theresa which about my only downtime of the day. Otherwise, I moved from project component to project component making sure everything was lined up (or at least could be by the remaining staff after I left). Finally got out at 4, ran home, packed until 5 minutes before my parents arrived.

Got on the road around 5:15, out of town and traffic by 6, didn’t turn out too bad. We stopped for 45 minutes or so to have Famous Dave’s in Owatonna, otherwise we’ve been driving down I-35, the spinal column of America! The back of my dad’s 300M is absolutely perfect for me and my Dell laptop, just enough room to flip open the screen to just the right angle and everything works great. Indeed, I’m writing this (and all the backentries) from said position.

It’s great to finally have some downtime after the past 5 days or so. Either I was sick or completely running on adreniline and stress in order to accomplish something on time. As I told people from work…after the past few days, it might be nice to just throw on the headphones and stare out the window. Which is what I plan on doing next.

Woke up at 7:00 this morning. My sister and Davin would arrive at 7:30 to pick me up from the hotel so we could go to Central Market and pick up a bunch of items. We got to Central Market a bit earlier than we thought, since we took the George Bush Tollway out to Plano. After picking up some Starbucks, we headed over to it. It wasn’t quite what I thought it was gonna be. Listening to my sister and brother-in-law talk about it all the time it made it sound like a farmer’s market. This was just a gigantic supermarket.

Least that’s what I thought before I stepped inside. (I hadn’t looked at the website, which would have clarified things quite a bit, I suppose!) When you walk in you land in the produce department, like many supermarkets. But this really was like a farmer’s market inside. The produce department was unfinished, kept around 65 in order to ensure the produce remained fresh. The selection was huge - it really rivaled many of the farmer’s markets I’ve seen. Everything was properly presented, either on ice or room temp, cranberries floating in a “bog”, etc. You’d select your produce, put it in a bag, then walk over to one of many stations. At this station you’d put the produce on a scale, punch in the produce’s number and a sticker would print with all the price information on it.

You then moved into a gigantic butcher area, which rivaled any butcher’s shop. They not only offered ANY cut you wanted, they would steam your seafood selections for you while you finished shopping. Then you walk into a huge wine section with row upon row of fine wines and champagnes. Next up is a huge section of bulk dry goods, then a huge bakery with every type of bread I’ve ever seen (and many I hadn’t!) Top it off with your ethnic foodstuffs, spices, imported goods, florals…I could go on. It is an amazing concept - I can only hope we get one (or someone starts a similar concept) in the Twin Cities area soon.

We then headed back to their apartment, hung out, played a little XBox and read passages from “America: The Book” which I brought down since I saw it on their Christmas list and wanted to give them a little taste of it since I had picked it up a few weeks ago when it first came out. It was a huge hit…we all ended up reading a few pages aloud over the course of the day. Michelle and I checked into work, then my parents arrived and we started the tourism day.

We picked up lunch at Cheddar’s. I was excited…if you know me, you know how much I love Cheddar’s “Smashers”. My sister claimed to eat there all the time, ‘cept she had never heard of them. I didn’t believe it, but sure enough, it wasn’t on the menu down here. I’ve had it in the Rockford, IL, Ann Arbor, MI and Des Moines, IA locations…unbelievable. I managed to get a close second…a chicken tender platter with mashed potatoes and gravy for dipping sauce.

After the meal, we headed down to Dealy Plaza to visit the Sixth Floor Museum. It was a truly moving experience, which I’ll write more about later I think. We spent most of the afternoon there, even viewed the display on presidential TV advertising, which was upstairs on the 7th floor. I really enjoyed visiting such an important place; you could feel the grief still floating through the air 40 years after the fact.

We then scooted home, relaxed around the apartment while Davin did some cooking, I took care of a bit of work that cropped up on our way home and the family visited. We headed out to dinner at “On The Border” which was excellent chain Tex-Mex. Yum. After visiting some more back at the pad, my parents and I said our goodbyes for the evening and headed back to the hotel.

Quite the wonderful day. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, obviously, so the feast is the primary focus of the day. Hopefully we’ll get some gaming in as well…I have a feeling Trivial Pursuit is in our future! Yay!

We decided to sleep in this morning…but considering all three of us (my parents and myself) need to share one bathroom we still needed to get up at a semi-reasonable hour in order to get over to Michelle and Davin’s house around 11am. On our way over we stopped by Starbucks…my mom wanted coffee, and I like their “Iced Lemon Pound Cake”. A yummy treat.

We got over to the apartment and were greeted by a wonderful scent permeating the air. Davin had been cooking and preparing our Thanksgiving feast for hours…all kinds of wonderful smells were about, the ham was in the oven being glazed and bathed in various sugary substances. The turkey was still out on the patio being brined, snacks were out and we all began our day of grazing.

My mom and Davin are VERY into football; my dad and sister are into it as supporting spouses; so we flipped on the games and that filled up most of the attention in the room. I spent some time on my laptop, reading books, paying a bit of attention to the game and the conversation around me.

Around four we sat down to dinner (and told the Tivo to finish recording the afternoon game). We had a great meal - Davin did a wonderful job. The ham was especially well done; he had used the cola method of cooking it, combined with a glaze made from cherries, sugar, etc. It was soooo wonderful. The rest of the meal, including but not limited to the turkey, dressing and wild rice soup was excellent. On top of it all, it was made even better by the fact that Davin did all the heavy lifting/work…I just sat back and enjoyed the meal.

The rest of the night we cleaned up, visited, watched “The Bourne Identity” since I had forgotten I had seen it. (I had seen it…just missed parts of it for some strange reason) Around 11 my parents and I left - it was obvious that Michelle and Davin were beat.

I haven’t seen the sun for DAYS!

Where did it go? I’m guessing it is somewhere above all the fog, clouds and general uckiness outside.

Least if I don’t get the sun, I want snow on the ground! Seeing all the brown leafless trees above ground and the semi-green grass on the ground doesn’t help brighten things up at all, either!

*sings in his deepest Bing Crosby voice*
“I’m…dreaming…of a whiiiite Christmas”

Commenting has been restored. I will now return to eating my:

Chipotle Barbacoa Burrito

• Rice
• Pinto Beans
• Tomatillo-Red Chili Salsa
• Cheese
• Lettuce

Be sure to keep the liquid nearby…that salsa gets hot after a while!

Today is the day I usually take off work each year to attack the shopping list.

I prefer to take a weekday off so I can enjoy all the shopping, rather than have to battle the even larger crowds on the weekend. (Not that I usually get it all done today…most of the time I end up battling the crowds on the weekend anyway. But getting a bunch of it done today certainly helps the sanity on the weekend.)

As an added bonus today, I’m going to meet Sneebish for coffee today. Haven’t seen her in real life for 8? years or so. Should be a good break in the middle of the shopping excursion.

Full steam ahead!

Melancholy today. Partly bored yielding to mostly confused as the day progresses.

…for a white Christmas.

In the meantime, I’ll be freezing my booty off!

Yes, that’s a HIGH of 0 on Thursday.

This last week has been a hectic one - not only have I not been keeping up my site but I’ve fallen woefully behind keeping up with everyone else’s blogs. Bloglines 920 articles that are unread. Ugh.

What’s been keeping me busy? Well, between finishing all the chores leading up to the holiday AND work-related projects coming to a head I have hardly had time to keep up with real-life communications.

For those of you wondering…this also means the home theater system mentioned previously has yet to be opened. Which is just as well…it will be more proper to open it up after I open up the rest of my gifts. Something about it being a Christmas gift just screams to me not to open it early.

I’ve got some really exciting presents I just can’t wait to give this year…but I must not write about them here. Least not yet. The receivers may find out what they are getting before they get it - which would be rather unfortunate from the surprise perspective.

There’s also some exciting things in store for Damon’s Daemon in the new year. Right now, the first feature will be starting Feb 1. My mind is already a flutter (in its spare time) thinking about the wonderful things I’m gonna try to write. Hopefully I’m gonna get close to the NaNoWriMo total of 50,000 words.

Now I lay me down to sleep. Got a lot to do tomorrow, even tho I thiink most of my retail shopping visits are over after the grand tour I made tonight. Whew! Smooth sailin’ from here.

Well, it is the day after Christmas morning. The apartment is filled with evidence of the recent holiday. On the one side, I’ve got piles of wrapping paper, tissue paper, shirt boxes, price tags and tape. On the other side, I’ve got my home theater system, boxes filled with all the booty from the Christmas gifting.

Usually, being the good geek I am, I have to take off the day after Christmas from work in order to play with all my new toys. This year I’ve got a natural day off in order to do just that!

So, away with the pre-Christmas preparatory wrapping paraphernalia!

In with the treasure!

The only reasons I left my apartment, from 00:00:00 01/01/05 until my departure for work this morning, were related to obtaining food stuffs.

I had visitors. I slept. I ate my “Holiday” Fruity Pebbles, which I got on sale for a buck a box at Cub Foods on New Year’s Eve. I watched a little TV. I read. I spent hours updating, cleaning up and resyncing my iPod back to my central music library. I lost at Trivial Pursuit, this time to only one opponent. I listened to lots of music. I made amends with some, reconnected with others and generally feel like I’m entering the year on solid footing.

Welcome to the 2005 rollercoaster of life. Hang on for the ride; keep your hands, feet and other objects inside the vehicle at all times. If you feel dizzy or overwhelemed, close your eyes; the feeling will pass with time.

One more quote…then I swear I’m done! Quoteth Mr. T:

“I love it when a plan comes togetha!”

I think we all loved it today. “The Project” proved itself to be every bit as valuable and extensible as I designed it to be, and it handled its first real-world challenge with only minor coding changes. (I might bump up the version to 1.0 just to celebrate!) The mad ninja code I wrote in a matter of three days (including a complete rewrite because of a silly Microsoft undocumented feature) plugged in beautifully - and with the rewrite it ended up working even more elegantly than I had originally thought possible. In the end, the customer project was finished only 3 hours late (3pm instead of noon) but we still got it done today thanks to some last minute scrambling by JManDoo and I. (Truth be told…not that we need excuses, mind you, but I should point out that we lost 3 hours yesterday because of some Fishwall issues…so we really came out right on time!)

It felt good to see everything working like we had planned…even moreso after we were told in no uncertain terms by “people who know” that what we wanted to do was impossible. IMPOSSIBLE Muahahahah!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I don’t think I’ve seen this much fluffy snow fall so far this year here in the great state of Minne-snow-ta. It is so wonderful to see everything all white and pristine…makes all the bitterly cold temperatures worthwhile when you get soft snowfall like today. I feel like throwing on the snowpants, running outside and making a snowman. I wonder if it is sticky enough snow to make snowballs? Might have to test that out tonight as people leave work…heheheh.

I got 3.5 hours of sleep last night ‘cause of work-related issues.

Gimme a break, k?

In other news, I’m very happy that 89.3 / The Current / KCMP has been continuing its strong performance. My iPod use has been cut dramatically while driving, for sure. (I may even be able to part with it long enough in order to get its battery replaced) Not all of the music is my favorite, but the variety is perfect. I actually get the feeling that a higher intelligence (rather than computer) is mixing up the tracks. Last night I heard a Soul Coughing tune (a live Casiontone Nation) spun right before a Madvillain track (Money Folder). The two worked perfectly together…woot!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been working quite a bit more than I’m used to as of late. Therefore, I took today off from work to let my mind rest a bit.

Last month was incredibly busy at work. I knew most of it was coming - yes, I even knew that considering the stress I’d be under I’d prbly get sick, too. (I did, of course) Nevertheless, it was exhilarating to participate in such a huge project at work, seeing everyone put in the effort that they needed to in order for things to go off with hardly a hitch. We changed almost everything over the course of the previous month; almost every customer was affected. To have only one customer encounter a major issue with the change is quite a testament to the skills and hours everyone contributed to make it a success.

The rest of life has been pluggin’ along as well. The biggest surprise involved a change in the management here at my apartment building. Mary, who’s been here for over 4 years, moved next door to me just before Christmas. It was a mixed blessing - it was wonderful to know I had a responsible tenant next door to me after the previous two were so horrible. Then for Christmas I get a new surround sound system and I then I worry about disturbing her!

All of a sudden, in the middle of the second week in February, I leave my apartment to head off to work and there are 4-5 movers carrying things out of Mary’s apartment! I peer inside, see no one moving about and begin to wonder. On my drive out of the parking lot to work, I notice a huge moving van in the circle with “Northfield” written all over it. “The manager is moving out?” I say to myself incredulously.

I keep an eye out for Mary in the office, only to be disappointed time and time again. I begin to wonder if she had passed away or something similar, since it was all so sudden. Eventually I catch a glimpse of her working in the office, but that then makes even less sense. Finally, nearly 3 weeks later, just before the end of the month, posters go up inviting everyone to her going away party.

Come to find out, she bought a place down in Northfield a few months ago. She advised the management company she was moving, gave plenty of notice and thought they would make some kind of announcement to the residents about her leaving. She didn’t tell anyone in the meantime, hoping that it would be a smoother transition. When her final day approached and there was still no announcement, she took it upon herself to let all of the residents know what was going on, still not knowing who would be replacing her. She’ll be missed, for sure.

Today’s agenda has three things on it:

• Finally finish Gumby, get it into the guinea pigs’ hands
• Finish laundry
• Get my haircut

Seems like a good list of things to do on a day off, doesn’t it?