We've been listening to the all Christmas Carol station at work, which is the most efficient way I know to induce holiday fatigue. This is what inspired the figgy pudding post the other day, and I'd like to thank Erin Hughes for pushing that into a more productive direction. Listening to every professional musician who has ever lived singing the ( Read more... )

I made plans to go down to Alton for my family's Christmas celebration. I rented the car on Tuesday night -- a Mercury Grand Marquee, which consensus says is an old lady car, but I quite liked it -- and polymorphism and I planned to drive down that night. Sadly, there were a number of errands to run, and a little under a foot of snow got dumped on us, so we ( Read more... )

... I'm going to think about New Years. Specifically, my resolutions from last year.

Lose 50 lbs.I failed to reach this goal, and completely fell off the wagon on my chosen method. However, through diet and exercise and a little something called "restraint," I've made it halfway to this goal. I was floating between 330 and 340 when I made that ( Read more... )

I so totally spaced on the fact that Memorial Day was coming up. Seriously; I made absolutely no effort to plan for a three-day weekend. I did make plans (belated Mother's Day stuff for tonight, actually), but somehow I just figured it would be back to work on Monday when I was planning out my month -- of which I did an uncharacteristically ( Read more... )

It's a pain in the ass because you just can't trust anyone. Here's what's happened at work ( Read more... )

Day three was nice and leisurely. I made polymorphism a vegetable lasagne as a housewarming gift. Not my best -- I think it needed salt -- but it'll feed her for a week and she gets to keep the lasagne pan. We ran some other errands and worked on the official business of the trip. Honestly, there wasn't much to do; it was maybe half an hour ( Read more... )

Day one: Sunday. Most of the day was spent driving through Iowa at night, so aside from a tractor trailer on its side in a ditch, I didn't see anything at all. It was a nice drive spent making phone calls and listening to my .mp3 player, though about half of Iowa was covered in a dense fog. Oh, almost forgot; I did see "the world's largest truck ( Read more... )

With an expected departure at 1 PM tomorrow, I'm very nearly ready. I've got some laundry going that I'll be bringing, I'm packing all my junk, and nearly everything else that goes is already in the car (I have to stop by my actual car and make sure I didn't forget anything in it, but that's on my way tomorrow).

A quick rundown:

Tomorrow, I pick up my rental car. Hopefully I can do it early and pick conejita_diabla up with it. Hang out with her and any other Chicago-area friends she rounded up until she's got to go, then I go see my dad about work stuff. Then I'll come back and load the car, though it's possible I'll bump Dad to the beginning of the actual trip and ( Read more... )

I enjoyed my trip, but there's not much in the details worth sharing. The main reason I went down was to spend time with my grandma, which I did. I'd have skipped the trip if that hadn't been possible, to be honest. Christmas breakfast was fried chicken and coffee cake, as per usual. I made a lot of phone calls on my five hour drive home. If ( Read more... )