Been a Long Time, Been a Long Time, Been a Long...

Whew! Seems like I've been off-line forever!

Mucho apologies for you fictional readers of this blog. I would normally post at least once in a week, but there have been extenuating circumstances lately, consisting of:

• Food Poisoning, which may have been a stomach virus, taking me out for 2 days
• Dead Computer, which had two on-site service calls and finally had to be sent back to Sony for repair, taking a week to return
• The Head Cold, which threatened to become strep throat, which I valiantly fought off for two days and now have forced back to the threat level of "Nuisance"
• And somewhere in there, there was Christmas and the festivities thereof

I may have mentioned that my family's version of Christmas is embarassingly extravagant. I will detail only the highlights of the Holiday Haul to illustrate:

Jason:

• Kitchen Aid Food Processor
• 4 appropriate for the office Shirts
• 3 appropriate for the office Pair of Slacks
• Stone Mortar and Pestle (for grinding fresh herbs)
• Computer Game (The Movies)
• Cast Iron Pot
• Waffle Iron
  
• 3 Books
• Calendar (with pics of my wife so I won't miss her so much when I'm at work)
• Bottle of Stoli Vanil Vodka
• Umbrella
• Money
  

Bernie:

• 2GB memory card for her camera
• Radar Detector (she doesn't appreciate it...yet)
• Gift card for the Glo Spa
• Hair Straightening Iron
• Jeans
• Blouse
• Pajamas from Victoria's Secret
• Desk Fountain
• Scrapbooking Kit
• Stepstool (for getting into bed)
  
• Money

Trust me, there was more, but these are only the highlights. We couldn't fit it all in my truck to get home. That's Christmas in my family. Everybody shops year-round for gifts and hoards them in secret until Dec 25. The result is a Christmas tree that looks like this:
Not that I'm complaining.

Since Christmas, I've been back to work. Bernie's been off all week. Is that fair?

Hopefully, now that I've paid off the Visa card (oy, vey!), we'll be able to start saving again so we can afford our trip to Malaysia later this summer.

Totally Exhausted

My company has asked that each corporate employee spend one working day in one of our stores during the Christmas rush. This helps out the stores that need help the most. Today was my day.

I spent the day condensing the Christmas merchandise on the shelves and filling in the blanks with new merchandise. Then I spent the afternoon getting boxes of toilet paper unloaded and on the shelf. (I suggested to the manager that since the store had so much TP that we could make a display of it in the front of the store with a sign saying "This year, give your kids something they can REALLY use.")

Anyway, this is the hardest day's work I've had in a looooooong time. I am so sore, it actually hurts to sit and type. All that bending and lifting wears you out. I must say that I enjoyed it, though I certainly wouldn't want to work that hard every day (for $7.50 an hour!). Thank God for a college education.

Bad Mood

I have caught a bad mood that I'm having a hard time shaking. Maybe it's a leftover from the food poisoning. I am grouchy and surly, and I am having to be very careful not to let it out on my family, who certainly don't deserve it.

Maybe I need to go out and get in a bar fight or something.

Why I haven't been posting much

Well, my computer is dying, and persists in dying despite two on-site service calls. The darn thing keeps rebooting after a few minutes. Sony has replaced the power supply and the motherboard, and it stubbornly persists in continuing to reboot. Now I have to pack the thing up and send it to the repair depot and I won't see it again until after Christmas.

And the news of the day is that I had a bout of food poisoning last night and am still sweating and shivering today. Hopefully, I'll recover to go to work tomorrow. It's been a long week.

Stream of Consciousness

Sometimes, I get a brainwave with a nice piece of philosophy.

Ever wonder why people get depressed when they are in college? It's the sudden realization that a gap is opening between the way you want your life to be, and how it really is - and that the gap is getting bigger every day.

You don't realize it until this point in your life because up until then, you don't have the freedom to really steer your life off course. Suddenly, the road you are on has no lane markers and very little signage, and you don't have a map. You can either decide to explore your new horizons and end up off course, or you can lock the steering wheel straight ahead, get where you're going, and miss out on all the fun in the process. As we get older, we learn to navigate better (or get used to being lost).

***

I haven't given a work update in a while. My new job is still fun and interesting. I don't dread getting up in the morning any more. The days fly by quite quickly now, and I think I'm bringing a lot to the team.

Every day I realize how bad my previous job was, with the CEO slinking around looking for people to criticize, an absentee boss, total jerks for co-workers, etc etc. I work with genuinely nice people now, and I don't fear for my job every day like I used to. I think for the last 5 years, I have lived in constant fear of losing my job (at IBM, at Arcatech, and at my previous employer). Not any more. And without that constant fear, I can be myself and do what I do best - be creative and think outside the box.

I've got love, I've got financial security, I've got ambition. Now I just need to do something about my fat body, and life will be perfect.

(sound of frantic knocking on wood)

On My Own...

Well, I'm all alone this week. Mama, Papa, Bernie, and my Mom and Dad are all living it up in Williamsburg, Va this week, and poor, vacation-less me had to stay home.

So, I'm a bachelor again. You know, this seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think I've gotten used to being married. I've never been alone in this house before, and I've gotten used to having a whole family around since Mama and Papa arrived back in October. At least I've got the cat.

To top it off, my computer has been acting up - rebooting itself, thowing dll errors on startup, etc. I couldn't figure out whether it was hardware or software, so I restored it back to October 31, and still had problems. So I did a complete factory restore. Still had problems. So I called Sony and told them it had to be hardware and they are coming on-site to replace the power supply.

Of course, as soon as the computer heard that, it decided to straighten up and fly right. Don't tell me that computers aren't intelligent and emotional. This one got well as soon as it heard that surgery was in the works. I don't care, though. The power supply is going to be replaced just as a precaution.

Now I have to decide whether to watch Heroes or the Panthers tonight. If I watch the Panthers, Heroes gets DVRed. If I watch Heroes, I join the Panthers at halftime. Hmmm...decisions, decisions.