Whipped!

Whew! I'm whipped (whupped if you're from the south like me :) and it ass because of all the stuff I have to complete before I go on vacation. Basically, tomorrow is the last day I work until Jan 3. :) Happy!

I'm finally taking a vacation! The queen and I are taking to two princesses to Disney Land in Southern California, though the 2 princesses do not know this yet. It's their big Christmas gift from our royal selves. Anyway, if you know us and see the princesses, please keep the secret! :) We have all the arrangements handled and are renting a royal carriage to transport us all overland through the glittering city of Las Vegas (I've never been there by the way) and on to Southern California. There, we'll visit with the royal Mouse and all his associates for the better part of a week. We'll also visit a couple of friends from our previous lives in VA while we're there. We might also visit a couple of friends in Las Vegas on the way back, though that's still unplanned. It won't be that much rest and relaxation, but it'll be a vacation from the norm.

I just hope the princesses appreciate the effort the queen and I had to go through to accomplish this task. I need to go and help one of the princesses retrieve a game from her closet. Talk to you all later! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters M, I, C, K, E, Y, and the number 5.

Ho, Ho, Oh, No!

We delivered Christmas cookies this evening. Those of you who know me know that if I deliver something, I like to deliver it and be on my way. Those of you who know the queen, know that she can't possibly deliver something without a lot of jabewasa. She asked me to go and I knew that I should have said no, but I said yes in the hopes that we'd deliver seven packages and then come home within the hour.

Yeah, whatever!

The first stop, she went into the house and I knew it was all going to be downhill from there. When she finally came out, my mood had already turned south for the winter and it didn't help that our princesses were cranky. We then had a few houses go by pretty quickly and then we got bogged down when the princesses wanted to get out of the royal carriage. After finally getting them back in the carriage, we proceeded to go to another neighbor's home and, like light in a black hole, we were all pulled in.

The lady was quite amusing and was from the South, so I felt comfortable talking to her, but it resulted in us remaining out for far too long. We finally got the princesses to bed, an hour late, and I'm sure they'll be cranky tomorrow. Especially since we all got flu shots today.

I guess it's the queen's problem tomorrow. :) Mostly anyway. I'll have to deal with it after work.

The queen's issue with blogger has still not been resolved. They announced that the remaining features had been put into place, but her blog is still F.U.B.A.R.! I guess it's just S.N.A.F.U. over at Google's HQ. I can't believe they put something like this in place without a way to back out of it if the process failed in mid-stream.

Anyway, I'm gonna either WoW or play Texas Hold 'em now. Later!

This post was brought to you by the letters B, L, A, H, B, L, A, H, B, L, A, H, and the number 85.

Continuing Saga...

The Queen's Blog is now in Limbo. Google and Blogger seem to have really mucked up the process and now she has no control of her own blog. It sucks because she's taking it pretty hard. If you're wondering why she hasn't posted anything yet, that would be why.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, U, C, K, S and the number 6.

Beta...

They updated Blogger / Blogspot and are in the process of converting to Blogger Beta. It seems fine to me, but is it possible to make the conversion process any more painful? You practically have the Queen in tears!

Anyway, I hope this new one is worth all the trouble. So far so good (aside from a little problem converting, but it's been resolved).

Nothing much happening here these days, but we'll see what happens as the month progresses. :)

That's all for now! This post was brought to you by the letters B, E, T, A, and the number 1.

Quiet Time...

I'm forced to do less talking than I normally do. I have an ailment (I think it's a sinus infection) and it's causing drainage and a sore throat. That leads to coughing and inflamed vocal cords, which results in less than optimal conditions for oral communication. I sound very bad, though better today than I did on Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday. At any rate, I need to reduce the amount of talking I do in order to make the cords feel better so I can talk. It's quite annoying. :)

I'm sure the Queen isn't very happy about it as she complains that I'm not vocal enough as it is. I guess this'll show her that it could be worse. :)

Anyway, not much happened over the past week aside from helping the Admiral rebuild her computer last night. Please let us all know if it's working correctly, Bob! :)

I'm not gonna say that much more. Instead, I'm gonna go and take a short nap or play Uno w/ the queen and the big princess. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, Q, U, I, E, T, and the number 8.

Alumni!

You can now officially call me an alumni of James Madison University! My diploma arrived in the mail this weekend. :) Now, all I have to do is spend a bunch of money to get it properly framed and display it to the world! I'm somewhat stoked!

Anyway, I ate too much Turkey on Thursday, put up the lights on 2 houses this weekend, and I've managed to acquire what feels like a sinus infection over night. What's up with me, eh? I guess it's a good thing I have to work tomorrow. I'll be forced to take it easy. :)

Not much else, I just wanted to let the world know that I have another title, now: College Graduate!

This post was brought to you by the letters J, M, U, and the number 17.

Feasting!

I made 2 sweet potato pies last night and I'm preparing a 20lb. turkey today. I've decided to skip breakfast to be sure that there is room for Turkeyday food in my belly when the time comes to eat it. :) The queen prepared 2 cherry, cream cheese pies for this feast and in about 2 hours, everything will be piled into the car and we'll all trek to the queen mother's house to feast upon the goodness. I'm looking forward to the food and enjoying the company of the queen's family. At least as much of it as I can stand, that is. At least I can eat turkey!

I'm a little light on sleep this morning because I had to get up early and prepare the big bird. I tried to go back to bed, but the little princesses don't understand the word "quiet". I also had to contend with the queen's inability to breathe and all the subsequent noise that her attempts created. The net result is that I'm a bit bleary-eyed at the moment. I'm sure the tryptophan induced coma will kick in some time in the middle of the afternoon and I'll do my best to fight it off. I need to be able to partake of the pies!!!

This post was brought to you by the letters P, I, E, and the number 6.

Yay!

The heat at work works properly! YAY!!! This makes me happy. It took them entirely too long to get it working correctly. Anyway, I'm no longer being baked when I go to work. :)

So Queen Karana asked me to prepare a list of what I want for Christmas and I figured you would get a kick out the shortness of the list, so here it is:

1) Palmone Treo 700p smartphone. My cell phone is getting pretty old and it time to replace it with a better option.

2) A gaming computer. I have the parts picked out, but it's a matter of getting permission from the Queen to dip into the royal treasury.

3) 2GB USB Thumb drive. Everyone wants to carry stuff around with them, don't they?

4) Various and sundry DVD Movies in wide-screen format.

5) Various and sundry books from the multitude of series I read these days.

I'm not going to list off all the movies or all the books because that would take entirely too long. :) Anyway, it's all done and you can amuse yourselves. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, S, N, O, W, and the number 31.

Still Busted!

The heat at work is still busted even though they came yesterday afternoon and "fixed" it. It was 80+ degrees for nearly the entire day and for several hours, it was 85 degrees. If you know me, then you know that I overheat pretty easily. I'm suffering the lingering effects of overheating now in that I have a headache and feel wiped out! I sometimes get a queasy stomach and it definitely happened this time. Think Flu-like symptoms. I'll be OK once I've had a few hours to cool off.

Anyway, I have to go cook now, so I'll talk to you all later.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, O, R, K, C, H, O, P, S, and the number 4.

Sniveling...

The Pink Princess is sniveling. I HATE sniveling. She wants to play the piano and that requires practice, but she hates to practice. The result is that she snivels and whines throughout the practice session, and consequently isn't trying very hard to get better. I'm conflicted about it. On one hand, I want to allow her to suck when she plays in front of people so she understands that it requires practice to get better at it. On the other hand, I have no desire to humiliate her. She has a recital on Saturday and she needs a great deal of work. I hope she pulls it together before then, but I'm not holding out much hope for it. Perhaps, I'm being too much of a pessimist.

Any Ideas? Anyone?


They finally fixed the heat in our office today. They started last week but couldn't finish because there was a part that was missing. The net result was that the office temp was 80+ on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and most of today. This was definitely NOT pleasant! At least the part is now installed and the heating systems seems to be working more correctly. We'll see what happens tomorrow, eh? :) I'd prefer it to be about 68 in the office, but that's me. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, F, G, and the number 6.

Again...

It looks like the Queen is getting sick again. She's got her hacking cough and she's taken to sleeping while sitting up. That's somewhat depressing.

My promotion has been made permanent and a raise in pay has been granted. Things are going well with me on that front.

I haven't played much WoW in the last 2-3 weeks, but that's because I was in the throes of two book series. I've been reading the Belgariad series (5 books) and the Malloreon series (5 books), both by David and Leigh Eddings. The second one takes place just after the first one with the same characters. Please forgive me if I've been scarce lately. :)

I can start to catch up on WoW and blogging now that I just finished the books.

I'll go now and figure out what my next post will be about.

This post was brought to you by the letters N, C, L, and the number 4.

Ready to go... Mostly

My mother-In-Law had the misfortune to have a hard drive failure 2 weeks ago (it was due to a fan failure and overheating). She consulted me and we ordered her a new hard drive and fan. Once they arrived, I spend a couple of days re-installing Microsuck Windows 2000 and updating it as well as drivers, etc. (it wouldn't have taken 2 whole days, but I do have other things I have to take care of.) After that, the old drive with all her data on it was so damaged/mangled that it took me a solid week of do this and do that to make the drive readable! As it turns out, it appears that all her data was still intact, so I transferred it to her new drive. All that's left is to install her printer software, digital camera software, and integrate her machine into the local network at her house. All that should take about 20 minutes or so, but they're out of town!. I'll probably go do this later on today at which point the project will be complete. Hopefully, her current machine will last her another 2+ years (depending on how many other components were damaged by the heat) before she gets a new machine. She'll have completely bypassed Window XP if that happens. Funny, eh? :)

Anyway, I just thought I'd give a plug to the software titled HDD Regenerator. It's good stuff!

That's all for now. This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, T, and the number 6.

Organized Religion and stuff...

Rant Warning! If you don't want to read this post, I'll understand. If you do and are offended, please know that you were warned!

I've decided to let it be known that I hate organized religion. I can't see any reason for it. The vast majority of organized religions I've seen seem to place more emphasis on what other people see you doing rather than what you actually are doing. Example. People make a big deal of getting into their "Sunday Best" in order to let anyone who happens to see them that they've been to or are on their way to an organized religious meeting. Of course some of them claim that it's to show respect to whatever religion they happen to follow. I concede a small claim to that, but I also claim that the same can be done by not wearing the worst things you have. Besides, isn't it claimed in the majority of organized religions that God (in whatever form you choose) can see you all the time anyway? I think it's more likely that this behavior is so that others can see you observing your religious gathering.

Then there's the idea of the religious gathering itself. It appears that people are going to worship together, when in most cases, it's so that one person can tell you his/her interpretation of a particular piece of text and expect you to accept and believe their interpretation blindly. What good is the free will that God gave us if we don't interpret the texts for OURSELVES and come up with our own conclusions? It seems more likely that those organized religions want to dictate how people act. To that end, they denounce this thing and that action publicly.

Speaking of which, this country was founded on the premise that there was a separation of church and state. If that's the case, then why do so many religions feel the need to destroy that distinction? Why can't they see that their actions are moving this country towards a place where our founders eschewed? Ever heard of "Freedom of Religion?"

Religion should be a personal thing between you and the pantheon you believe in. It doesn't require anyone else to participate. It doesn't require any place else either. I'm a religious person, but I don't think it's necessary to blatantly shove my religion in anyone's face. I also feel that there's a place for religion in everyone's life (whatever you believe), but I believe it a personal thing and should be kelp between you and your pantheon only.

This post was brought to you by the letters F, E, D, U, P, and the number 9.

Lost.

I like the TV show "Lost". Unfortunately, I'm not up to speed with it so I have intentionally not watched any of Season 3. "If you like it so much, why intentionally miss it?" you might ask. You'd have a really good, pointed question if you were to ask it. My answer is this: We missed about half or so of the second season during the occupation of my mother-in-law's basement as she doesn't have cable and her over the air reception of that particular channel was pretty much non-existent. We have DirecTV now, but I'm so far behind, I may never catch up.

On the bright side, I know someone who has Season 1 on DVD and a colleague at work allowed me to borrow Season 2. We'll be able to catch up now. :)

I'm not going to say much about work other than it's sometimes a giant pain to try to work well with others. Especially when the others all couldn't care less about any department other than their own. It doesn't seem to matter to them that they wouldn't be able to do a thing without my department. I'm the head of the IT department. :) I'm sure that they'll get over the silliness at some point, so I'll continue to have as much patience as possible and hope they start thinking sooner rather than later.

I've begun reading again. I go in cycles. I've recently begun a cycle of heavy reading. In the past 2 weeks, I've read 4 fairly large books and have started a 5th. I haven't played as much WoW as before, but I plan to try to balance the 2 a bit. :) I also haven't been able to do any gaming at all as my game masters have been canceling on me. Usually at the last minute. I'm not bitter or angry, but I need my fix. Perhaps, I'll just drop them and get involved in another gaming group. Post a comment if you're interested in what I play, or starting a group. :)

Anyway, consider yourselves updated! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters D, L, E, and the number 1.

Military

I saw this posting on CNN today that was a link to a letter written by a Marine in Iraq. I thought it said a lot without saying anything classified. It really made me think a bit about people. I hope you'll all read it and take a moment for whatever. The link is to the printable version of the letter.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, S, M, C, and the number 1.

Random Headache

I woke up with a pretty bad headache this morning. That's not a good way to start a day. This was significant because We have Managers' Meetings on Tuesdays. I hate to go into one of those with a headache. It sucks!

Speaking of Managers' Meetings, ours was actually productive today. We decided on a few items and got a clear indicator as to what next steps to do on other items. Of course, the Marketing department wasn't represented in this meeting and so it wasn't pre-empted and turned into a Marketing Meeting. :)

Speaking of Marketing, if any of you readers, like cartoons, like technology, and dislike marketing, you'll probably like the online cartoon by the name of User Friendly. :)

Not much else to say today other than it feels like the season is in transition (which it is), but I don't feel like it's quite Fall. We're sort of in limbo around here.

Anyway, that's all for today. This post was brought to you by the letters D, Y, K, and the number 5.

A little different.

Today, I played host to my daughters, Sara and Becca. They spent about 3 hours in my office at my workplace watching movie on our portable DVD player. I think that enjoyed the time with Daddy, though I didn't really spend a lot of time interacting with them. I think they thought it was neat to be with Daddy for so long during the day. I do have to get work done while I'm at work you know. :) I told my supervisor, the president of the company, and he was cool with it. He told me that there were marks on his table where his kids had marked it up with permanent marker when he had to babysit at work too. I thought that made him a little more approachable.

Moving on. My WoW character is just about to gain level 38 and I feel I'm just about ready to solo a few things that have given me problems in the past. I'm also a little torn about my guild since it doesn't appear particularly interested in offering any assistance, though that's what guildies are supposed to do for other guildies. Oh well. I'll live. :)

OK. I've said enough for this one. Karen already told you about the Circus yesterday, and besides saying that the kidletts greatly enjoyed it (so did Karen and me, but don't tell anyone), there's nothing to say. I was a bit disappointed that there were no lions, tigers, or bears, but I guess they've been deemed inappropriate for circuses, though it may have happened a long time ago. Heh! It's been a VERY long time since I've gone to a big circus, and I don't really remember much of it. Est Vita! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, R, I, S, G, and the number 7.

Where does it all go?

OK. Who can tell me where the time leaks off to? I just sat down ready to post since I figured it had been a couple of days since my last one and realized that it had been SEVEN days since the last post. Holy CRAP! Where did all the time leak out? Where did seven whole days go? I can't fathom it for the life of me. I was pretty sure that I'd posted only a few days ago. Oh well, I'll get over it. Hopefully you will too. :)

I made banana pudding a couple of times recently. Once for the family, Karen, Sara, and Becca, and once for a company baby shower at work. (Sorry, I'm not gonna give that link out yet. :) Anyway, I know that my family likes my cooking, though I really don't think this counts as cooking, but apparently I'm a pretty big hit at work as well. Basically, the people at work made gluttons of themselves and tore into the thing as if it was gold. I was luck to get the container back in one piece! Perhaps I should make desserts for the family more often. :) I'm sure the females of the house would enjoy that. I'm sure Karen will have a comment about this.

My WoW character has finally reached level 37. Only 3 more until I can purchase a mount and wear ail armor! :) Yay! Of course, most of my guild doesn't appear interested in helping me much any more. What's up with that? I assist anyone else in the guild I can, unless I'm slowing them down. Too bad it doesn't work both ways.

OK. That's it! This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, F, G, and the number 7.

Time for a rest!

The big event is finally behind us! Rebecca's birthday party was today and I know I'm glad it's over. Don't get me wrong, I love to see kids having fun, but as you all probably know by now, Karen doesn't just have cake, ice cream, presents, and singing. Oh No! There's the custom CD that goes with the theme, there's the loads of games that require props to be built (Sara's princess party comes to mind), there's the months of planning and stressing over the event (on Karen's part, not mine), and finally there's the lack of sleep and tight deadlines as Kare- er, WE procrastinate until the last minute and get no sleep the night before and work ourselves crazy the day of the event. It just feels really good once the thing's over. :)

Now, before my poor wife blows a gasket, I will freely admit that this was NOT the prime example of going overboard. In fact this one was quite tame. There was only one prop that really needed to be made and there wasn't really much to do to make it. There was a bunch of clean up to do before hand (needed to be done anyway) and some plans needed to be changed at the last minute (weather related), so it wasn't that bad. The feeling after it's over is the same though. :) You should ask her to post some pics of the last 10 birthday parties we've thrown for our kids. :)

Anyway, I'm tired and this post was brought to you by the letters, O, V, E, R, and the number 4.

Tinker Toy - Done!

The swing has been purchased, transported, assembled, placed! The backyard playground is pretty much complete! Next spring we can add the fort and slide over the sand box. ( if we decide to go that route :) Now all that's left is to allow the girls to see it and lose their minds. :)

Now that all that is complete, it's time to grow the wallet again as it was squeezed a bit tight! The next thing to purchase will be Karen's birthday present. :) Before you start thinking I'm letting a big secret out, she's well aware of what I intend to get her for her birthday. The biggest reason for it is that we were going to get it for her earlier, but she decided it would be better to wait until her birthday to do it. I don't really have an issue with that because I know what I want to get for Christmas! LOL!

Anyway, I'm not sounding too well these days as I have some sort of head cold or sinus thing that has made my voice kinda shady. It's no big deal, but I sound pretty odd. :) That being said, I think I'll shut up now and allow you all to enjoy my entry as It doesn't happen too often these days. HA!

This post was brought to you by the letters, R, O, Y, G, B, I, V, and the number 7.