Bit of a minor emergency here today, so I’m kind of working through lunch… Seems something that was supposedly done a long time ago isn’t done at all…

Simpson’s also have to take the day - well, maybe once I’m done doing what I’m doing, I’ll do a Simpson’s quote

Friday (the 13th, no less) Erin came downtown and met me for lunch, thus I didn’t have time to post anything. Sorry.

We’re finally done our Christmas shopping, which is always a nice feeling. Erin finished hers on Friday, and I went out Saturday afternoon to finish mine off. All I had to do was get a <dynamically dele… ah - nevermind.

Sunday I did absolutely nothing - well, if your definition of nothing includes playing Star Control 2 for most of the day. I also spent some time reading about various board games on Board Game Geeks. Interesting site there…I actually came across it by looking up “StarLord” which is a game that I bought at Value Village on Saturday. Erin and I played it, and thought it wasn’t very good/compelling/whatever so I went online to see if I could find some sucker who’d be willing to pay real money for it (since I paid $3.99, I figured that $4 + shipping would almost be worth my time ;) The game is in pretty good shape, and everything is there - not surprising, since it’s likely only been played twice (once by the original owner, and once by Erin and me.) I also picked up a mucho old “Stock Ticker” for $1.99 - mainly because I wanted the dice. Turns out the dice were missing :( The odd thing is that the rules inside the box don’t seem to match up with the rest of the game - the board is pretty old, with par being $2.00 instead of $1.00 in the current version, and each spot is an additional $0.10 instead of $0.05 - How do you like that deflation?

So, yeah, pretty uneventful weekend. I think we were tired from making sausage Friday night at Mom & Dad’s or something.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Attention. All honor students will be rewarded with a trip to an archeological dig, conversely, all detention students will be punished with a trip to an archeological dig.” - Principal Skinner

It’s almost mid-December. I get my mid-month advance tomorrow. The days keep rushing by, and soon we’ll have a baby in the house making time fly even faster…I don’t know what I’ve done all December - between pre-natal classes, breast feeding classes, Christmas shopping, work, doctor’s appointments (Ok, so I haven’t been to any of those this month yet…) I don’t remember the last time Erin and I just spent a quiet night at home. Hopefully tonight can be that night.

Tuesday night was supposed to be that night too, but it didn’t quite pan out. Who knows what the weekend holds for us. At this point, we’ve got nothing planned, but I’ll wait until Friday night before I believe that we’ll have a quiet weekend at home. At least the pregnancy classes are starting to wrap up. Monday’s class will be abbreviated (for us) because we’re attending the breast feeding class, and the last half of the pre-natal class is supposedly on breast feeding. It’ll be good to get home a little earlier for a change.

Not that I’m complaining too loudly - it’s nice to be busy. It’s nicer to be able to strike a balance between busy and too busy though. I think we did pretty well during the past year at maintaining that balance, but we’re getting tipped over this December. I think January will feel much less hectic because of it though. Of course once February arrives, all bets are off.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “And we will do anything. Including, but not limited to, anything, to make your stay here tolerable.” - Mayor Quimby

Today was the Christmas lunch at work (one of them anyway…) so as a result, no long-winded, boring post from some blowhard computer geek. Instead, I’ll finish this sentence, and slap a quote on this post, and call it done.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals!… except the weasels.” - Homer

I remember finding a site (a couple of years back now) that did music recommendations based on the user’s reaction to various sound clips. It did a pretty good job, and I was thinking I’d check it out again, just to see what’s up. Only problem is that I don’t know what it was called. I think it was Audio-something or Something-galaxy (not audiogalaxy though, that would be too easy)

Anyway, I know I sent the link to some people who read this site on occasion, so if you can think of what it was called, drop me a comment here or something. I spent quite a bit of time looking for it yesterday at lunch, and couldn’t come up with it. I did find other sites that seem to offer a similar sort of service (Music Budda, DigitalMC and the Music Genome Project) but none of them were the right one - I think. The Music Genome Project looks kind of familiar, but the interface is broken, so I can’t try it out to be sure. If only my email hadn’t disappeared in the great hard drive crash of ‘00.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “No! No, freakin’ kids. I do not need this, I’ve got a masters degree in folklore mythology.” - Comic Book Guy

We had a pretty busy weekend (read action packed) so I’ll try to get everything in here, but forgive me if I forget something…

Friday night was the Christmas Party for work. It was a good time, but Erin got tired pretty early, so we made it an early night. Really, she did quite well, staying up well past her normal bed time. I think it’s because she took a long nap Friday afternoon. Did I mention that Erin doesn’t work any more Fridays? Her last day is Christmas eve, and she’s taken the 13th and 20th off.

Saturday afternoon, the power went out for a large section of town. I was talking to Erin’s dad on the cordless phone, and suddenly everything in the house shut off. Including the phone. Apparently he tried to call back, but because the only phone that rings in the house needs to be plugged in to the wall, we didn’t hear it. Erin did call him and explain what happened though :-)

Anyway, since we had no power, we decided to go to the mall and return some Christmas gifts - yeah, I know, like shopping in reverse. What happened was that I’d found the same thing (only better) at a different store, for less money…As we were driving to the mall, we noticed that the power was out all the way to 8th street, and as far down as Acadia Drive. I don’t know what happened, but by the time we came home, everything was back to normal.

Saturday night, I went to a friend’s place to play a highly modified version of NHL monopoly. There were some neat rules, where you could completely avoid paying rent and stuff. It was the first test of the rules, and I think they went well, and with a few minor modifications, it would be even better.

I think I got home around 2:00 or something, though I wouldn’t swear to that. I was pretty tired. Sunday we went Christmas shopping - yeah, I know, like returning in reverse. We did pretty well, I think that other than gifts for each other, Erin and I only have one gift left to come up with.

I also spent some time Sunday morning working on my crokinole board. I sanded it down, and got the lines drawn on it. Next step is to get some polyurethane and surface it, then put the pegs back in and play. I think it’s going to be a pretty good board by the time I’m done with it.

Also, this past week when we were making supper, our rice cooker conked out on us. Don’t rush out and get us one for Christmas. We had some pretty specific thoughts on a new one, so we bought it ourselves. Hopefully this one lasts a little longer than the last one. It’s hard to believe that we’re on our third rice cooker since we got married. I remember thinking that we’d hardly ever use it when we opened it at the gift opening… Was I ever wrong - it’s the rare week that we don’t fire it up at least once.

There’s more post than you bargained for.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Come on over and strap on the feed bag. We’re going to fire up ol’ Propane Elaine and put the heat to the meat! Nummy-nummy-num!” - Flanders

I dare you to read this article, and not get mad. Go on, bet you can’t do it.

Ok, since you’re too scared to click on links without descriptions, I’ll fill you in on the details. You see, this moron (soon to be, if not already unemployed) Walmart manager took all the toys out of the “Toys for Tots” donation bin, and put them back on the shelves. There was apparently no way of knowing that they weren’t all stolen from the store, since there were no receipts - ergo, they were all stolen goods (in this tiny little man’s mind.) So, they really belonged back on the shelves.

It takes a really special kind of jerk to steal toy donations for poor kids, and that’s essentially what this guy did. I suppose it’s possible that he was just a misguided person trying to prevent theft, and I suppose it’s possible that he honestly thought they had all been stolen from his store. Still a pretty stupid thing to do.

I guess it’s true, for every genius, there’s an equal and opposite moron

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.” - Homer