Last night was a lot of fun. We got to meet Claude, who seems like a really nice guy, and we got to visit with Jen and Brett and Berta also, which was great. I think William really had a great time playing with Jen. After supper, we opened the remaining Christmas presents, and then had a quick little poker tournament. I suggested that we play Crazy Pineapple, which was a lot of fun (especially once my trip queens beat Brett’s trip 5’s and Darren’s 6 high) I caught some lucky river cards to beat Berta, but I’m pretty sure she played better poker than me (other than the two calls after I hit my miracle rivers - one was a gutshot draw, and the other was a full house draw when my two pair were smaller than Berta’s two pair heading to the river) It was fun anyway.

William was running around like a maniac, Julia was hanging out with the coffee table and whoever would sit by her. She really seems to like Deb. We set up William’s drums last night, and he had a blast playing with them. The cymbal might have to have a mysterious accident though. William got all kinds of great puzzles and books, and a cool Mr. Potato Head anniversary edition (it looks like a real potato) He was so excited after he opened his first present that he forgot to hand out the rest of them. It was honestly a bit of a blur, and I don’t know half of what William got, or who from. Next year will be interesting when he gets his name put into the gift exchange draw instead of getting gifts from everyone - whoever gets his name will have a much easier time than the rest of us usually do. (As William said: “I like toys”)

We actually managed to keep his stocking fairly candy-free this year, which was tough. Erin’s uncle Santa got him a big tube of Tootsie Rolls, which caused a bit of a problem until we gave 90% of them away when he wasn’t looking. I think the presents are what William was looking forward to, but the spending time with family is what he enjoyed the most about the holiday. At one point last night, he was running laps in the house on his stick-horse, with a train of three dogs following close behind. We stayed out a little too late, which meant that he didn’t want to go, and was cranky when we finally got home. Fortunately he fell asleep fairly easily once we got him in his PJ’s.

I finally got around to wading through my email today - it had been nearly a week, and with automated emails and spam and mailing lists, I think I had around 1000 waiting for me to sift through. It would have been fairly easy if I had time to download them into my mail client, but instead I was sifting through them by hand in the webmail interface. I did it fairly quickly, so if you emailed me in the last week, there’s a good chance I mistook it for spam and deleted it (I did get an email from Trent with a cool video in it, but I think that was the only one actually directed to me by an individual)

And it’s time for the long weekend. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I hope you’ll all have a safe and happy New Years Eve/Day (and what the heck, the rest of the year too.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Hey Kids! I’m flame-retardant!” - Krusty The Clown doll

I went out to a stag last night, and had a good time despite remaining sober ;) It was good to see everyone again, since it had been a few months in some cases. I left at about 11:30 because I had to work today, and I didn’t want to be completely bagged all day. As I was pulling up to our house, I saw a large white rabbit come running out of the park next door. I stopped to watch it, and it stopped in the middle of the road, looked around, then hopped off across the street. It was pretty neat.

Anyway, when I got home, I expected that everyone would be asleep, but apparently the kids weren’t co-operating, so not only were they awake, they were frisky. Add to that, Erin wasn’t feeling well - it was starting to look like a long night was ahead. I think we all finally managed to get to sleep around 1:30 or so. Hopefully that means that the kids will nap well today before we head over to Mom & Dad’s for Christmas celebrations.

My cousins will be visiting tonight too - Brett and Jennifer. I haven’t seen Brett and Berta for a couple of years, and I honestly don’t remember the last time I saw Jennifer. It’ll be good to see them again and catch up. Apparently Jennifer has brought Claudio into Canadian winter, so we’ll get to meet him too. It will be a full house at Mom & Dad’s tonight. To top it off, Canada plays Norway in the World Jr’s tonight, so I suspect Berta will have to put up with some ribbing (unless the unthinkable happens and Norway beats Canada…)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you.” - Mr. Burns

We had a good Christmas in Edmonton, the roads were clear both ways, and traffic (while heavy) was good. Now that we’re back home, it looks like we’re going to get a bunch of snow today though. Big fluffy flakes were falling past my window for most of the morning, and now it looks like they’ve taken a little more interest in getting to the ground.

William and Julia were really good travellers, and charmed everyone in Edmonton (unsurprisingly.) The Christmas festivities aren’t done for us though, since Christmas with my family is scheduled for Thursday night, so I’ll have a more complete holiday wrapup after that.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Arr, sometimes I wonder why I bother plunderin’ at all.” - Captain McAllister

Erin, her Dad, and the kids all went to Jim & Judy’s last night for supper, and I stayed home to have a quiet-ish night by myself. I watched a couple of episodes of “MythBusters” which was really entertaining. I hadn’t watched it before, but I will definitely watch it again.

I made myself some “Oriental Mushrooms” for supper from a recipe I found on recipezaar. They were ok, but I think I ate too many of them - my guts were gurgling until around 11:00 this morning. Tonight will likely be devoted to getting the van packed up so that we can leave directly after work tomorrow, so as to get to Edmonton at a more reasonable time. We’ll see how that goes - if past history is any indicator, we should be arriving there sometime around noon on Boxing day :P

Simpson’s quote of the day: “On this cable system we receive over one million channels from the furthest reaches of the galaxy.” - Kang (or was it Kodos?)

So, back in April, I conducted a little experiment to see if anyone would find my site just by my mentioning them. Well, Greg Singer contacted me, and gave me a brief update on what he’s up to. It got me thinking that I should try a more pro-active approach, so I did a few google searches. Apparently Chris Sturby had a brief career teaching business classes - I say this because I found his professorial reviews on some “rate your profs” site, and the reviews were unmistakably about Sturbs. It sounded like he hasn’t changed a bit (and that’s a good thing.) The funniest thing that I found though, was this link for Colin Simmonds. Funny only if you ever knew Colin (no offence to either Colin) His nickname was “pipes” at one point because he wasn’t exactly the body-builder type.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “And remember when I let that escaped lunatic in our house because he was dressed like Santa Claus? Well that’s nothing, because you have a gambling problem!” - Homer

I think that the longer I’m away from working retail, the more I enjoy shopping at Christmastime.

I worked at a store called “Work World” for quite a while. It was a franchise, and the chain has since been acquired by competitor “Mark’s Workwearhouse.” Anyway, as anyone who has worked the holiday rush can attest, it’s a crappy time of year to work retail. It’s good to be busy, and you get lots of hours, but you get more crazies out than at any other time of the year. Most people are understanding, and good customers, but you’d still get one or two per shift that you wish would just go away. At the end of the holiday season, you’re sick of Christmas carols, and you’re sick of people. Especially in Canada, where Boxing Day sales finish off the season with a flock of birds descending on the malls with the attitude that they’re entitled to buy anything they want for deep discounts. (”cheep cheep cheep”)

Anyway, now that I’ve been away from it for 6 or 7 years, I find that I can just enjoy peoplewatching. I went to Walmart on Sunday, looking for one last gift for Julia (which they were out of stock of) and while I was looking for it, I saw people berating staff for following store policy, I saw staff, who were obviously new, trying to find things that they had no idea where to find. I saw children in shopping carts screaming the Veruca Salt standard “I want it now!” I saw parents finding the perfect gift for their kids, and I saw kids with a look of wonder in their eye as they drooled at a display case.

I found myself flowing with the human current, whistling a tune - at first just the song that was on the radio when I got out of the van, then various Christmas carols that I must have picked up from the store’s PA system. Despite the zoological bent of the crowd, I found myself smiling. I left the store without buying anything, and I didn’t feel frazzled. In fact, I really enjoyed the experience, because underlying all the hubbub, every single person there was shopping for a gift for someone they cared about. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that in the holiday pandemonium.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I told you officer, I’m not ‘hepped up’ on ‘goofballs’!” - Ned Flanders

Apparently our internet connection was down for part of the morning, which resulted in people not being able to access this site. Sorry about that, because I know that you are all using the site as a reference work to help you live your daily lives.

Or maybe not.

Tonight is the annual staff Christmas party. This year should be a good one, because the industry has had a good year. We’ll see though. Christmas has really snuck up on me this year. For whatever reason, the whole year has really flown by on me.

We had a consultant here from India for a fairly long time (I honestly don’t know how long) and his he and his wife had a baby at about the same time as Julia was born. His son was in the NICU for a week or so. Anyway, yesterday was his last day here, so he got to go home and see his family again for the first time since they went home four months ago. Somehow it seems like only a couple of weeks ago that Julia was in the hospital, and we were making the daily treks there to see her. Meanwhile William is growing up more every day - he’s toilet trained (though he still wears a diaper at night) and comes up with clever things all the time. His latest thing is knock-knock jokes. He knows three or four, and he love telling them/having them told to him.

Last night William wanted to watch Charlie Chaplin, and he sat there and watched a couple of silent films, laughing appropriately and asking questions about Charlie’s motivations. Crazy.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Verily I declare that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not t’other way round.” - Comic Book Guy