Rooftop

Last Christmas was a marathon. It was Michelle and my first married christmas, and we attended 5 separate events. It was exhausting. This year we planned a little better, and actually ended up with a bit of breathing room between events. It was wonderful, and we had a chance to visit with our families. The day after was a bit busy getting stuff working and waiting ~5 hours for Best Buy to install my new car stereo (no more squeal!)

Aside from being able to spend time with family, we’ve had the opporunity to visit with friends. Not as many as we’d like, but we’re working on it. Next year we’ll have it down. Bob’s Keg & Cork provided a great place to visit, drink some great beer, and Bob is just a great guy. He even served a full house on Monday, the day he’s usually closed.

Hope you all had a great holiday season as well.

My Grandparents moved out to Washington this summer. They’ve lived in the same beautiful house on the same beautiful lake in the same Nebraska town for over 40 years. The move has been somewhat difficult, as you can imagine. Its not easy to move from all those memories, traditions, and routines, but they’re getting settled in.

Last night they had all the Washington Freeds over for a cocktail party at their place. Its the first social gathering they’ve had in their new place, and I think it really was the final event that christened their home. Their new place, though much smaller, still had the same feel as the living room back in Hastings. Part of it was the similarity in decorations, lighting, and placement of furniture, but most of it was seeing them comfortable and happy in their new surroundings. It was a very pleasant evening, and I’m glad we were able to be there.

Fearful of actually starting the tradition of sending christmas cards, I’ve put a very non-commital, all-inclusive christmas update online. If you want to read it, you’re welcome to, if not, fine by me.

I finished out my year today. My Simpsons Trivia calendar year, that is. I’ve kept track, and my final score is 202 right, 67 wrong. That gives me a 75%, which I’m happy with. There’s room for improvement, but that means I’d have to watch more TV. Even when its the Simpsons, its a chore.

While downtown this weekend with my parents, we stumbled upon a giant bronze elephant from Xi’an China, which was donated to the city of Portland. After a 7000 mile journey, we happened to show up in time to see it moved by crane into its final spot, facing east at the terminus of the North Park Blocks. It was facinating to watch the bronze behemouth moved; and to wait while the pre-made forms were removed because the measurement was off. I attribute it to a metric-standard conversion. Damn standard system.

While I understand that we typically think of China as being in the East, they really are closer when we look west, plus, you get to look at Powell’s Technical Books store. Bonus.

I had a dream about hell last night. As a rule of thumb, I always post any dream info in the extended entry because who really wants to read about other people’s dreams anyways?
Continue reading Hell

My family went to Great Britain in 2000, and had a splendid time. We were there when all the Mad Cow, Petrol Strike, and Foot & Mouth shit went down. It made for an interesting trip, but now I have doubts about giving blood, since I was there when the Mad Cow thing went down.

I try not to worry much, and I do a decent job of it. However, I sometimes get worried that I will slowly go crazy due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. My dad described the disease as a joke when he was in medical school; the blink tag of diseases. He also described how a person with it slowly goes crazy, driving everyone in their life away and eventually dying alone and very much in a bad state. Sometimes I wonder if that beef vindaloo I had in Keswick will come back to haunt me someday.

I think people like their memories. I sure enjoy mine. I think that’s partly why I do this, and why I take so many pictures. I love to look back from time to time and remember places, smells, tastes and feelings that you can associate with pictures. Today we had Library Inservice, which amounted to a lot of sitting around, and listening to library events that may or may not affect you.

The room we were in has a podium with a computer and an overhead projector. A couple days before I had been training students with WebCT, and had set the desktop background using one of my pictures, and for some reason, it was still set today. I was kind of embarassed, because its a faux pas to that on a work computer. I got comments on the picture, and overall, I was very glad I put it there because it gave me a wonderful image to accompany my constant day dreaming during the sessions. Why do meetings suck so much?

I did the grocery shopping this past week. It was fun, but I shouldn’t try it again without a full list. However, using this tactic, I may not stumble upon great items that make my work day shorter like Butterfinger Hot Chocolate.

I had to restrain myself quite a bit. There were lots of things I wanted, like cheese, beer, bread, deli sandwhiches, and so on. Instead, I stuck withe the standards, like Prima Rosa frozen bean & cheese burritos. These, cheddar, salsa, etc – yum.

We’ve had an elusive mouse loose in our apartment the last week. We bought a humane t(c)rap, but it didn’t ever stop him. Tigger has been useless too. At 13, he’s a real Strom Thurmond. He just sits around and doesn’t really contribute.

We’ve been waking up at night because the mouse is active. We couldn’t figure out why he sounded like he was above us, but then we found poop on the headboard. That made us really want to get rid of it. I woke up and saw it peering down at me this morning, and after several failed furniture moving sessions, we finally caught it after lunch today. Due to the mouse’s long stint indoors, I assumed it was a wise foe. Ultimately its downfall was hiding inside a plastic bucket, from which it could not jump from. Take That!

Anyway, the mouse has been release into the wild again. How long until it returns? Who knows. More importantly, how the heck did it get in?