We survived last night. I’m about to lose my voice and The La’s drooling buckets. The La and I were in bed before The Wife left for work at 10:15 last night. My only indication that the new year had arrived was being woken up by my neighbor’s own private fireworks show. I did manage to post some xmas pictures in the photos section. We’ll see how tonight goes. I’ll be calling my doctor’s office first thing in the morning to try and get an appointment so I can get drugs.
This’ll be a quick one. I’m in the process of revamping the way I display any photos other than the picture of the week. You can check that out here (I stopped using Gallery when I switched to WordPress in Jan. 2006. Photos are in Flickr now.) or just click the Photos link in the Main Menu. I’m using Gallery after seeing it in action on Max’s site. I haven’t posted any photos from Xmas yet as most of ours turned out pretty badly. I still hope to get the video footage up in the not too distant future. My mother sent some pictures that turned out better than ours, so I’ll probably add an album with those shots sometime this week. I don’t know if I’ll get to it tonight as Mary is working and both Lily and I are having snot issues this week. Lovely, eh? Happy New Year!
A belated Merry Xmas and a somewhat early Happy New Year to the throngs of thechunk.com readers. Happy Birthday to my sister who turns 28 today.
I didn’t quite make the Saturday deadline for mailing out our xmas cards. The majority were sent on Tuesday and more went out today. I think we’ve still got a few more addresses to track down.
We had a very nice Xmas. I bought pre-lit 7.5 ft. artificial tree on Saturday morning. It looks great. I’m not sure how long we’re going to leave it up. I guess until Epiphany (Jan. 6th?). My mother and sister came in town on Tuesday afternoon for a 24-hour whirlwind stay. The Wife made a wonderful Xmas Eve dinner of pork tenderloin, boneless beef rib, cranberry, and real mashed potatoes. My mother brought some sides and we got a pumpkin pie from Central Market.
The Boy made out like a bandit. He got his Spider-Man Web Blaster and his Attack of the Clones DVD along with a bunch of Spy Kids figures. His Jaja and Grandpa S. gave him an impressive Yamaha keyboard complete with stand and bench. I’ve got to find him a piano/music class in the new year. It was great fun to have a the young kid Christmas enthusiasm this year from The Boy. I videotaped most of his gift opening and hope to finally use the firewire video capture card that I bought ages ago to get the footage onto the site. La’s big present was the super-deluxe swing that we got her as an early present to ourselves. The Wife got some clothes, books, and some bath salts/bubble bath. I also did very well. I got some books, some DVDs, and a couple of PS2 games. The two big surprises were the cappucino/espresso machine from The Wife’s parents and a talking Homer Simpson bottle opener from Santa (ahem, my mother).
I also managed to survive my first full night alone with both kids last night. Mary went back to work for a 11pm-7am shift. The Boy’s no big deal these days, but La is another story. I got her to sleep just as The Wife left around 10:30. Andy was over to hang out for a while and we stayed up talking and watching Best In Show until 12:30. Part of our discussion involved our thoughts on LOTR: Two Towers, but I’ll save that for another thread. I really should’ve been sleeping while La was down too, but I just didn’t do it. She woke up at 1:30 for her first bottle. I had her back down by 2, but I was up for another 1/2 hour listening to the dog across the street bark non-stop. I think his owners are out of town and for some reason they allow him to roam free. I wasn’t far from going out there with a bat and braining the fucker to shut him up. I did learn that the City of Austin actually has a phone number specifically for barking dogs. I may be using that one soon. She woke up again at 4:30 and it took me an hour to get her to go back down. Total sleep for me: 1hr + 2hr + 2hr + 1hr after The Wife got back. Six hours straight would be ok, but broken up like that isn’t very restful. I have a feeling that The Wife and I both will be in bed before 10 tonight. I worked from home today and will be going in for a full day tomorrow. The Wife works again Saturday night and then both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Unfortunately, that means I’ll be missing the big Unsane reunion show at Emo’s on New Year’s Eve. It’ll be just La and I watching Foo Fighters on MTV.
Lots of holiday stuff going on the past week, so let’s get started..
The Wife was up early Saturday and saw an ad in the paper. She called and left and message and I followed up with the kids and checked out the car. I discovered that 5-year-olds aren’t the best people to take with you when shopping for a car. The Boy kept exclaiming things like "We should buy this car, dad!". I could see the seller doing a Mr. Burns, "Eeeexcellent!".
It turns out that the seller lives out in the boonies (somewhere near La Grange), is a retired car salesman, and has a connection through his son at a local dealership to get "creampuff" trade-ins of cars that evidently don’t sell all that well out there. Since he re-sells several cars a year, he’s categorized as a dealer and we unfortunately had to pay TTL whereas we probably would’ve avoided the taxes if he were a private party.
I had the van inspected yesterday by AutoPI who I recommend. I also found out that Austin Telco Credit Union has some of the best local auto loan rates. The bummer is that I went there after the inspection and it turns out that they have coupons for $20 off AutoPI inspections. I think it was well worth what I paid, but $99 sounds much better than $119.
I fully expect the soccer mom/dad minivan comments to start rolling in, so go ahead. I can take it.
KUT (our local NPR station) is running a special on the making of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. It’s a two part series with part one running last night and part two tonight.
They had a contest last night to give away the new Impulse Deluxe Edition CD and new book, A Love Supreme – The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album by Ashley Kahn. The fourth caller to call in and be able to name the members of the quartet won. I called in and actually won it! An early birthday present for me (it’s Monday, hint, hint).
The really funny thing is that Mary had mentioned the new book to me a few weeks ago and I blew it off, telling her that I already had all of the Coltrane books (stupid me). On top of that, Mary had just talked to her dad earlier this week and he had gotten me a copy of the book as a christmas present. She called him last night to inform him. He’s going to give the book to someone else.
In other news, I downloaded and built the source for the original Quake over the weekend, but you still need the original install for all of the maps and models, etc. I had always meant to buy a copy, but passed it up the last time I saw it in a bargain bin. Now, it appears that it’s near impossible to find at most of the major retailers around here. id still sells it for $30, but I’m not paying that much for a game that’s 6 years old. I managed to find a site selling it for $9.99, so I bought it from them. It’s almost $15 with shipping. I suppose I got my $15 worth over the years. I hope it’s actually a new copy. It’s through some software store in Wisconsin that I found on Yahoo.
We made it back in one piece from Dallas. The La wasn’t too bad on the trip. She only got mad twice on the way up and that was because of accidents on either side of Waco. On the way back, she got angry right before we were going to stop in Temple anyway for lunch.
It was really cool to see my Great Uncle Ken who was visiting from England. I hadn’t seen him in 12 years, which was the last time my family took a trip over there. I learned that my Aunt Cora, who passed away this summer, was quite an accomplished amateur actress in the 60’s. I had no idea. We also got to see my cousin Don and his girlfriend, Jennifer.
We took a bunch of pictures, so I’ll be updating the picture of the week later tonight. I’ve been meaning to standardize an online album, so I might do that with the Thanksgiving photos.
On a sad note, I just learned today that a former co-worker passed away over the holidays. He was only 28 and it was apparently from complications arising from pulmonary hypertension. Scary. I really need to make an appointment for a physical in the near future.
Oh yeah, and on a trivial note, the Mavs only got 14 in a row before the Pacers stopped them. Oh well.
We’ll be gorging ourselves on turkey and watching the Mavericks try and extend their 13-0 start to beat the record of 15-0. There’re new pictures of the week for both Henry and Lily. Hope all those travelling have a safe trip.
There’s a new Halloween edition of the picture of the week for both Henry and Lily. Mary and I have been “taste testing” Henry’s candy to ensure that it’s “safe”. He and I went trick-or-treating downtown with his preschool, then we hit several blocks in the neighborhood while Mary and Lily greeted trick or treaters at the house. There were quite a few people out tonight, more than I expected.
I picked up Grand Theft Auto: Vice City today during lunch at Fry’s. I hope Henry doesn’t mind a 6:30 bedtime tonight. I’ll let you know what I think of it, assuming I can tear myself away.
Oh yeah, there’s a new Lily picture of the week as of last night.
As promised, there’s another new Lily picture of the week from the lot taken this weekend. I’ll add another one tomorrow. Mary’s mom leaves tomorrow and her dad won’t arrive until Thursday night, so we get a 36 hour taste of what it’ll be like to be on our own again. We’re definitely not going to be eating as well anymore.
I’ve added a growth chart link to both Henry and Lily’s pages. They’re just in tables now, but I’m going to try and find something that allows me to plot a growth chart on the fly. If you know of anything that works with PHP, let me know. I’m not sure if my ISP has the right libraries compiled into PHP to manipulate graphics. I may go the applet route.