Entries for month: November 2006
This time last year I had just given my two weeks notice at Perdue, and was preparing to move up to Pennsylvania and start at E-Tech. We were planning our second Christmas together, and oddly enough, our first Christmas apart – in a manner of speaking. Starting December 10th I moved into a fancy furnished apartment in Pennsylvania and lived there until Megan could tie up all of the loose ends with her job in Maryland and move up here too. If memory serves, that was about a month and a half. We only saw each other on weekends, but we spoke on the phone just about every night. That's definitely not something I ever would have expected we would do during our first year –
our first six months! – married.
About five months ago we bought our house. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I think we were really lucky. We got about twice as much house as I thought we would be able to afford, it's only two and a half years old, give or take; and its in a better neighborhood than I would have guessed. We were very fortunate, indeed!
And this time last month I had just signed up for
NaBloPoMo. It's been a heck of an adventure trying to come up with something even mildly entertaining to write about every day (
except one –
but Conan forgave me, can't you!?) for a month. Based solely on the number of comments it generated,
Philosophy 101 was my most popular post this month, and to be honest I'm disappointed that
The Day I Was A Social Engineer didn't net more than a single one-word comment (asking what a "Wii" was). But don't expect more philosophy discussion. It's a tough topic to tackle, and I haven't had a single class on the matter.
I would like to put this out there, though. If you're a reader – a regular or just someone stumbling in from the NaBloPoMo randomizer or a search engine (or anywhere else, for that matter) – do you like the daily format? Does that encourage you to come back more often, or even just more than once? Even if you don't read every day, would you rather come back and find a few things to catch up on? Or on the other side of the coin – did you prefer the more sporadic posts, usually detailing more interesting events?
I ask because I'm getting settled with posting as part of my daily routine, and unsure if I want to continue it now that the month of voluntarily-mandated posting is over. No matter what, I'll continue Photo Wednesdays, though.
I'm writing to you now from my new
Macbook! This mean machine was ordered very late on (Black) Friday, shipped on Sunday, and arrived on my doorstep at 10:02 am on Wednesday. Impressive, when you consider it came from China by way of Anchorage Alaska! (And apparently they work on Sundays?)
What's not impressive is that FedEx ignored Apple's requirement for a signature at delivery. They just left
my precious on the doorstep and drove off. Thankfully I signed up for email updates on my package status, and I use Google Talk to monitor my email like a hawk. They dropped the package off and drove away at 10:02. By 10:12 I was on the phone (1-800-Go-FedEx) with an intelligent, polite, and helpful CSR who called the driver and told him to go pick it up and leave it at the distribution center, where I picked it up after work.
We loves our precious.
In any case, tonight we finally dug into the Christmas decorations. And as we expected, we came across a few surprises. The first official decorations are up, though. Now I can't wait to get a real tree! (Mostly because I know how much Ollie is going to attack it and I can't wait to shoot him with the spray gun!)
Yay! Christmas time is here!
It doesn't officially start until Thanksgiving is over and thankfully (
get it?) we had four thanksgivings this year. Now that all of the turkey gorging is done, we can move on to baked / frosted / caramelized treats. Oh, and you know… all that other stuff like decorating and hanging stockings.
I love this time of year. I love snow, and Christmas trees, and spending time with family, and gifts! I already
bought my gift to myself, so now all I have to worry about is what I'm going to get for Mrs. T and assorted family and friends.
To be honest? I haven't a clue, yet.
Luckily we (Erin) started a tradition with last year's Pollyanna to assemble a personal wish list and email it to everyone participating – so that the person who is giving you a gift can get your list without giving away the secret.
It's also been mentioned more than once now that I should write a computer program that will take care of the gifter / giftee assignments. With your normal Pollyanna, it may not be that big of a deal – not picking yourself is pretty much the only thing to worry about. But in our case, we have 8 people, of which there are 3 couples and two singles all participating. So in addition to not picking yourself, we also require that you can't pick your S.O. – because they're inevitably going to find out who you picked, and you'll give them gifts anyway, and it's just more fun this way.
When I started writing that last paragraph I thought that there may already be a service that does this online. I did a quick Google search and nothing useful came back. If you know of a "Secret Santa" / "Pollyanna" service online, please do fill me in before I waste an entire day making my own, far inferior version! Actually, scratch that. I don't care. It'll be fun anyway. (And I've already started!)
Something else came up and we ended up
not pulling out the Christmas decorations tonight like I had hoped. Last year after our three Christmas'ez we went to Walmart and picked up a bunch of junk that was on sale. We bought so much, in fact, that we have no idea what we bought and are eagerly anticipating cracking the tub in the basement marked "Christmas Decorations" – because that in itself is going to be like opening a Christmas present. Either that or being assaulted with boxes of cards (true story!) erased our memory of the day.
