Just had a bad cold, courtesy of some neice or nephew no doubt. I got it the day after T-Day. Plus the damn game had me crying in my beer for days. Best quote (paraphrased from some guy who wrote into one of the AJC blogs): "Tech would have been better off with two Johnsons and no Balls." Explanation - we have two great receivers who are both named Johnson, and one very flaky good/bad/whoknowswhatkindofQBwillplaytoday QB named Ball (who cost us the frelling Georgia game for the last four years running). Another funny gag floating around is how UGA will retire Tech's #1 QB jersey, seeing as how Ball has been their MVP for four years in a row. Hmpf. But I'm getting over it now. The cold and the football thing. We're doing well in basketball and that helps.
PDM and I went out and got our Christmas tree tonight. An artificial one. Real trees are nice, but I just can't see wasting a once-live gorgeous tree to sit in our house for a month and then go to the chipper. We don't have a place to plant a real one with a root ball, which is what my Dad used to do every year. He had 16 acres. I have 0.5 shady acres that are already loaded with hardwoods. Moxy is already eyeing the big box it is in. She loves to eat boxes, and the bigger the better. Since we would like to keep said box for future storage, we are trying to discourage the little monster. Dang cats.
I'm pretty much over the cold (except for being a walking phlegm factory). But poor PDM woke up with my symptoms from last Friday, and he has to work this week since he is a hardworking college physics instructor. Awww. I tried to be helpful - I made my version of chicken soup: hot and sour soup with chicken. Apparently, I made it a little too hot for someone with a sore and irritated throat. Oops.
And in late breaking news, Stellar has finally updated his blog. It's true. Go check it out.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Thursday, November 23, 2006
T-Day
Have a great Thanksgiving Day and enjoy the feast. I'm in the north Georgia mountains with PDM and his brothers and families until Saturday, and they're firing up the deep fryer to cook the turkey. See you in a few days!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Guess who's coming to dinner?
No one.
My sister and her husband and son were going to be coming over for dinner yesterday, and she and the nephew were set to spend the night. My bro-in-law and nephew are already in town visiting his dad, and sister was due in on a 6:30 flight from San Diego. They’d all rendezvous at my pad and we would have dinner. PDM and I carefully planned a menu during Sunday’s craziness and had the house and guest room clean and ready to go. We started working on the meal as soon as we got home from work.
The phone rings as expected at 6:30. It was my sister, calling from San Diego, not the Atlanta airport. ARGH! This was approximately five minutes after we passed the point of no return on the meal prep – it had to be cooked no matter what. Turns out, she’d left a message for me on my voicemail at work about how she couldn’t get on the flight. The problem was that I now work at two different facilities , and I won’t be at my main office until Wednesday, so I never got the message. [My sister did finally make it to Atlanta, but got in at 5:30am after spending all day in airports trying to get on a flight and then all night on a plane. She’s a furloughed flight attendant, and traveling on standby during Thanksgiving week, and there were some canceled flights and other problems with the San Diego flights to ATL, which is why she was getting bumped.]
We called everyone we could think of who lives close by, but only two friends were home and they both had other dinner plans. So PDM and I were left to eat all that food ourselves. Beef satay, chicken tikkas, and cumin potatoes. About two pounds of each. The food was delicious, but we had way too much of it. We thought about taking a couple of care packages to the bartenders at our pub, but by the time we’d eaten and cleaned up it was 9pm and we were beat. So tonight when our next houseguest arrives (hopefully!), instead of the beer cheese soup and BLTs that we had planned on making, we’ll be eating reheated leftovers. Except we will have to heat them the old-fashioned way, since our stupid microwave is still out of action due to the broken glass plate that I can't find a replacement for that costs less than $42.
My sister and her husband and son were going to be coming over for dinner yesterday, and she and the nephew were set to spend the night. My bro-in-law and nephew are already in town visiting his dad, and sister was due in on a 6:30 flight from San Diego. They’d all rendezvous at my pad and we would have dinner. PDM and I carefully planned a menu during Sunday’s craziness and had the house and guest room clean and ready to go. We started working on the meal as soon as we got home from work.
The phone rings as expected at 6:30. It was my sister, calling from San Diego, not the Atlanta airport. ARGH! This was approximately five minutes after we passed the point of no return on the meal prep – it had to be cooked no matter what. Turns out, she’d left a message for me on my voicemail at work about how she couldn’t get on the flight. The problem was that I now work at two different facilities , and I won’t be at my main office until Wednesday, so I never got the message. [My sister did finally make it to Atlanta, but got in at 5:30am after spending all day in airports trying to get on a flight and then all night on a plane. She’s a furloughed flight attendant, and traveling on standby during Thanksgiving week, and there were some canceled flights and other problems with the San Diego flights to ATL, which is why she was getting bumped.]
We called everyone we could think of who lives close by, but only two friends were home and they both had other dinner plans. So PDM and I were left to eat all that food ourselves. Beef satay, chicken tikkas, and cumin potatoes. About two pounds of each. The food was delicious, but we had way too much of it. We thought about taking a couple of care packages to the bartenders at our pub, but by the time we’d eaten and cleaned up it was 9pm and we were beat. So tonight when our next houseguest arrives (hopefully!), instead of the beer cheese soup and BLTs that we had planned on making, we’ll be eating reheated leftovers. Except we will have to heat them the old-fashioned way, since our stupid microwave is still out of action due to the broken glass plate that I can't find a replacement for that costs less than $42.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Explain this to me
We broke the glass dish from our microwave this morning and I looked at several sources on the internet to find a replacement. What I found defies logic.
Average cost of replacement dish: $50
Average starting cost of a similar-sized, brand-new microwave: $50
Grrrrrr. So after work, I get to go to the frelling store to buy a whole new microwave, because I am NOT going to pay $50 for a stupid piece of molded glass. If you built a microwave oven from scratch using replacement parts, it would cost you more than $1000! Bastards. And because of this little experience, I will NOT be buying another GE model.
Average cost of replacement dish: $50
Average starting cost of a similar-sized, brand-new microwave: $50
Grrrrrr. So after work, I get to go to the frelling store to buy a whole new microwave, because I am NOT going to pay $50 for a stupid piece of molded glass. If you built a microwave oven from scratch using replacement parts, it would cost you more than $1000! Bastards. And because of this little experience, I will NOT be buying another GE model.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Sore Muscles, and a Sense of Accomplishment.
We had a busy day today. Georgia Tech football consumed most of the day yesterday, and we just gave into it. We left for the game at 10:00am and got home at 5:30pm. I did exactly thirty minutes of yardwork (leafblowing!) when we got home, until it was too dark to see what I was doing, then we went to the bar for the evening. It turned out to be a good idea -- a lot of our friends were there and we had a good time and watched several football games simultaneously, plus one race.
That left a lot of work to be done on Sunday, on a limited timetable (yardwork during daylight hours but not too early with the noisy stuff, and most stores will close at 6). We know better now than to skip a weekend of leaf removal (it makes the next weekend's job nearly impossible), so we both got out there and bagged leaves until mid afternoon. Then we got cleaned up and did some Christmas shopping for relatives we will be seeing at Thanksgiving. The idea is that we'll just give them the stuff during the Turkey Day get together and save us a trip or some postage. We had a plan and were able to knock that out with time to spare. Came home, growled on some leftover Chinese and then made the grocery list for the dinners we'll feed our Monday night and Tuesday night houseguests (separate guests each night). In between all of this stuff, we were cleaning up the house like mad and getting the guest room ready. We're both pooped. But we got a lot done, and it feels really good to have at least a portion of the Christmas shopping off our plates. I've still got to come up with ideas for my gi-normous family, but we got almost all of PDM's people taken care of.
I'm looking forward to seeing PDM's brothers and their families for T-Day, but man, it sure is a lot of work getting everything ready for it. One last loose end is finding a cat-sitter for the Moxinator. My old cat could be left to her own devices for three days, but I don't think Moxy is ready for that. I know that house isn't ready for it!
That left a lot of work to be done on Sunday, on a limited timetable (yardwork during daylight hours but not too early with the noisy stuff, and most stores will close at 6). We know better now than to skip a weekend of leaf removal (it makes the next weekend's job nearly impossible), so we both got out there and bagged leaves until mid afternoon. Then we got cleaned up and did some Christmas shopping for relatives we will be seeing at Thanksgiving. The idea is that we'll just give them the stuff during the Turkey Day get together and save us a trip or some postage. We had a plan and were able to knock that out with time to spare. Came home, growled on some leftover Chinese and then made the grocery list for the dinners we'll feed our Monday night and Tuesday night houseguests (separate guests each night). In between all of this stuff, we were cleaning up the house like mad and getting the guest room ready. We're both pooped. But we got a lot done, and it feels really good to have at least a portion of the Christmas shopping off our plates. I've still got to come up with ideas for my gi-normous family, but we got almost all of PDM's people taken care of.
I'm looking forward to seeing PDM's brothers and their families for T-Day, but man, it sure is a lot of work getting everything ready for it. One last loose end is finding a cat-sitter for the Moxinator. My old cat could be left to her own devices for three days, but I don't think Moxy is ready for that. I know that house isn't ready for it!
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Until next year...
Today was our last visit to "The Flats" until next fall. We had perfect football weather: sunny and clear, cool without being cold. This game was an easy victory. We took our starters out at halftime and still went 49-21 against winless Duke. I'm not quite ready for the season to end, but I have been unable to convince PDM to take the trip to Jacksonville on December 2 to go to the ACC title game. It looks like I'll be watching the remaining three games on TV. One more to close out the season, then the ACC championship, then a bowl game to be determined later. It's been a fun ride this year.
And now we're down to the week of the big hate match, so I just have to say: "To Hell With Georgia!"
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