Pre-Christmas Preparations

Feeling good after a languid day spent at the house. Stephanie made me pancakes for breakfast so that helped get the day started!

I've accomplished some decent stuff today:
- Rented a car for the Buffalo trip
- Trimmed nasty dead leaves from the Banana trees ( did I mention that I have banana trees!? They are great for feeding homless primates)
- Mopped half the house

Unfortunately I did plan to go into work today but I can see now that isn't going to happen. I've had some serious work looming that I need to complete, though I hate going in on Saturdays. Maybe tomorrow?

The holiday season has been pleasant so far, aside from my financial destitude. I wrapped Stephanie's present and unveilded the package to her spectacle. Since we are going to Buffalo I said I would let her open it on Tuesday morning before we get on the airplane. (really there is no way to fit that suck'a in our luggage). She was sort of poopy because she wanted to open it this weekend so I made a deal that if the cats manage to unwrap and reaveal her gift before Tuesday, then she can have her present early. Surprisingly the cats stayed away from the presents.

Now this is something that is sort of surprizing. Our cats, whom to this day have managed to bite holes in anything paper and plastic, have suspiciously avoided this package. I even tucked a kitty treat into one of the fold to see if that would convince them to strike. Still the kitties aloofishly ignored the package. What is with these guys?! This reinforces one of my hyphothesises about cats. Cats can cunningly detect exactly what humans want and strategically position themselves to be contrary.

Christmas Cleaning

Stephanie just informed me that lake effect snow is forcast for Buffalo! Just in time for the place to be snow-slammed for when Stephanie and I arrive a little over a week from now.

Man I miss the snow!

The Christmas season has been pretty decent so far, despite the lack of cold weather in Savannah. Steph has really helped to get in the holiday season by decorating the house and reminding me to buy presents. I've got some great presents this year....of course I can't elaborate on them because snooping eyes might be reading this blog. I'm under the sad delusion that thousands of geeks standby waiting for the next installment of this mangy cyber rag.

We had a work christmas party on Saturday night. It was a pretty great time but surprisingly many people were sort of nervous and stuck-up due to the"work" social setting. I'm still contemplating what contributed to the high levels of pretension. Maybe people think that our "work" is a real professional sort of place so these sorts of social gatherings should be a semi-elite engagement. Fortunately I don't suffer from any such delusions of grandeur. For one, I don't get near enough pay to be high and mighty. Really, I'm closer to being homeless than elite with all the christmas spending lately. So I did my best not to let other people's pomp mess with my cool mojo.

I was supposed to clean the house today but I got too pissy to make much progress. To me, cleaning is a sort of triviality that's required but isn't really that gratifying when it's finished. You don't earn money by cleaning, it doesn't accrue any interest and your efforts are only doomed to decay over time to where you are right back where you started from. So really I'm at a crappy crossroads here. To clean or not to clean. If I don't, it might get worse. If I do, I'll regret the efforts spent in vain. Really the best solution is to hire an immigrant worker to clean for me. That's the ticket!

New England Crust

Thursday night I flew to Providence, RI to attend training in Groton on Friday. I noticed an interesting aspect of New England culture while I was up there:

New Englander's are freakin' crusty!

When we got into Mystic, CT (near our hotel) we ate at a place called JAMM'S. The food was good but the waiter was something else. First off, this guy was loud! The restaurant had a pretty average noise level and he managed to project his voice to a level that could be heard no matter what part of the restarant he happened to be in. I started calling him Mr. 6......because his voice was at least 6 dB louder than anything else in that place. Please excuse the acoustics nerdism. And to add to the causticness he spoke as pompously and rapidly as possible. He also refered to his patrons as "Buddy!". Quite strange.

I went shopping in Mystic and unbeknownst to me the shop was closing at 8:00. The lady in the store curtly informed me that it is 8:06 and tomorrow the store is open from 9:00 am to 8:00. Not a single "thankyou for coming" or a "sorry we're closed" . It seemed that I was in the wrong for entering HER shop.

Now besides the crusty, screwed up people in New England, there is one other thing that really bothered me. Both restaurants I visited CHARGED for refills of my coke. These people simply have no sense of hospitality.