Well after Christmas I had a work day, followed by a day of catching up with a few relatives I hadn't seen, so I'm a little late.
Anyway, after a night of lack of sleep, everyone went over to my Sister's house for Christmas. It was actually a pretty good day. I also got a shiny new Camera so I took a few pictures. I'm still learning the ropes of the new one so if a few of these came out terrible I can only request you cut me some slack.
My parents bought My Sister, Brother, and respective spouses a Blu Ray player. They were pretty psyched to say the least.
Megan helped Emma open her Monchichi.
BEAN! (My Brother Steve's Boston Terrier.)
I gave Jen a few Blu Ray movies because I knew my folks had purchased Blu Ray Players. Here she has Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and The Shining. We couldn't help but wonder how she hadn't seen The Shining, but she will see it now. She doesn't have a choice.
I gave Brian a copy of The Dark Knight, and the A Death In The Family Graphic Novel. Later in the evening he set up the Blu Ray player, and put it on for a few minutes just to see how nice the player worked. He seemed pretty impressed with it.
Still, he lit up seeing the Classic Trek T-shirt, and Revamped Trek flick.
On the whole it was a pretty good Christmas. Everyone got along well, we had a huge dinner. I mean huge. There was a Turkey, AND a Ham. A lot of Potatoes, Green Beans, Peas, Olives, Squash, Sweet Potatoes, Two types of Stuffing, and a bunch of stuff I'm probably forgetting. Everything came out wonderfully so if any of you guys who made the food decide to read this, well thank you a lot. Also thank you for not electing me to cook any of it because it would not have been anywhere near that delicious. In fact, I still have an extra Lemon Meringue pie to eat as of this writing because Amy was kind enough to make one for me, and one for everyone else. I say extra because I hadn't realized this, and ate almost an entire one during the Christmas festivities.
I do have to close on some sad news though, Early the following morning my Cousins Kyle, and Chad lost their apartment in an electrical fire, so any prayers or well wishes are appreciated. They made it out perfectly fine, but they did lose a great deal of their belongings. So here's hoping their insurance can reimburse them. Our family is helping in whatever way we can but there are also emotional distresses that one suffers in these cases so again any prayers or well wishes are greatly appreciated.
Merry Christmas everyone.
- More love.
- Less weight.
- More yoga.
- More books.
- More exercise.
- More vacations.
- More fun!
These all seem totally doable.
Bring it, 2010! Bring it!
It's feels like it's been while since I've made a post. Work has been extremely busy. There were more layoffs and now I have more work and more people around checking out what I am doing which means less internet surfing time. This should quite down now that the holidays are in swing and everything should be back to normal after the first of the year.
I have recently decided something though after months, actually a year on vox I have decided I like it and I'm going to stay. I know this place used to be better, more people, the vox team where more active and more helpful back then but it's still a decent place if we the users make it so. I hate to see a post from a neighbor explaining that they are leaving vox and why. There are still plenty of us here though so I have decided to stay.
and with that I am going to reorganize my blog a little bit. It'll be the same but I have added the things on a tuesday group and will be writing some more personal stuff , friends only of course. Some sex talk, bring some sexy back to Fridays. I want to get back to writing what every I feel like without holding anything back. This of course means more friends only post but I will also write about Orlando, and any other topic I find interesting as a public post.
I'll also be posting my New Years Resolutions and the ones I made last year, which ones I accomplished and which ones I didnt. It's something I do every year, last year I didn't post them to hear since I was so new to vox but this year I feel more comfortable.
I really do wish more of my pownce friends would have stayed here, I understand why they didn't. There was a bad taste in their mouth about Six Apart and I understand that, I also understand the nature of the web biz. It's a rough business, anyone that tells you to go into IT, Computer programming, interactive design and digial media entertainment because it is lucrative is fooling themselves. The company I work for has now made layoffs for two years in a row. At any moment we could be told to pack up and leave without much notice. It's just the way things go. No it isn't fair and these are hard working people who do a bang up job but sometimes things just don't work out and you save and salvage what you can. There isn't much else you can do.
So I'll be around and posting more again. I'll leave you with one of my favorite toasts. I believe it's an Irish toast.
"May the roof above us never cave in.
And the friends gathered below never fall out"
Merry Christmas to all. Have a great weekend and have fun.
I didn't do a very good job of maintaining that music vox, did I?
It's okay though. I've built an entirely new site from scratch, and I've ported all the old music posts from this blog as well as the djfstop vox over to it, complete with download links for the music, and new entries too. You should really go check it out.
These are some vintage postcards from my mom's collection. Today I will bake Christmas Tree cakes and make Swedish Roselle cookies. Of course I will wrap presents and get ready for tomorrow. We will go to mom's and see the peeps and then it's off to a Titan's game for Kevin and I.
It's been a busy holiday so far. Very busy at work. But I will try to remember what this day has meant for so many years.
Christmas is my mom's birthday and it hasn't been the same for so many years already. I'll think of her many times today, tomorrow and many more times this week.
Tonight we will watch Meet Me in Saint Louis as we have every Christmas Eve for the last 18 years.
Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
I'll see you after the new year!
Hope this time is joyous and peaceful for you and all you love. Best to everyone in the new year as well...
love and chocolate kisses,
gunderson
One of the common items I generally have to plug during work are insurance plans. In some cases the can be a genuinely great thing to buy. For instance on a Notebook computer typically most of the chipsets are integrated onto the Motherboard. Sound chip goes? New Mobo. DVD drive goes awry? Refurbishment happens.
If this sort of thing happens after the manufacturer's support ends it's pretty much a Chicken & Egg scenario.
On other things it makes little to no sense. How many people would spend $5 to insure a $10 item? Not many I'd wager.
Of course most people in my predicament are supposed to mention these things to everybody just on the off chance you come across one of the rare ones, or because you want to be able to help someone day 367 when they come back enraged their product decided to break.
Anyway the big wigs want us shilling this sort of thing because they make the short sighted move of getting people into the doors with loss leaders. So if people DON'T pick up the insurance, and whatever profitable accessories there are, the company loses money. The flaw in their logic becomes apparent when they assume everyone, and their mother will buy everything together if one proposes it properly. This is completely preposterous of course.
What the big wigs actually cause with this attitude however is the opposite of what they want.
Flogging employees who don't convince 100% of the client base to spend the extra either gets them to become insanely confrontational or simply disenfranchises them to the point of barely scraping by enough to not lose a job.
This in turn results in less people coming in the door.
To prove my point after work I stopped in a certain chain store looking at some last minute stocking stuffer stuff for a relative I see maybe only once a year.
Anyway I found a copy of Viewtiful Joe for $3. Yes. THREE DOLLARS.
When I made my way to the counter the cashier did his spiel, and asked me if I wanted to spend a buck on scratch protection. Sure. I know you should never manage a customer's pocketbook, so I explained that had I been buying a preowned epic $40 game disc that looked like it had been through a war, I might have considered it. But not for something that merely costs THREE DOLLARS. Which at that point the poor sod wouldn't stop badgering on about it, even going so far as to spew hyperbole about Xboxes eating discs.
As a result not only did I only spend THREE DOLLARS, but I probably will go to that location as a last resort in the future.
I also got a satisfaction survey on the receipt which I normally don't bother with, but this was something I just had to mention with a dab of snark.
Weirdest of all though was the $5 SHOE store coupon I received on the bottom of a GAME store receipt.
Lately I've managed to pick up and watch or read the most depressing stories, I want to disappear into nothing when they are over.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy: The book cover is black. That should have been an obvious sign. The whole book is dark. You want to cough up all the ashy phlegm when you get done with it. Ugh.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father: A documentarian makes a movie for the kid of his murdered childhood friend. Oh yes, and it gets worse from there.
This American Life, podcast #342, How to Rest In Peace. Stories about kids who's parents have died... either murdered or killed themselves and how they cope in adulthood.
I don't know. Those are just a few examples, but I seemed to be obsessed with bad things. Dark things. Currently, I'm considering jumping into the book "Lit", which is a memoir, but now I'm not so sure. My decision-makings skills are a bit twisted at the moment.
Feck.
