Nei­ther of us felt too chip­per this past week­end, so things that were sup­posed to get done, didn’t. The biggest fail­ing was not rak­ing any of the leaves off the front (or back or side for that mat­ter) lawn. You know how quiet and beau­ti­ful it looks out­side your house at day­break after 3 inches of snow overnight? You can’t see where the grass ends and the dri­ve­way begins. Where you had plants or flow­ers there are just raised lev­els of snow. Good, now replace that snow with a blan­ket of dead brown oak and hick­ory leaves…the only way I found our news­pa­per this morn­ing was because as it skid­ded across the dri­ve­way after being thrown from the pass­ing car of the car­rier, it left a lit­tle clear­ing behind it like a comet’s trail.

It wasn’t a total loss though as we did final­ize the Christ­mas present buy­ing for fam­ily mem­bers, with a cou­ple of small pur­chases, so their boxes can be mailed out soon. I did pull down the half dozen plas­tic stor­age boxes from the attic so we could dec­o­rate the inside of the house too. Donna scat­tered about the sea­sonal knick-knacks while I unfolded the plas­tic tree. I guess it is time to dig out the Christ­mas MP3s.

The post office doesn’t open until 9:00AM on Sat­ur­day. It’s 8:30 on weekdays.

Post­marks for this year’s Christ­mas boxes to fam­ily will read North, South Carolina.

There is no such place as South, North Carolina.

Lunch in Dar­ling­ton. The meat­loaf sand­wich at Cracker Bar­rel is pretty damn good.

Din­ner in Colum­bia. The 1/2 lb. burger at Fudruck­ers is pretty damn good.

The orange light on dash shaped like a gas pump is bad.

Christ­mas light dec­o­ra­tions are good.

Rollerbladed this evening for the first time in a while. I’m afraid it has fallen into the same bucket as the blog­ging. I take every oppor­tu­nity to pro­cras­ti­nate and when I finally do do it, it is half-hearted at best. Could just be that time of the year — its dark in the morn­ing and nearly dark at the end of the work­day too.

Big news is I went through the scads of pho­tos I took on the Thanks­giv­ing Florida trip and made a 20 image gallery — Florida Trip 2006 right now and as always there is a link in the sidebar.

I got this via email today with the title Red­neck Time­out:

This is funny on so many levels…

My col­lege stu­dent, AKA The Hired Mouse, who was work­ing with me dur­ing the sum­mer to reduce my big ol’ pile of draft­ing back­log was a prodi­gious Dr. Pep­per drinker. Adam usu­ally downed a cou­ple 20oz. bot­tles a day, but could fin­ish off three of them before lunch on a dare. Dur­ing this time frame Dr. Pep­per was run­ning a pro­mo­tion that if you sent in twenty-three UPC sym­bols from the labels of the 20oz. bot­tles you would get a free Pep­per Pack. The PP con­sisted of a ball cap, a T-shirt and a lunch box. Need­less to say Adam responded to the chal­lenge and in the span of a cou­ple weeks had the required 23 labels.

The fine print said, “Please allow 6–8 weeks for deliv­ery — Offer good while sup­plies last.” There were no descrip­tions for the items, so Adam had no idea what any of this stuff would look like or when it would get to him. He tried to wait patiently, but he really did want to get his Pep­per Pack before his employ­ment was over at ASCO so he could show off his Pep­per Pack.

Finally after about a month and a half he came in to work one day with a nice look­ing gray ball cap with a Dr. Pep­per logo patch on the front. Not bad look­ing, I’d wear one of those. Adam was a big kid and he said even thought the Tee was an XL it was too small for him, so he gave it to his mom. And the lunch box was one of those old time rec­tan­gu­lar metal things and was good for a col­lectible or col­lect­ing bits of junk in the garage.

See­ing as I drink Dr. Pep­per too I thought maybe I’d go for a Pep­per Pack as well. I don’t drink as much as Adam and with the offer expir­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber I was in trou­ble. August was almost over, but my buddy Mark drinks and he offered to help. Some­time in the third week of Sep­tem­ber we had enough labels to mail in. With the phrase “Offer good while sup­plies last” and the fast approach­ing dead­line, I didn’t think there was a very good chance I’d ever see a Pep­per Pack, but what the heck it was only cost­ing me a 39¢ stamp (we won’t count the cost of the soda as we would have drank that many in a month anyway.)

Hav­ing totally for­got­ten about the pro­mo­tion, I was totally con­fused by the box from Min­nesota in the mail last Sat­ur­day. Donna demanded to know what I’d ordered and I fran­ti­cally search my mem­ory banks for what I might have done. The only clue to what it might be was a small line at the bot­tom of the label that read Pep­per Pack. I couldn’t think what that meant. Did some­one send me a Christ­mas gift that con­sisted of the pep­per of the month, Jan­u­ary would be jalapeños, Feb­ru­ary might be habaneros, etc. It wasn’t until I saw the maroon metal lunch box that I remembered.

I’ve got a new favorite hat…

Before going any fur­ther, read this post — Fold­ing Bucket — from Octo­ber. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Really.

Donna and I swap gifts with very few peo­ple other than fam­ily, but there is one cou­ple and their kids that we have been doing so with for about the last 16 years. Even though we don’t see as much of them as we used to we still get together enough that we know likes and dis­likes which makes present selec­tion fairly easy. The woman in this fam­ily has become a quasi-regular reader here (Hi Rae!), so she knew exactly what to get me for Christ­mas this year — The Gift.

Our Christ­mas box arrived today from Donna’s sis­ter in Stu­art, FL. While Donna was squeez­ing and ana­lyz­ing the wrapped presents try­ing to deter­mine just what might be inside the pretty paper, I was danc­ing around the house shout­ing, “My favorite pants are here! My favorite pants are here!” like Navin R. John­son with the new phone book.

Harry Har­toun­ian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about noth­ing.
Navin R. John­son: Noth­ing? Are you kid­ding? Page 73 — John­son, Navin R.! I’m some­body now! Mil­lions of peo­ple look at this book every­day! This is the kind of spon­ta­neous pub­lic­ity — your name in print — that makes peo­ple. I’m in print! Things are going to start hap­pen­ing to me now.

Are you as tired of pen­guins as I am? The ones in Mada­gas­car prac­ti­cally made that movie, but then came March of the Pen­guins and this year’s Happy Feet. Tonight I even saw a Dawn dish liq­uid com­mer­cial about how they save mother pen­guins after oil spills, so they can go back to rais­ing their babies. Enough! Take out your flight­less black & white bird rage here: Yeti Bat­ting Prac­tice. Click once to make the pen­guin jump and then click again to make the Yeti swing.

For those of you who are not reg­u­lar read­ers, Donna and I get our hair­cut every 4 weeks from a friend who owns her salon. Today was hair­cut day an on our way out tonight I spot­ted some­thing on dis­play that made me do a dou­ble take. As long as I’m on the whole relat­ing life to movies kick…Remember in the movie M*A*S*H where every­one gath­ers around the woman’s shower tent and they are tak­ing bets as to whether or not Major Hot Lips O’Houlihan is a nat­ural blonde? Let’s just say that with mod­ern tech­nol­ogy she would have no wor­ries about the truth now. Intro­duc­ing — Betty Beauty.

I finally got the photo gal­leries script updated to eSPG 2.0. Took quite a bit of mon­key­ing around to get some­thing that is rel­a­tively trans­par­ent to you the viewer. But it makes it eas­ier for me to add pic­tures and their descrip­tions because I can now do it online as opposed to chang­ing stuff on the desk­top and not see­ing the results until after every­thing has been uploaded.

I added a Ran­dom Gallery Image to the side­bar. If you click on the teaser image it will take you to the main gallery page where you will be greeted with the big new trick the updated script has up it’s sleeve, a thumb­nail image the go along with the gallery title. I may need to put it closer to the top or nobody will ever see it…

Both Donna and I have devel­oped a case of the snif­fle, runny nose, sneez­ing thing. Boy are we fun to be around…

Tomor­row when you look up and notice that the flags are fly­ing at half mast, who will it be for?

The Good — Ger­ald Ford
The Bad — Sad­dam Hus­sein
Or
The Ugly — James Brown