We get so few rainy days that the ones we get are special. Normally I’d like to just sit at home or lay in bed listening to it. Today, I had to go out in it. For some reason the safety features such as anti-slip aren’t working. I replaced the battery and usually it takes about 50 miles to reset the sensors and get everything back up and running but it’s been about 75 miles now and still no slip control.

It’s that day of the year. Sandy and I are sitting around the house after opening presents watching A Christmas Story and admiring our gifts. We replaced pot cookware with a stainless ensemble including a 2 quart enameled cast iron number. A couple of whisks and some smaller tongs were left by the big guy too. I also got my sweatshirt collection refreshed. Sandy got a vacuum cleaner… I know I know, but that’s what she wanted. It’s a Dyson so it’s pretty upper end. I’m hoping the gift will help us clean better. We’re not filthy but when we do run pull out and plug in and run the vacuum we have, it’s got lots of pet glitter (AKA hair). With the cordless convenience it should make it a snap to get things cleaned up.

It’s going to be a nice quite day. Sandy and I may go downtown to take our picture in front of the tree or we may wait and do that on NYE which is less than a week away. Christmas is always a little sad because it’s over. Admittedly we’re on the bridge and nothing gets done until next year but that starts a long stretch. The miles to go before I sleep I guess.

Also got the front and back yard fertilized. Writing it here so I remember when I last did it.

I’ve got things on my mind and things I want to get done but I’m not going to worry about them today. I’ll do what I feel like today and tomorrow will take care of itself if the great spirit sees fit to leave me here another day. Merry Christmas to all!!!

So yesterday I was perusing my email and came across a little 6 shot single action .22lr revolver for $124.99 at Academy and couldn’t say no. Heck I think it even has a $25 mail in rebate. So I bought it online and picked it up at 7:30am this morning.

So I’ve got another gun that will get shot once ever 5 or so years. While I currently don’t have any place to shoot it, I do aspire to owning a piece of land where I can take some cans out and plink them with a 22.

Aside from that trip, not much happened today. It rained a lot, that was nice to have the rain and thunder, I do so enjoy it. I also cooked up 3 pounds of bacon. And went for a 4 mile bike ride before the rain. And took an amazing nap with the cats. I love it how they are happy when I nap with them.

Life is good today. Happy Christmas Eve everyone!

So for the second time in two months I find myself at the hospital. Although this time it’s Sandy who’s under the knife and I’m doing the waiting. This is a really nice hospital, it’s UT Southwestern University Hospital and makes the one I was at look like a clinic. We got here in record time but then again we were getting here at 4:45am so there wasn’t a bunch of traffic and considering we’re 2 days away from Christmas, there probably wouldn’t have been normal traffic anyways.

We’re here so Sandy can have surgery to fix her nose that got broken and healed wrong when we went camping at Dinosaur Valley State Park. So the $1k bike leads to a $15k surgery. At least she’s cover by her military benefits.

As I get older, I’m beginning to lament the path not taken more and more. Don’t get me wrong, I traveled the road that I was supposed to and came out at this end of it extremely blessed in all that I have. But what if I would have started earlier? What if I hadn’t smoked for 20 years? Where would I have been had the military took me?
It hits me when I meet professionals that are so much younger than I am. The doctors that are working on Sandy don’t look over 30 even though they surely are. I wonder what it’s like to have your life on track and things in order 20 years before I did age wise.

I can’t complain too much. I’m not sure what higher power is looking out for me but they’re doing a great job!

Still don’t have the hang of Sunday’s. Oh well, this one isn’t too bad. I’ve been pulling the stuff out of production all weekend and the main part should be down today. What a royal pain in the backside. I’m wondering if Oracle just doesn’t have the talent to tune the database so it actually works right.

The beef tips from yesterday turned out amazing!!! We’ll definitely be making that again. I’ll have to keep an eye out for sales on sirloin and use this as a go to. It has freezing possibilities for quick meals during the week. Check it out and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

There’s football on today so I’ll try to get some more work done in the garage. It’s cold out today and the propane heater works well but give me a headache I think, maybe it’s just work.

Today always reminds me of the Robert Frost poem ‘Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening’. The shortest day in the northern hemisphere and the longest night. And miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep…
It sort of feels like using this time to rest because there’s a lot more to do ahead of you, or at least how I like to think of it.

Tonight we’re trying to make beef tips and mashed potatoes. The recipe came from here and it calls for sirloin beef tips, that’s a rather expensive cut of meet at about $10 a pound currently, it’s basically a steak. The idea was to use like a chuck roast and cube it up and low and slow it. But now that I’m thinking of it, we probably should be doing that in the pressure cooker. I was looking for beef stew tender meat but that takes about 8 hours, this one is done in 3, well supposedly 2.5 but I’m cooking it for 3.

Made more progress on the garage. There was college and professional football on today. Nice to work to. We’ve been having a fire in the fireplace in the evening and the cats absolutely love it. It might as well be for them:)

I got a great start to it today, up at 5 and trying to make the production exports work. I’m not able to pull the demographic data except for 500 records every 45 minutes. I’ve been doing this for something like 19 years and have never seen it this bad, there’s also a lot more coming out but what can you do.

I still need steps and calories but I think I’ll try to handle up on that when the football game comes on. There are a couple tonight including the start of the NCAA football playoffs. Not that I follow it but it’s good to have football on in the background. I like that there’s a live event someplace that people are hanging out at. I don’t want to be there myself by any means but it’s nice to know there’s a party crowd someplace.

Life is good today, it’s been busy but I’m not stressing over things that I don’t have control of. At least trying to be zen about the whole thing. There’s part of me that is dwelling on past mistakes and apologies that can no longer be made because it’s too late. I keep thinking of the scene in Hamlet where he’s confronted by his fathers ghost. ‘Sent to my reckoning with all my imperfections on my head’ or something to that effect.

This is my favorite time of the week. Tomorrow is only one day and regardless how bad it is, 5 o’clock gets here eventually. I’m riding the endorphins from getting an end to end XSL working in TCC. I didn’t do it from scratch but you know what? I don’t think anything comes from scratch any more, it’s forked from another project. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel anymore. Even figured out that pesky empty node issue. It’s honestly been a fun learning experience and pulling back the cover as to what XSL can do has been eye opening in a very positive way.

Tomorrow is Sandy’s last day at work for a week. She’s in for surgery on Monday and recovery until next Friday. Hopefully a nice relaxing weekend and a quite week coming up. It is Christmas already. Not sure how that got here that quickly. Thanksgiving came late this year.

Hopefully getting some garage work done tonight, there’s a good game on Thursday night football. Denver vs Chargers. 9-5 vs 8-6 in a divisional game with playoff implications sound fun.

I usually don’t care for the treadmill. You stay in one place but act like you’re walking. It’s not as natural as just walking because you have to kind of think about it. But with the back room getting put back together I positioned it in front of the TV and gave it a shot for a mile today. It wasn’t bad. I was even able to use the hand weights to do 50 reps of the 10 pound. It’s a little tricky but not too bad. And the big screen helps avoid thinking about the pain. I think I need a fan blowing on me the whole time to help cool down, then I may be able to do intervals.

Once again I’m feeling good but there was a hot minute today that got my heart racing. I was having an issue in that the aggregate notes were way too big, 90k characters or more. Turns out that it was picking up the history of all 6 and put it for each application. The issue turned out to be a ‘./’ was needed and I had a ‘//’ in the code. It wasn’t really that hard to find but I hate the stammer when you finally figure out what’s going on and have no idea why it’s going on. Oh well, that’s coming together.

Had an interview today, it went well I guess. I always come off as such an awkward geek. Although I suppose I was able to answer all the questions. Oh well, I wasn’t actually looking and it’s been a really quick turn around.

Got my steps and everything else complete but I wasn’t feeling it at the gym today. The day sure felt draggy but of course, this too did pass…