20061231

happy new years to you all

I hope the coming year gives you what you need and you can smile about the past year.

My goals for this coming year:
Play more with my son. (like that is difficult to work towards)
Fight less with my wife. (hmm, but i am so good at it and you are supposed to do what you are good at, right? or not in this case)
Finish the masters program. (one more class to go!)
Learn to read music and play a musical instrument. (for some reason the concertina has always been appealing to me. antone got one i can learn on?)
Run five miles in less than 50 minutes, outdoors in above freezing weather. (i just need to start running again, as i stopped after thanksgiving, what with finals and all. *sigh*)
Do more in the garden for a longer stretch of the year. (already picking my seeds, gods i love catalogs)

That should keep me out of trouble ... or at least off of the streets.

20061225

pictures of the holiday


Our niece, me and our son. My initial attempts at inflating the teletubby were quite entertaining to my son.

Nice group shot of everyone as the kids opened gifts. We had a hold on gifts for adults this year. The gift of flying so many folk over from Poland was enough.
Here is our son "helping" our niece hang decorations on the tree. Amazingly, no ornaments were harmed.
And here is me, my wife, her sister-in-law and her brother all ready for the party.

20061223

all gussied up and nowhere to go

Ok, not true, we have somewhere to go. I just don't want to go. Former neighbors of my folks are having their annual holiday event and we are going. An amazing home, food that is always spectactular and an above average open bar are some of the positives for the event. Larger numbers of people that I do not know, or at best have not seen since high school is not as much on the positive side for me today.
My wife, her brother, his wife and I are meeting my sister and folks there later this evening. It is black tie. I long ago gave in and bought my own tux. Just your basic one button model which should last me, roughly speaking, forever. Or at least until I get the full kilt in the family tartan. (There are a few other things on the list ahead of that purchase, so don't hold your breath.) Since I am, well, me, I do have green chuck taylors to wear with this tux. They sort of complement the dark green vest and bow tie. (NOt to be confused with the red chucks I wore when I got married.) If nothing else I am always more comfortable than everyone else at these things. Luckily I do not have a goal of being taken seriously to slow me down.
With all of the family staying with us for the holidays, I am not feeling terribly extroverted so getting the energy up for going out tonight is not too easy for me. I, and my wife, am currently thrilled if I can just stay on the positive side of surly right now. It is a struggle. I did get a break this afternoon and snuck off to watch a movie. Blissful. I saw "Eragon". It was at the theater nearby and started next. I read the book last year, but can not remember enough details to say how true they stuck to the story. Guess I will have to read it again. Poor me, all this free time and another book to read.

20061219

The In-laws are coming! The In-laws are coming!

As I come down from having had my last class for the semester this past Saturday, I am now preparing for the arrival of my in-laws. My wife's mother, father, younger brother, his wife and their daughter are arriving later today. Please note the total number of people staying with us for the holidays is five (5). They will have been on planes and in airports for the last almost 14 hours, not counting what it takes to get through customs when they arrive. They will be with us for the next three weeks, give or take a day.

So as the rush for end of semester ended, it transfered directly to all of the things needing to be done before the arrival. Little things I have been putting off until my papers and presentations were completed, like getting christmas tree, another long baby gate to keep our little one from laying with all the interesting things on and under the tree, a booster seat for our niece so we can safely drive around with her, finshing some woodwork in the kitchen and dining room. Little things, except when they are all in one lump. They have gotten done, mostly. still some work to be done in the dining room.

This is not as crazy as it sounds, but it would have been nice to have had a nice break. The two classes this semester were IT Law and Leadership Fundamentals. They were both really interesting classes but demanding of my attention and time. I had never had a law class so getting a grounding in the basic of copyright, trademark and privacy has been good for me. The leadership class was painful. Sometimes becuase it was challenging my own assumptions about myself and my concepts of leadership and other times becuase some of the authors really want to be scientists but are so far from it in their work it is painful to read. And this is me, with my background in cultural anthroplogy, complaining about a lack o rigorous scientific methodology.

Well, only a few hours to go before the in-laws arrive, so I better make sure there is nothing I need to be doing in the meantime. I think my job will be to pour the vodka once we get back and settled in. I can do that, and am looking forward to it. I only hope have enough!

*smiles*
be well