It was a good Christmas, very different, but good. I had a wonderful time today with faganthepure's family. I was also able to make something good happen. One of his relatives is a Marine and could not be there. They wanted to video chat with him. Fagan's mom had no wireless in her house and the system they watned to use was a new netbook. It was an older setup but I was able to hook my Mac to it, get it to give me the internet connection and then use my Mac to rebroadcast it. So they could bring the whole family in. I was glad to be of such help. There was also good food and fun game playing.

Now I am at newperspectives house. She gave me my Christmas present. A new fencing mask with a jaguar head! It is just awesome. Picture will be posted soon with other Christmas pictures. Now we are going to snuggle in and watch the Muppet DVD that I gave her.

In between there was near disaster when ldybz3 took sgtgwn to the airport and got stuck in traffic. There was a major pile up right before the airport exit. She got her there 40 minutes before flight time and Jen and Sean flew to Texas.

Now I will spend the next three days down here in the St Louis area doing things with family and friends.

mood: pleased tags: christmas

Drive to St Louis area went well last night. Christmas morning was nice at the Coode home. I am now at faganthepure's Mom's home for dinner, which is delayed a bit from the original plan. ldybz3 barely got people to the airport due to a pile up on the interstate in front of her.

Got the server restarted at work so that is good. I did not have to make anyone go in on Christmas to push a button.

More later tonight

mood: good tags: christmas

Just finishing up celebrating Christmas Eve with my family. Ann, my step-mom for those that do not know, was only going to make a little light food this year. And yet we are all stuffed and there is food still left over. Always seems to work that way. Gifts have been exchanged and a very good time is being had. Soon I will head to St Louis with ldybz3 and faganthepure as well as Sean. We will stop in Macomb and pick up sgtgwn as Jen and Sean fly out from St Louis tomorrow to Jen's family. We will stay tonight with Fagan's Dad and then go to his Mom's house tomorrow.

mood: good tags: christmas

It is Christmas Eve and I have ldybz3 and faganthepure here!! We have had a good night. They got here late, a shock I know. So I took them out to dinner at Jorges the Crooks which is a nice place here in Quincy. It was wine Wednesday so I got them one of the $10 specials. Good times.

When we got back to the apartment I had to remotely fix Sean's computer. I have Windows installed on it and he had broken it already. Then Beez got out her computer. It has no power. I have not been able to make it work yet :(

Now we have stayed up way late just doing stuff and it is past bedtime.

Christmas is here!!!

mood: good tags: beez, christmas

With newperspectives home sick and ldybz3 driving her car up instead of getting a ride and taking the train, we have many car issues to consider for the next few days. Then I get a call that talkisdead will need a ride back from Springfield on Monday where his dead car is. So I am thinking that leaving my car in Springfield tomorrow night might make sense. I will have to ponder this, but since two vehicles will have to drive up from St Louis to Springfield on Monday anyway, this might be the most sensible plan.

Anyone want to volunteer a place for me to park my car over the weekend? Drop off around 11 on Christmas Eve and pick up on Monday in Springfield. Street parking is OK, though I worry about weather.

I have to talk this over to see if it is the best option, but it seems like this would be the least total driving for everyone when it is all put together.

mood: contemplative tags: car, christmas, life

I go to my mailbox tonight and what do I find? A Christmas card in a very small envelope. This is not too surprising, right? But it has a stamp on it for 0.95 Euros and a postmark of Nederland.

Thank you so much for the card draconisregina and dutch_ditch. This is the first foreign Christmas card I have ever received.

mood: touched tags: christmas

More than a week ago I got a USPS "we left your package at the office!" slip in my mailbox.  Between storms and leaving work late and holiday shopping traffic volume, I was only able to pick it up yesterday.  It was from the awesomest gift giver ever, though, so totally worth the wait!  It had two DS games (new Professor Layton!), and a Neil Gaimen book!  And entertaining comments next to each item on the invoice sheet.  Lastly there was an envelope on the bottom.  geepgal hands it over and says "I think this one is for you."  I open the envelope and there's a box inside.  I open the box and there's a bag inside.  I open the bag, pull something out, and say, "It's an earring...that matches the necklace I'M CURRENTLY WEARING."

So thanks, linnyninny .  You continue to be a gift-giving genius.

At least that was the plan. Chicken is hard though. I had 1.5 boneless breasts of chicken. I carefully cut it into chunks. I did not cut myself, which I considered a good start. Then I could not tell when it was done. It is much harder to move around the pan than hamburger is. I finally added the taco seasonings and water. This did not go very well as it does not work like hamburger in water does either.

I put the shells in the microwave to warm them and burned one black and the others extra crispy. So I decided that I would just mix the crushed shells, chicken, and cheese together. It was not awful. But chicken is hard.

Now I get to clean that pan...

mood: complacent tags: food

Busy day today. Started by putting in about 90 minutes of work on a couple of servers at QNI. These happen to be the two servers I installed when I was at TriLutions. In 2003. These are quite old in computer terms and the hard drives have been running constantly for more than six years. They are starting to die and replacements are hard to find. I started a rebuild and then went on to the rest of my day.

I went to Macomb and gave Sean his new to him used MacBook for Christmas. sgtgwn and I decided to give it to him early so that I could transfer all his information on to it. They are flying to Texas on Christmas Day and he is going to be travelling all over on Christmas Eve. I work Christmas Eve, so this was the best plan. He seemed very pleased with it. We went out and got the Christmas presents for his cousins today. I am now almost done shopping now.

We then went back and got his system all setup including installing Windows on it. He can now play Mac and Windows games. Just what he needs. We then had some pizza and I headed back to Quincy about 7:30.

Another hour with the servers and a pair of other calls from users and it was nearly 11pm. Talked to ldybz3 a bit after that. Chatted on line and caught football highlights. Now I just have to organize my cracker box apartment ready to hold four people for one night.

mood: busy music: The Boston Camerata: Reading (O moder mayde) tags: christmas, sean

So today was another day of Christmas shopping. This time it involved going over to Hannibal. I found a couple of unique gifts over there at the specialty shops. newperspectives was with as an advisor, but I do not it think it helped with one of the purchases as I bought it anyway.

On the way home we found another good one at Big Lots, a place I never shop at. Maybe I should go there more often. But then the check engine light came on in my car. What is the deal? It only has 253,454 miles on it. Stopped at AutoZone and they said it was the solenoid. Might just need cleaned. I need to do a little research on it and then likely find a trust worthy mechanic in Quincy to check it. I was told it was fine to drive on, my mileage would likely just be less.

I had only one call from work so far this weekend, but I do need to go in to do a maintenance routine after midnight.

It has been a nice day

mood: good tags: car, christmas, life

I watched The Nativity Story on TNT tonight. This might have been a mistake. It started out OK, but then I quickly realized that this was a telling of the traditional nativity scene in historical trappings to make it feel more realistic. It did not resonate with me at all. It mixed history, the actual stories from the bible, and traditional add ons into a production that just failed for me. I did like the fact that the majority of the actors looked Semetic. I liked the use of Roman power. But after that, it just did not work for me.

mood: disappointed music: Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song tags: christmas

Work was crazy again today. So what did I do afterwards? Went out for Christmas shopping. It went well enough. I still have a few things to figure out but found some things. Got some options. I might even make a list. Also got a universal remote for the TV that iknowitsasong gave me. And I got it programmed and working.

All in all a good night.

mood: busy music: Johnny Mathis: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas tags: christmas, work

The teeth are doing very well. I am eating almost everything by now. I can still feel the stitches on the left side and it is still slightly swollen. All of this is within the parameters that I got from the oral surgeon. Next year I have to figure out what kind of dental work I can afford to deal with the missing teeth. This will likely be a two year process due to dental limitations.

The car is getting a new starter. $135 worth of parts and labor. It just went from weak to dead faster than they thought it would. I am so glad it chose to die in Galesburg where Dad could come help me. I knew the theory of push starting a car, but had never done so. It will be finished tomorrow.

Now that just leaves me with Christmas and work to deal with right now.

mood: blah tags: car, health

So way too much of my night has been dedicated to trying to get a secure certificate to load on a Tomcat based web server. It is just filling up my logs with repeating error messages. 60MB of error text in about 3 hours. I am not having fun with this at all.

mood: frustrated tags: work

The starter on the car went out on the way home tonight. The same starter that the people called week, but not necessary to replace right away two weeks ago. I guess they over estimated it. It was kind enough to decide to do it in Galesburg where my Dad could easily come out and help me push start the car. Once running, I was able to get Sean home then back to Quincy. I then took the car to the starter place and parked it and walked home. I will get them to replace it tomorrow.

Now I have stuff to do for QNI because I did not have the computer with me this weekend. Sigh.

mood: grumpy tags: car

Sean, newperspectives, and I went to the Youth Fighter Symposium. Sean got into rapier gear first thing. He practiced, went to the classes, and then towards the middle of the day, he attempted his youth rapier authorization and passed! He fought well enough and did not panic, so it was a good time for him. Then he entered the tourney and did win a fight. Not bad for a first tournament. Videos will follow when I get back home on Facebook.

I did fight the marshals vs graduates fights. Had a good time and did not injury the mouth. The pizza for dinner was tougher than the fighting. I got to fight and talk with HRH Quilliam of Ealdomere. We both thanked each other. I thanked him for making a dream come true for me even if it was not out of the Middle youth combat program. He then thanked me for being one of the pioneers of youth combat and pushing it towards other kingdoms. When Ealdomere first started youth combat, they took the rules I had written for the Middle nearly verbatim. He told me that without the SCA he did not know where he would be in his life and combat was the main portion of that. I was very honored indeed.

mood: pleased tags: sca