I have a day off again, whoopie.  No such thing as too many days off.  How I shall spend it remains to be seen.  I haven’t ruled out heading to the Brooksider and watching the basketball games this afternoon.  Anybody in for that?  Anyone, anyone?

That was a reasonably entertaining weekend;  Much more so than I had anticipated, that’s for sure.  Given our lingering fiscal crisis I had fully expected to spend my time sitting in front of the TV.  Donette’s nephew Jeremy was in town though, so we met him down at the Brooksider Friday night.  And I do mean Friday “night“;  We didn’t even head down there until <gasp> 6:30.  Stayed pretty late for us too.  Matter of fact it was so late that after we left we couldn’t find any dinner, everywhere was closed.  So, we headed back home and dug through the cabinets.  The pantry is pretty bare, as we still haven’t re-stocked from our recent vacation, but we did manage to find a dusty can of Skyline Chili in the back of a cabinet.  Yummy.

Saturday Martin gave me a call, apparently suffering from the winter boredom syndrome as much as myself.  He suggested spending the day stirring a pot of gumbo, which sounded as good as anything else I had planned.  So, I trekked up to the Northlands, and that indeed is how we spent our day.  I took my propane cooker up there and we set up in the garage, which was tolerably warm.  As for the gumbo, it came out pretty well.  At least I guess it did, I left it all there.  It was too hot and too huge to deal with that night so we decided to just portion it out later.  It had taken on a life of it’s own by the time we finished randomly adding stuff.  I’m estimating the final amount at 5 gallons.  I have no idea what the two of us are going to do with that much gumbo but we’ll figure something out.

Sunday I headed up to Mom’s for some “chores.”  Sheesh, I ran through two week’s worth of gasoline between the North & South trips this weekend.  I will admit I haven’t been that direction in a while though, guess I was due.  She had all kinds of difficult home maintenance items lined up waiting for me, like changing the light bulb in the kitchen.  Oh, sure, that sounds funny until I mention it took me three times before I got it right.  It was a special light bulb, see.  My handy-man skills are kind of “special” too, that might have contributed to the difficulties.  I stayed up there for a few hours, then headed back home and watched the 3:30 football game.  I wasn’t particularly interested in the outcome, but it provided a means to kill the rest of the afternoon.  For my evening diversion I watched “Murder in the First“, which wasn’t too bad.  Can’t go wrong with Kevin Bacon, as a rule.

Edit – Spent my morning trying to figure out my video editing software, with moderate success.  Now I need to figure out how to get it on here.

Well we are already into the issue of not having anything to put in here, but I’ll make a cursory update anyway just because I’m on a roll.  I could, of course, delve into all the exciting plans we have for the upcoming weekend, but then I wouldn’t have anything to type about on Monday.  Additionally, said plans don’t really exist at all, so that would make it even harder.

I suppose I could cover dinner, that’s always worth a mention.  Donette has been on a rather hard-core diet lately, and as such sometimes we end up with totally different dinner plates.  Case in point, last evening.  She made spaghetti for herself, except it was actually tofu noodles instead of pasta.  I was skeptical enough that I opted out and microwaved some leftover gumbo for myself.  I tried hers though, and actually it wasn’t bad at all.  Given a choice between the whole-wheat pasta she makes now and then or the tofu noodles, I would without a doubt choose the tofu every time.  While I have grudgingly accepted the whole-wheat bread and bagels we’ve switched to, I can’t do the pasta or tortillas.

I got to use the Skype video feature for the first time the other evening;  Pretty darn cool.  I bought a camera for just that purpose like two years ago, only to find I didn’t really have a use for video conferencing.  So, the camera has set idle on top of my monitor since then.  But, when Ed & Kim brought home their new baby the other day, I figured “Now there’s a fine opportunity for a video chat.”  Indeed, it worked out nicely.  We got to see the new little ‘un, and talk with the new parents for quite a while.  The video is rather shockingly clear, I was surprised.  Matter of fact, I thought it was so cool I am thinking about getting it hooked up to the TV somehow or another.  Anybody know how to do that?  Anyone?

Wow it didn’t take long for that vacation to wear off.  Remind me never to complain about it being 8 degrees in the morning again.  Geez that would have quadrupled this morning’s temp.  On the “good news” side of things, my bus pass finally came so I didn’t have to walk all the way to work.  Even better, a $15 rebate showed up in the mail too, so I was able to afford lunch today.  Heck I got enough left over from that for a (cheap) lunch tomorrow too!  Oh yeah, let the good times roll.

So did I tell you about all the famous people we hung out with in Hawaii?  Rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.  We’re sitting on a beach in Kauai, when none other than Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner plop down next to us, with their two little girls.  (I must admit, although I do recognize the name “Ben Affleck,” he certainly didn’t look familiar.  And Jennifer Garner didn’t ring any bells at all.  Donette filled me in right quick and fast though.)  Donette and the littlest made fast friends;  I guess it’s the “teacher” vibe or something.  We were even lucky enough to have this famous young ‘un get sand all over our stuff.  About had a little trouble over that incident, but Ms. Garner (“Jen-Jen” as she asked me to call her) apologized nicely so we let it slide.  And if that run-in wasn’t exciting enough, Donette ran into Greg Brady where we stayed in Maui!  I get a lot of questioning looks on that one.  Greg Brady;  From the Brady Bunch?  C’mon, it’s only one of the greatest shows in television history.  I think he may have an actual name instead of Greg, but he might as well have it legally changed if so, because he is, in fact, “Greg Brady.”

Eight??  It’s eight freaking degrees out?  Shouldn’t there be a zero after that?  And shouldn’t all that white stuff out there be sand?  Eeeesh.  Grim.  I had a heck of a time getting into work yesterday, even with the city’s new snow removal plan.  (Was that a cruel joke Funk?  The streets looked just the same as ever, which is to say “untouched.”)  My first snag hit when I remembered we’d stopped our mail while on vacation, and therefore I had no January bus pass.  Not a huge issue, but we are literally so broke I didn’t have the $3.00 it takes to get downtown and back on the Metro.  That’s broke.  We scavenged around the couch cushions and came up with an ample number of quarters though.  I caught my 6:30 ride and was cruising merrily along, but didn’t get too far and the bus got stuck.  Hmmm, didn’t see that one coming.  I mean he got stuck good too.  Sideways in the road, up in some poor guy’s yard, the whole nine yards.  Several other riders seemed a bit put out, but I thought it was rather entertaining.  Kind of like a carnival ride.  He was banging off the curbs, fishtailing everywhere, and smoking the tires like he’d just won the Brickyard 400.  It was never really close though, there was no way he was getting up the hill.  Full fifty minutes later, he finally got backed up across Main street to a spot where he could get started, and just cut that part of the route out.  We made it about three more miles and he gets stuck again.  Unfortunately I had my headphones in and didn’t hear what he said, because I bet it was worth hearing.  At any rate, he just shut off the bus and got out.  So, everybody else followed suit, and got on the next bus to come along.  All told, an hour and half ride to work.  Which is much better than an hour and a half ride home.  Today, I afforded myself the rare luxury of driving the car to work.  Not that I was worried about the bus getting stuck again, but our two weeks of mail didn’t show up yesterday and I still ain’t got three bucks.  Anybody got a quarter?