Hey look at that, I made it all the way into the second week of the new year and I’m already late on my updates.  Tsk.  Far worse things have happened I’m sure.  I’ve been busy, what can I say.  OK not really.  I’ve been lazy, that might be more accurate.  Besides that we haven’t done anything of note.  Friday I continued my schedule of hitting Hop House after work.  Fun place, I rather fancy it.  After a few hours there, I decided to call it a day and head home for another night of TV.  I rather quickly decided this was a horribly boring way to spend a Friday night, so I headed over to a buddy’s house to watch TV there instead.  Misery loves company, or something like that.  I ended up sitting on the couch reading Chu’s Day repeatedly to his 1-year-old.  Pretty exciting story really, although it starts to lose a little something after about the 30th time through.  For me anyway, she seemed to still be enjoying it.  I do like the description on that Harper Collins site though.  “A story that reflects…”  Really?  It’s got like six pages.  I don’t think 1-year-olds even do a lot of reflecting.  What do I know though, maybe they do.

Saturday we went over to a friend’s house and watched the football games.  Truth be told, it was the same friends I visited Friday night too.  We’ve only got two friends, and one is out of town, so that kind of narrows down the scope of our social outings.  The football games were pretty entertaining as I recall.  At least I managed to stay awake, which is an accomplishment.  Afterwards they fixed a great batch of pasta with blackened chicken.  A day of entertainment AND dinner, can’t beat that.

Sunday we stayed home, not wanting to wear out our welcome.  The weather was particularly nice out so I turned on the TV on the back patio and watched the games out there.  Man, I can’t wait until Spring, it’s fun just sitting out there watching the tube.  I’m not sure why it’s any more fun than sitting inside, but it is.  I put together the last of the patio furniture while I was watching football, and Doni gave the back yard it’s inaugural mowing.  The mower hasn’t been started since we moved to California, and it put up a pretty good fight.  Might be time to replace that thing, I’ve gotten my $100 out of it for sure.  The stupid pull rope finally broke on about the 5,000th yank.  Remarkably, it actually started on the very same pull, so at least we got the yard cut.

I made it through the holidays safely again.  It always gets kind of dicey around this time, definitely touch and go.  We kept a very low profile, leaving me with precious little to go on for the purposes of this page.  I did enjoy some delicious food though, so that will have to do.  New Year’s Eve, we passed on a chance to join some friends in San Francisco, instead opting to stay in and fix a nice meal at home.  And it WAS a nice meal, indeed, but I immediately regretted not making the trip.  We need to broaden our horizons a bit.  Matter of fact, I went ahead and made reservations for a hotel at next year’s event, so we don’t get sucked into the same rut.  Oh well, anyway, we got some nice ribeye steaks from Whole Foods, and some big ol’ lobster tails from Nugget, and enjoyed our stay-at-home meal, such as it was.  After that I made the all-too-common error of turning on the TV, and it was lights out for Phil.  Donette claims she stayed up and rang in the new year, although I have no way of verifying that.

Friday, determined to get back into my normal post-holiday routine, I enjoyed a little happy hour at Hop House.  Enjoyably boring as always.  After that we headed home and fired up the long dormant Rock Band game, which was good for some laughs.  The rest of the weekend didn’t have much of note.  If we did anything at all Saturday I don’t recall what it was.  Sunday I spent the majority (entirety?) of the day over at a buddy’s house watching football and smoking ribs.  It was a nice day out and I enjoyed myself immensely.  The ribs turned out quite tasty too, at least as my normal rib effort goes.

I’m gonna make it through the holidays, I can feel it.  That might be overly optimistic, but things are looking good.  We don’t have any plans for NYE (a.k.a. our anniversary…) so we should be in for a quiet week.

Christmas was a bit busier than anticipated, thanks to some friends.  They invited us over for Christmas Eve, and I guess we didn’t embarrass ourselves too badly because they invited us back for dinner on Christmas Day too.  We had a good time watching the little ‘uns tear it up.  I think there were about eleventeen of them;  The buggers were moving so quickly it was hard to count them all.

As for the weekend?  Quiet and boring, just the way we like it.  Saturday we went shopping, which was much less stressful than the last time I tried such a foolish venture.  I nailed some pretty good after-Christmas bargains at the local nerd store, then we headed to one of our favorite wineries to wind down and enjoy the wonderful weather with a little picnic on their patio.  (Which has since faded considerably…  Saturday nicked 60 degrees, today will be lucky to hit 50.)  When we got back home I hit the biggest bargain of all, a new doggie door for Teagan.  (And Kane I guess, although so far he’s refused to use it.  And why should he, when he can just meow loudly until somebody comes and holds the flap open for him?)  Anyway, I’ve been seriously shopping for this one particular doggie door since we moved to CA.  For reasons I cannot fathom, they don’t stock the “extra-tall” patio door kind in the stores, only the shorter version.  This strikes me as a bit odd, since absolutely no patio doors around here fit the shorter ones.  I worked around this problem in the rental house by duct-taping a beer carton to the top of the one I brought from KC, but Donette labeled that some kind of decorating faux-pas at the new house, not to mention it wasn’t a particularly energy-efficient solution.  So, I’d had the correct size in my Amazon shopping basket for a year plus, patiently waiting for them to knock a few bucks off.  (The specific model I had picked out was exorbitantly expensive, at least in my book.)  Well, if it hadn’t dropped after a year, I was starting to get the feeling it never would, so I braced the checkbook and got ready to pull the trigger.  At the last minute, on a whim, I decided I should at least try good ol’ Craigslist, so I pasted in the model number.  What do you know, I actually got one match, and it was even in my city.  I went ahead and shot the guy an email, despite my “too good to be true” feeling.  A few quick emails later I was at his house, which was like a mile up the road from mine, picking up his nearly-new door for well under 1/2 the price I was just about to pay.  Ding Ding!  Heck I might go ahead and get that new lawn mower I need with all the money I saved!

We’re back from a nice vacation.  Well, I was on vacation, Donette was working.  We were in Chicago all week, aptly named The Windy City.  Less commonly used, but uttered several times by myself during the week, The Windy Unlivable Cold Unfit For Human Habitation City.  That probably would be a more familiar nickname if it rolled off the tongue a little easier, because it is certainly a fair description.  Well, it was fun anyway.  We snuck in some fun even with her work schedule, and then had a big Christmas party Thursday & Friday downtown, which was a good time.  I’ll just share some pics, as I’m rather out of sorts being back to work today.

Just a brief(er) update as to our going-ons, as I am on a pseudo-vacation.  Last Thursday, we spent a rather arduous day flying to good ol’ KC.  We (Donette) had intentionally selected Las Vegas as our mid-way point, having no direct flight options, because of the certainty of avoiding weather-induced delays.  Well, what do you know, there was heavy fog in Vegas and no flights were getting in or out.  Only us, I swear.  I don’t really mind getting up at 4:30 to catch a flight, it’s just one of the unfortunate aspects of travelling.  But when your flight doesn’t actually leave until 11:00 in the afternoon it does add a little insult to injury.  We ended up going to Phoenix instead, but our evening plans in KC were long shot by the time we finally got there.  We did get to stop by her parents and visit for a while, before heading south and checking in at the hotel.

The rest of the weekend was something of a blur.  I worked a good amount of the time, while Donette took care of some Christmas shopping, visited with friends & family, and generally enjoyed a little down time.  We got out to my Mom’s for an early Christmas celebration and got to see the whole family for a few hours.  Martin the socialite put together an MU watch party so I got to see a few friends there too, which was fun despite the dismal game results.  We also made it by a good majority of our favorite haunts, none of which disappointed.  Apparently my stomach isn’t up to large quantities of good food anymore though, I spent no small amount of time in severe discomfort.  Granted, it stands to reason that inhaling a slab of ribs in 3.5 minutes is going to result in a tummy-ache, but it didn’t used to.

Now we’ve moved on to the Chicago area, where the roles have reversed;  Donette will be spending her time working and I’ll be sitting in the spa getting my hair and nails done.  We were delayed coming out here also, but were handsomely compensated this time so it’s all good.  I’m not looking forward to much activity outside the hotel room though;  It is COLD here!  Bone-chilling, unfit-for-human-habitation, unbearable COLD.  Brrrrr.  Get me back to CA!!!  It may not be exactly tropical at our house right now, but at least you don’t have to wear 6 layers to go out and get in the car.  Off to the hot tub.