Peace and Joy to You.

For you, dear reader, I wish you good will during these holidays. To my Christian friends, Merry Christmas. May you remember all that is good about the baby Jesus and the promise of salvation that would come from Him. To my Jewish friends, enjoy the Festival of Lights and all the good that it brings.

I wish peace for you, dear reader. Peace is not just the absence of conflict, but the existence of all that is right for each one of us. Enjoy your family and friends as you celebrate in the coming days. Reflect fondly on all the good that took place this year and all the promise that lies ahead for 2007.

Smiles.

Half-Way There and Free Tickets

On Saturday Glenda and I celebrated six months of being together. It also marked six months left until our wedding day. To mark the occasion, we did a little bit of Christmas shopping, ate dinner at Carrabba's, and saw the moving Stranger Than Fiction. All in all we had a very romantic and nice evening.

Sunday the two of us went to the Chiefs' home game against the Ravens. I'd managed to get offered a couple of free tickets from a gal at work, so we took her up on it and went. It was the first time going to a Chiefs' game for either of us, so that was kind of cool. The Chiefs didn't do so well. That aside, however, I didn't see how paying so much money for tickets (which we didn't have to do), parking and food (which we did have to do) to see the whole game from one spot -- even though the crowd environment was charged -- was worth it for the long run. It's one of those things you should do once in your life for the experience, but I'll just stay home for any other games from this point forward.

Smiles.

Open Wide for Me!

Today was a really good day.

Everything just seemed to click in that way that you look back on it and say, "this was a good day!"

I was very productive at work, getting a number of needed things done and setting myself up for another productive day tomorrow. Besides getting some busy work here and there done, I troubleshot some final quirks with our routing switcher. That now means that I can do some really good programming tomorrow and set us up a really functional system.

For lunch I had a really good mini pizza at Minsky's while I finished re-watching my favorite episode of Ed on the iPod. Minsky's "Prime Cut" pizza is like Meat Lover's and pure heaven combined into one mouth-watering pie of pure bliss. The episode of Ed is called "Live Deliberately" and is always a good reminder for me of making the most out of life.

The best part of the day was this evening: Glenda was in a play kind of thing for her church so I watched Benjamin for her. This was another step in my blossoming fatherhood as I'd never before gone through the whole process of putting him to bed by myself -- especially without her around! Everything went great, though. I must say that it was interesting to brush another person's (very little) mouth. Not gross or anything. It's just one of those things where you've never had your muscles go through those exact movements before, so the entire time you're thinking, "well this is new." Also, five year-olds have far less teeth than adults. I guess part of me knew that, but didn't realize how big the difference is.

We had so much fun overall and he seemed so excited that his new dad got to spend so much quality time with him. I know I loved it!

Epilogue: Glenda, upon returning home saw how happy I was and said I was "glowing." The most touching part was when she said that fatherhood "becomes" me.

I can get used to this.

Shootin' the sh*t.

This afternoon I had the...ahem...pleasure of videotaping the installation of the latest addition to one of our local parks: a prefabricated restroom building. The City found that it's about $20k cheaper to pre-fab it and install it than to build on site from scratch.

I go on some interesting shoots working for the City. The funny part now is...

My job has literally gone to the crapper.

I wish I weren't so nosey.

I'm really tired of being sick. Earlier this week I got sick AGAIN with sinus drainage, aches, and even a fever! It all has culminated into a full-blown sinus infection for which I now am taking an antibiotic.

I got a referral from my PCP to go see an ear, nose, and throat doctor. I've been having problems with severe nosebleeds for the last few years. Every now and then -- more often in the winter -- I'll get one. When they happen, it's always the right nostril and it's always a geyser of blood. Twice now I've been told that it could be a superficial blood vessel in my nose that may just need to be coterized (sp?). Until something fixes it, I'm now gun-shy to blow my nose at all. I'd like to blow my nose. It's a good thing.

With that, you have a nice day. :-)

Smiles, Michael