So I needed to do some whites. Easy enough, I go in, separate them out, make a pile on the floor. Open washing machine, pour in some detergent, turn the dial to gentle and medium, close the lid and away we go! Boy, I had some clean water I'm sure, because when the damn machine was done, I noticed I never transitioned the pile of clothes from the floor to the washing machine. Oy vey!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and got most everything they wanted, or at least what they needed. Sometimes the needs are all that need be addressed.

This was my 24th Christmas, so very hard to believe. It feels like so many and yet seems too few. Age does a funny thing to us, it makes us begin to realize the things in life that aren't so important, and some how highlights those things that have been important for so long, yet went unseen.

Every year I get incredibly excited for Christmas, as I'm sure a great many others do as well. When I was younger I used to sleep all the time when December rolled around because as long as I was sleeping, time went a little bit faster. I know it seems odd, but it oddly makes sense. I've never been able to sleep on Christmas Eve, I seem to get far too excited for the next day and so all I do is toss and turn for a few hours until my eyes can no longer stay parted and hopefully catch a couple hours of sleep.

Christmas morning is always fun, but it's changed over the years. Instead of running out of bed at 6 in the morning and waking the parents so that we may dive into the new found toys, I now take my time. Stop to have breakfast first, and enjoy the company of my family before moving into the family room to open presents. It's simultaneously exciting and sad. All the presents look so wonderful under the tree, and I'm very curious to see the new things I've gotten, but I most certainly don't wish it to end. This is way for many years I stock pile my presents while others open. And when it is time to open, I peel each individual piece of tape away carefully and uncrease the paper to slowly reveal what lies beneath. It's my own way of making Christmas last.

This year, like many past, I received a great deal of things that I wanted and I'd like to say thank-you to all of you for the wonderful presents, I'm honestly grateful! But it seems that Christmas is something more than it used to be. It's a chance to see my family whom I've lived away from for six years now. It's a time to go home. The houses are always decorated lovely, and are so inviting and warm in the winter. The trees always look magnificent. I love being home. I like spending time with my mom, with my dad, with my step-dad and my step-mom. I enjoy the day we spend with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It's odd to remember Christmases past with so many youngins running around crazy like. Those days have now passed and we are most all much older now, able to enjoy the time we get to spend together, the time that always moves too fast and is always too short. This is the new Christmas. The gift of family and time that we get to spend together, the love that we share and the comfort of going home. I somehow feel that no matter how long I live on my own, in my own place, it will never really be home. My home will always be where my family is, both of them. From the house I grew up in to the house I never really knew as it was after I came to college that my mother moved there. It's still home. I hope many of you were able to go home. I hope you were able to be with your families. I hope your Christmas was merry and filled with love and loved ones. I hope your presents were lovely, and your memories glorious.

So yesterday I decided to reformat my computer. It'd been awhile since I'd last reformatted and over the years or months or however long its been, it's collected a fair amount of useless crap that's slowing it down, no good. That and I had the OS installed on a 20 gig HD along with a substantial number of programs and I was out of space to do much of anything. So I took out the 20 and used my 80 gig for the main HD so that I could again install Adobe CS2 and all of those other wonderful programs without having to worry about space. One of these wonderful programs is Half-life 2 and more importantly, Counter-Strike. Now me and CS go back many years, to the beginning of my college career when my room mate and I failed many a class in order to be 1st and 2nd in the rankings and head up our own clans. ( I know, we're geeks, get over it)Well as the years went by it became obvious that perhaps we should focus more on school than 10 hours of gaming a day. (Also, more and more different games came along that needed to be perused as well.) Well now that finals are over, and my old roomie still plays CS quite often along with running a server, I felt it was a good time to get back into the Counter-Striking groove. With a clean HD, I was eager to install CS and get to the killing. Ha, here's where the fun comes in. Not only does Valve use Steam for it's gaming purposes, ( I hate steam with an unbridled passion. It wouldn't be so bad if the program actually worked right more than 5% of the time, but it doesn't) but apparently once you've installed your game, you may never do so again. You see, when I'd installed Half-life 2 last year, and played Counter-Strike, they authorized my CD key and that was the end of the line. So even though I paid $50 for the game, and the right to own it and play it at my leisure, or so I would assume, in order for me to play it again after reinstalling it, they need another $10 so they can provide me with a new CD key. What a bunch of crapola! Seriously. I hate you valve! HATE HATE HATE. Thank-you.

edit: Turns out I'm slightly stoopid. Apperently your cd key goes along with your steam account. I was trying to create a new account to which it responded, and I quote, "Uhm, don't think so." So now that I figured my old account info, I think I'm good to go. But I still hate Valve, and Steam. Thank-you.

So last Saturday night, after watching both the Chiefs and the Cyclones play like dookie, my girlfriend and I watched the Sound of Music on ABC (which when combined with commercials is 4 hours long, they just don't make films like that any more) Well, I guess the Lord of the Rings were pretty long, but they sure as hell didn't break out into song to explain the dire situations they continuously found themselves in. Coincidentally, this fact brings me to the interesting question that was posed to me that evening. After they escaped from the Nazis and were climbing the hill (pronounced "Freaking mountain!"), my girlfriend turns to me and asks why I've never professed my love to her in song. Huh, interesting question. Well, not interesting so much as odd I suppose. I'm fairly certain I've never professed much of anything in song, other than how Frosty was a jolly, happy soul. I guess there was that time that I exclaimed to the world how exciting it was that Santa Clause was coming to town. But beyond that, I've never professed anything else in song. What an odd kind of world it would be if we all walked around and spontaneously burst into song. In fact, I guess it'd be like the Musical episode of Buffy. (What a splendid lil ditty that was) We'd not only profess out love in song, but also how the dry-cleaners got the mustard out. Perhaps someone should get on that, we have a talk like a pirate day, we should also adopt a "sing about everything" day. Anyway, to answer the question why I've never professed my love in song, I feel the response is something along the lines of 1) It's never occurred to me, 2) I can't sing, 3) I can't write songs, 4) It's never occurred to me, 5) I'd probably laugh too much during the attempt that it wouldn't work anyway, 6) It seems kind of humorously silly, 7) It's never occurred to me, and lastly 8) I can't sing. Have any of you ever professed anything in song? If so, feel free to comment about it, because hot damn, the world wants to know! (Oh, and please provide the lyrics if you have!)

Hola all! I know its been quite awhile since I last posted, a thousand apologies for that. I'd like to say its been a horrifically busy week, but I'm not overly sure how true that is. I've been finished with finals since last Wednesday, I even know my grades for all four classes. (B-, B, B+, A for those wondering) I have been working a fair amount as well, have to pay for those Christmas presents as well as bills and gas.

I finally got my 360 last week sometime, it was Thursday or Friday I think, I don't really remember now. The days get all confusing when I don't have classes to break them and identify them. Sine I pretty much work at the same time in the same section every night, there isn't much of a way to identify the passing of particular days so much as the obvious sun going down, sun coming up phenomenon that takes place quite often. Speaking of which, happy belated winter solstice! Anywho, back to topic, It's a pretty sweet little system. I got Project Gotham 3 as I felt it was a pretty safe bet. I own the first two in the series and I do enjoy a good racing game! So that being my only game for the better part of a week, I've been playing quite a bit of it. I did break down yesterday and trade in a bunch of my old xbox games for some store credit and picked up Perfect Dark Zero. I've played it only for about 20 minutes, but it's pretty good, fairly intense, and obviously good graphics. I was actually surprised with how good the sound is actually, both for this game in particular as well as the depth of sound overall. The old xbox claimed to offer dolby surround sound, but it was never really that good. The 360 definitely takes advantage of the sound, so if you have a good surround system and decent receiver I'd strongly encourage anyone to pony up the couple of bucks and by a fiber optic cable so you can be immersed in the sound alone. I also managed to connect it to my PC through media connect so now I can stream music off of my computer to play while I'm playing other games if I don't care for their soundtracks. I use this primarily for PGR3 as its nice to get your own mix, that's not to say that PGR3 doesn't come with some good tunes itself, my personal favorite being the classical mix, there's just something cool about hauling ass through New York with some Mozart blaring in the background.

Aside from sitting on the couch a great deal, I've finished up my Christmas shopping and wrapped a good number of presents. Our tree looks really nice all decorated and with the lights on and so many pretty presents sparkling under the tree. This truly is my favorite time of the year. I like how festive things are, and how warm, cozy and inviting everyone's places are. Unfortunately I start to get a little sad because I know in a week it'll all be over and then we'll just have a few months of impressive coldness and nothing to do. I wish Christmas could last longer! That's probably why I take so long to open my presents. Actually my family usually does a round robin where everyone takes turns opening presents. I usually stock pile mine until the end so that it last longer. And then when I do open them, I like to take each individual piece of tape off and unfold each crease of the paper, thus drawing out the suspense. This is fun to me, and makes Christmas last that much longer.

Alright, well I just wanted all to know that I'm still here and as I find interesting/funny/different/thoughtful/stupid things to write about, I'll start throwing some more stuff up here. I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I'll leave you with a couple of things...

Defective yeti post that had me laughing so hard I almost fell off my chair.
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001534.html

And a picture my mother sent me. If you don't start to at least water up a little, you have no heart!!!!! Then you can giggle...

I had pancakes for breakfast, thus fulfilling my pancake quota for the year with 5. Next scheduled pancake consumption: August '06

I'd just like to say Hello to some visitors over the past couple of weeks.

Hello person from Middletown, NY

Hello person from Avintes, Portugal

Hello person from Dumont, NJ

Hello person from La Paz, Uruguay

Hello person from Sunnyvale, CA

Ok, so I didn't say hello to everyone who visits obviously, just a little sampling of the range of locales that have visited lately.

No, it's raining, No, it's snowing. Who the hell knows? If it could just pick a category and stick with it, that'd be lovely. It's been raining an impressively wet snow since early last night. When I got up this morning to scrape my windows, I was surprised to find that I could just sweep my hand across the car and the entire slushy mess would just fall off. Kinda different. I don't think I like it. I'd rather have just nice ol powdery fresh snow. I'm traditional that way I guess...

On a side note, it's freakin perfect out for one hell of a snow fight. :)

So I was going to make some egg drop soup today, but it turns out that my eggs are old. They were actually old about a month ago, I have however kept them in my fridge the entire time, so I feel this begs the question: Since they're no longer suitable for eating as eggs, and they've been refridgerated the whole time, if I kept them another few months, would I hatch some penguins? Or perhaps just a chicken with a scarf...

Mom: "What are you doing?"

Me: "Watching something about D-day"

Mom: "I'd like to learn how to do that"

Me: "You want to learn how to storm the beaches of Normandy?"

Mom: "Oh, I thought you said Ebay"

So I'm doing laundry, again. Here's the general "flow of goods"(FloGos).

/--> ..Wear too many clothes ->
| ..Clothes pile up in hamper ->
| ..*thought* should do laundry ->
| ..Proceed with laundry ->
| ..Seperate clothes ->
| ..Big freakin piles of clothes on my floor now instead of in hamper ->
| ..One lil load goes into washing machine ->
| ..Lil load is done, moves to dryer ->
| ..New lil load goes in washing machine ->
| ..Get side-tracked, have something else to do ->
| ..Clothes in dryer stay in dryer for day ->
| ..Have too much to do, but need clothes ->
| ..Dyer clothes go into laundry basket ->
| ..Washing machine load goes into dryer ->
| ..New load in washer ->
| ..This continues until laundry basket is overflowing with clean clothes ->
| ..Dump clean clothes on bed to fold at some point ->
| ..Need bed for sleeping purposes ->
| ..Clothes move to pile on floor ->
| ..Clothes now all wrinkled and need to be rewashed & dryed ->
^------Rinse/Lather/Repeat


*New ID:YST items posted

I'm still livins

Hot damn, I should write gang wrap music. Anyhoo, I'm still alive. Just thought you'd all like to know. It's been a busy past week with dead week and then finals. Finals week isn't what's scary any more, it's the "dead" week leading up to it. It's the presentations and multiple 30+ page papers. That added with the 30+ hours of work makes a boy healthy wealthy and wise, or just plan tired. So I haven't forgotten about my lost minutes, I've just been all too aware lately that there weren't enough minutes to lose. Give me another day and I'll be back to posting some good ol nothing-ness.




The last lyric... I'd like to congratulate anyone who actually knew the song or band from the lyric without having to look it up. My dad listens to a lot of a music, both now and when I was growing up. I remember nights of making mix tapes, or even mix reels on the reel to reel machine. The stereo was impressively large, especially given todays sizes of things. My father and I would sit on the floor and spin the reels back and forth to find the right song and transfer them to and fro. Mounds of records arranged by our sides. It was good times, and this is one of the songs I remember my dad listening to and it's actually one of my favorite songs fo all time. It's very energetic and quite fun.

"Welcome back my friend to the show that never ends, I'm so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside..." -Emerson, Lake and Palmer "Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part 2)... Lyric continued...

"There behind a glass is a real blade of grass
be careful as you pass.
Move along! Move along!

Come inside, the show's about to start
guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you'll get your money's worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth.
You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo.
You've got to see the show, it's rock and roll ....

Right before your eyes we pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries then he dies then he dies
Come inside the shows about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart

You gotta see the show
It's a dynamo
You gotta see the show
It's rock and roll


Soon the Gypsy Queen in a glaze of Vaseline
Will perform on guillotine
What a scene! What a scene!
Next upon the stand will you please extend a hand
to Alexander's Ragtime Band
Roll up! Roll up! Roll up!
See the show!

Performing on a stool we've a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule
Keep it cool. Keep it cool.
We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown
were exclusively our own,
All our own. All our own.
Come and see the show! Come and see the show! Come and see the show!
See the show!"

Now Playing - Too Much(live) - Dave Matthews Band
1 - Ramblin Man - Allman Brothers
2 - Step by Step - New Kids on the Block
3 - Scotty Doesn't Know - Lustra
4 - Wonderland - Dexter Freebish
5 - Bang - Eve 6
6 - Better Luck Next Time - Life House
7 - Against the Grain - Garth Brooks
8 - Misery - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
9 - Don't Ask Me Why - Billy Joel
10 - Its in His Kiss - Cher
11 - Bring it Home - Sister Hazel
12 - Marco Polo - Loreena McKennitt
13 - Different Wings - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
14 - Pride - U2
15 - All For You - Sister Hazel
16 - It Must Have Been Love - Roxette
17 - The Magic Friend - 2 Unlimited
18 - There's Only One of You - Animaniacs
19 - When I'm With You - Sheriff
20 - Come Sail Away - Styx


Last "lyrics" - "The roads going straight, and the cars pointed straight, I don't see why I can't take a nap now" - BIll Cosby "Why is there air?"