Yesterday was rough.  I didn’t get to sleep until after 3:00am and then was up before 7:00am and at work by 9:00am.  I made it through the first half of the day in a fog and then took some vaca and went home at 1:00pm.  I sat on the couch with a bag of doritos watching How I Met Your Mother and basically floating in a fog of sleepiness, but I couldn’t fall asleep.  I might have for a little while, but not for long.

At 6:00pm the kids came home and I bundled them up and took them out to do something I have never done before.
—Shoe Shopping—

Yes, you read that correctly.  Rob took the two kids out to buy new snow boots.  Rob who can barely shop for himself took two young people out to try and buy footwear.  Oh those poor, poor kids.

My step son nailed his first choice.  Size, style, everything.  Nice job!  My step daughter… well… I failed her.  She does not yet own a pair of snow boots for 2012.  The first store we went to had nothing that she deemed worthy of putting on her feet.  The second store had a style she liked, but once she had it on it felt weird.  We tried a few different sizes, but she just didn’t like the way the boot felt on her foot.  If we’d have had more time we would have tried another store, but we couldn’t stay out all night.

Jen, my beautiful bride, wanted to watch the season premier of American Idol last night.  I don’t like the show.  I am not a fan of the music-as-game-show paradigm.  I also want to vomit any time I see or hear Stephen Tyler.  Last night he managed to sum himself up for the public perfectly when he told a contestant’s father this his 15 year old daughter was hot.  No, really.  He did. 

I just had the strangest thing ever happen to me.

I was sneezing, and in mid-sneeze I had to… Well… Sneeze. The two sneezes somehow canceled each other out and it left me feeling stuffy with a bit of a headache and a cough.

Isn’t that the strangest thing ever?

I was on call Tuesday morning.  The on call period began at 3:00am Tuesday morning and lasted until I started work at 9:00am.  The event which required the on call support was supposed to take about four hours and then the situation would be monitored for a while and then that would be it.

That’s not what happened though.  There were problems that cropped up during the process and things stretched from four hours to about 12 hours.  Our folks on site did a good job keeping things going in a tough situation, but by the time it was finished the day staff was getting ready to go home.  I was asked if I could extend my on call to a second night.  I said okay.

Mistake.

I should not have pushed my luck.  I got called at 9:00 last night and worked until 2:00 this morning.  Then I was all wound up and couldn’t fall asleep until about 3:00am and then the alarm started going off at 6:30.  I shoulda bettah known bettah.

Wanna know what else is pathetic?

The Bruins just lost to Tampa Bay.  Tampa Bay had lost seven straight games and were dead last in the Eastern Conference.  A Bruins win would have put us in first in the East.  Their incredible run of dominance is officially over.  They haven’t played very well for the last week or two.  They are looking more and more like the 3-7 October Bruins and less and less like the undefeated in November Bruins.  I’m getting nervous.  We play New Jersey tomorrow.  Let’s hope for better things.

Wanna know what else is pathetic?

Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford, who makes about 500 billion dollars a game (slight exaggeration) had surgery on his hand (wrist?) yesterday and will probably miss the start of the season.  After a dreadful first year in Boston last season I was optimistic that ol’ Carl would straighten things out this year and be a positive factor for the Sox.  Now that looks unlikely, at least in the short term.

Pathetic, ya know?

I’m old.  In case you hadn’t heard, I’m old.  Middle age has arrived like a car that hits the puddle on the side of the road while you’re on the sidewalk and hoses the crap out of you and ruins your whole day.

I’m not that old, I don’t mean to say that.  I’m 40, I’m not 140.  No one is chiseling my name into a headstone just yet.  I just mean to say that I’m not young anymore.  My days of being a kid in even the loosest sense of the word are over. 

When I was younger I would set a goal for myself and be willing to put up with large amounts of crap in order to reach that goal.  Now I am not willing to put up with nearly as much.  Things that, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t important, like a hobby or something that is just done for fun, that start to annoy me can just go away, while in my younger days I would be willing to put up with some annoyances in order to get the end results of the hobby or fun thing.  Not anymore.  If it’s supposed to be fun and it’s causing stress it goes away.

I am perfectly willing to spend 24/7/365 (or 366 in this year’s case) just being with my family.  That’s where the fun and enjoyment come from now.  That’s where the focus is.  Everything else is superfluous and can just go and get bent.  My wife and my step kids and my family are all I need. 

Here’s the fourth and final Hurricane Irene song.  It’s only been, what, four months?  Five months?  Yeah, that should give you a clue as to the quality of this particular song. 

Here’s the song:

…and here is the complete four song EP thingie that only exists in my soft little brain:

Listening to Tanya Donelly and making some Ramen for the kids lunch.

Pretty much perfect for a freezing Monday of a holiday.

I was going to make a cute kitty joke like – is that new cat bed big enough for you, Patches? – but then I reached out to pet her and she ran away like I was Norman Bates with a wig on my head.

Jerk.

Apparently this goes really good on scrambled eggs.

Is today the day that we watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2?

My nightmare susceptible step son is nervous, but also dying to see how it ends and blasting us with a barrage of please-please-please?

It could very well be movie time.