My step son, Harry, is home! He was here when I got home from work last night and it was wonderful having him around. Having kids here makes me happy.
Him being home today means that I am working from the office desk in the cellar instead of the desk in his room. I am a cellar dweller again while he’s home. Today is Friday and I am working from home. Next week I will be in the office on Monday and then I am off for xmas eve, xmas day, and I took a vacation day for the day after xmas. So one day working in the cellar is all I need. I can handle it. Not that there’s any difficulty working in the cellar, I just like being upstairs more. That’s all.
I do have one thing planned for my lunch break down here in the cellar where no one can see me…
I setup a gift wrapping station. Let’s see how much of the remaining pile of presents I can get through while I eat my chicken patty and fries. Bring on the work day so I can get to it. Two working days left before Santa comes. Still much to do in that little amount of time. Let’s do this thing!
I don’t like what the calendar does to me at this time of year. We’re so close to the holidays that I just stop being able to deal with the days that still lay between me and the big dates.
We are currently seven days away from xmas and 14 days away from New Years. That means 13 days until New Years Eve, but NYE is a work day for me so that’s pretty screwy in general.
As an added bonus, we are 38 days away from the next vacation too. I sure hope it’s nice and warm in Florida in January. Last time we visited in January it was cold-ish in the morning and warm in the afternoons. I can live with that.
With the possible exception of anything that might be added to any one of the many piles of xmas gifts in the next few days, everything that isn’t for my wife or for a Secret Santa has been wrapped. I’ll have it all done by the weekend, with oodles of time to spare before the big day arrives.
I just want it to get here. I want Santa to arrive and unlawfully break into the house do his dirty work. I want the kids home with us, even if it is just for a short time, and I want to see the niece and nephews and the siblings and the in-laws on both sides of the family. I just want it to get here already. Is that too much to ask?
And just like that, our very full nest is an empty nest again. Harry left this afternoon and Bellana left a few minutes ago. They are both heading home to Vermont.
It was a wonderful weekend and I loved every second of it, but now I am sad. Jen and I will have dinner together and I’ll probably be pretty mushy and lovey (no spoilers) because I know she’s sad the kids are gone too.
Getting old sucks but it’s better than the alternative.
The kids and my in-laws are coming over today for a second round of Thanksgiving dinner. Jen and I are going to start cooking in about half an hour (at 7:00am). If Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, then today is the day that I am talking about when I talk about my favorite holiday, even though it is not technically a holiday.
Based on the previous sentence I should create a new holiday to celebrate run-on sentences. That would be a gas, don’t you think?
We are also going to put up the xmas decorations while we have the kids here. I’m not sure what else we’ll do for our holiday festivities but we’ll think of something.
Jen and I made a full, albeit small, turkey dinner for ourselves today and it was wonderful. Everything was delicious. Even better, almost all of the cleaning up is done and it’s only 3:30pm. There were a few dishes that I couldn’t fit into the dishwasher. They are soaking in the sink right now. Other than that, everything is done on the cleaning up after the turkey day dinner front.
Of course gastric bypass boy over here did have a minor issue. I ate too much, too fast and the last few bites sort of… came back for an encore… if’n yer know’n what I’ma meanin’. That had nothing to do with the food itself, just the way I ate it. I’ll be more careful next time.
Here’s hoping that you and yours are having a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Now that the cooking and the eating and the cleaning are all done, I think I am going to take a four hour nap.
Happy Thanksgiving, Massachusetts! Happy Thanksgiving to the rest of New England too.
Our family Thanksgiving is actually going to happen on Saturday. The kids are at their dad’s today so we’re punting to the weekend in order to have everyone together.
For today though, Jen and I are going to have a mini Thanksgiving on our own. We found the tiniest turkey in the world and it’s going into the oven shortly.
When we decided to not have anything big today I had thrown out the possibility of me and my love going to New York to see the Macy’s parade in person. Clearly we didn’t go, but we’re watching the parade on TV and… well… thank goodness we didn’t go. It’s pouring rain in New York and everyone looks drenched and frozen and miserable. Bullet Dodged.
So, my New England neighbors, enjoy your turkey and stuffing and have an extra helping for me!
I am less than an hour away from the end of the work week. Sigh of relief.
We are coming up on what might be my favorite week of the year. Thanksgiving week. One of the kids will be coming over this weekend (and I need to clean the hell out of this house before she gets here). The other will be here on Monday. It’s going to be great. I took a vacation day on Wednesday so my favorite four day weekend is now a five day weekend. Glorious.
We are doing our family Thanksgiving on Saturday, not on the actual Thanksgiving Day on Thursday. That means Jen and I have nothing going on for the holiday. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am thinking a Super Mega Star Wars Marathon. That sounds like a plan to me! How about start with Episode Three, then watch Andor and Rogue One, then watch the original trilogy. Let’s do it! The Star Wars Holiday Special aired around Thanksgiving in 1978, so I think that makes Star Wars as a whole a Thanksgiving movie series. Logic. QED.
For now though. Finish the last half hour or so of the work week, then cook dinner, then eat dinner with the love of my life, then… sleep? Sounds like a plan to me. Book it!
Today is the day that used to be known as columbus day, before those of us who actually care about other people decided that chris columbus was a dick and giving him a holiday was in bad taste. Now it’s Indigenous Peoples Day and I much prefer the sound of that.
Unfortunately, it’s not a holiday for me. I have to work. Worse, I have to work in the office. Worse than worse, I have a 9:00 meeting. I left home super early out of fear that traffic would make me late for the meeting. I completely forgot that most of Massachusetts is off work today and there was so little traffic that I was in the parking lot over an hour early.
Oops. At least I won’t be late for the 9:00am meeting, right?
Happy Indigenous Peoples day to all who celebrate. Also, chris columbus was a dick who “discovered America” through nothing more than incompetence. Let’s not give him any more holidays.
The weather held long enough for me to cook dinner on the grill. Jen marinated some chicken and I cooked it. I consulted The Google to know how long to cook it and the suggestion I went with was much too short a time, but I rolled with it and it looks good now.
The whole time I was outside, I had this cat up at the top of a tree eyeing me.
He or she was sitting in that spot when I first went out to turn on the grill, and he or she was still there when I packed up and went back inside about half an hour later.
You could say that he or she was watching me… watching me like a hawk.
It’s Wednesday. I’m back in the office. You don’t care, but I want to write about something… anything… so here we are.
Today is Juneteenth. I completely forgot. When the state first established today as a holiday we got it off. Less than a year later our company turned most of the non-national holidays into floating holidays so now we don’t get today off. It was just another day for me except that there was no traffic on the highways this morning. From my house to my office, 43 miles, took 46 minutes. Why couldn’t every commute be this easy? While having the day off would have been great, I will take this as the next best thing… sort of.
I failed to get six hours of sleep again last night. My watch tells me I got 5:45 but my heart rate numbers were pretty spectacular. Hopefully that means I won’t be too completely exhausted again today. Just mildly completely exhausted. I still haven’t hooked up my CPAP machine since coming back from Florida a few weeks ago. I think my sleep numbers (assuming my watch pulls accurate data) are implying that using the machine won’t make much of a difference. I should probably use it anyway. Maybe there will be a placebo effect or something and I won’t be quite as tired after a short night’s sleep. I don’t know.
The Oilers won last night. Yippee. Well… that’s being mean. I am glad they won. Not because I expect them to dig out of a three games to none series hole, but because it literally extended the NHL season. If they are going to lose on me and prove that I suck at picking the outcome of NHL playoff series’, then the least they can do is lose in seven games so we get our money’s worth, right?
As for the Red Sox, they have won four in a row including two wins against the first place Yankees. Glorious. I saw a post on social media where someone said that this streak proves they will not only make the playoffs, but advance to the American League Championship Series. I laughed out loud. No, let me be more specific… I laughed out loud for a long, long time. They are four games above .500. They are in third place in the division, 11.5 games behind the first place (and thoroughly evil) Yankees. They are two games out of the wild card. Oh yeah, it is June. Yeah… they are better than I thought they would be, but they are still pretty clearly mediocre. They might sneak into the wild card, but I am not holding my breath. If you’re expecting the Red Sox to do anything better than middle of the pack, then you haven’t been paying attention. No. They will not make it to the ALCS. If they do, I will happily eat my words, but I won’t have to because there’s no chance. This is the way. I have spoken.
I watched last night’s new episode of Star Wars: The Acolyte. There has been so much hate spewed at this show. Most of it rooted in sexism and racism rather than the story or anything to do with it. I’ve enjoyed the show so far and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. I’m on for the ride, as the saying goes. Last night though… episode four… I finally had something that I didn’t like. What was it? The running time was less than 30 minutes. Come on, Star Wars. We need more than that from our weekly episodes. We need more to sink our teeth into. These episodes should be more like 45-60 minutes, right? We need that content, folks. We need it! Star Wars, babie! Give us more!
Inside the Red Head's Head 