Domestic Geek

Sorry there have not been any posts lately. It's been SSDD and have just not been in the mood the be a broken record. Sales at the stores are always down around the holidays, but the bonus from the owner always offset the difference. Without that money this year, I was in a little bit of financial shock. On top of that, the last few years I have gotten extremely depressed around the holidays. Five years ago my mother went into a diabetic coma right before Thanksgiving and died on January 4th, two days before her birthday. She and I really got into the whole holiday thing: baking, decorating, etc. It has been hard to get into the whole holiday spirit without her around. This year was especially tough. Part of it was the fact that the weather was so nice that it didn't seem like the holiday season, part of it was that my Dad was visiting my sister in California, and part of it was the whole work fiasco. We got the tree decorated on December 23rd, I made a cheesecake for my friend's party, and that was about it this year. No cookies, no lights, nothing. Here are a couple of pictures of the little bit of holiday spirit I mustered at the last minute:





Then after Christmas I got really sick. Booo. I thought I was going to hack up a lung. Anyway, I was going to take that time to work on the old blog, but Blogger had some major issues. Something about their servers getting hacked and then not being able to access the servers and then not being able to edit my template. The guy who runs this thing was out of town and couldn't get things fixed right away. I got so frustrated with the whole thing that I just decided to catch up on my reading. I'm working on Stephen King's Dreamcatchers right now. I guess I'm going to have to find someplace to host my blog where I can use Greymatter or something. Freeservers doesn't allow cgi scripts. I have a feeling that this blogger thing is getting too big for this one guy to handle alone. I know I can't gripe much because its free, but I really need to explore other options.

Poor Dad. I talked to him about 5:40 PM. I dropped him off at 3 and his plane was supposed to leave at 4:45. They were being told the plane might leave about 6:10. I haven't heard from him since. I hope he got to leave. Hanging around an airport is extremely boring.

I heard the funniest joke on The Sports Zoo on the way home:

I just got back from taking Dad to Denver International Airport. He's flying to L.A. to visit my sister for Christmas. I want to know one thing: Why does everybody slow to 10 miles BELOW the posted speed limit when they see an officer on the side of the road? The speed limit is 65, the officer is busy with some other schmuck, he's not coming after us, so DRIVE already! Going under the limit does not counteract the fact you were speeding mere moments ago.

Got my paycheck today and no bonus. I hope the owner is proud of himself, the damned scrooge. That was truly the last straw. I understand that he can't afford the same bonuses we were used to, but a little token would've been nice. Something to let us know our hard work is appreciated.

I am having the hardest time getting in the holiday spirit this year. Christmas is a little over 4 days away and I could truly care less. I finally got the tree into its stand on Monday and that's as far as I got. I'm taking tomorrow off from work so I hope to get the lights and ornaments on. I do need to come to town and do the last of my holiday shopping. I was really hoping to get that bonus to get some better gifts, but now I'll have to be more frugal. *sigh*

I'm writing on my dad's computer. I like our satellite conncection better than dial-up, but this cable connection rocks! Anyway, he lives across the street from Buckley Air Force Base. A jet just took off and Dad's cat, Sadie, just had a conniption. You would think that after all the years they've been here that she would be used to that by now. Hee