Dang, it's been a long time since I've made a post!!! Hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have a happy new year!!!
Now, what have I been doing in the interim??? Many things. My niece had her birthday. My company had their Christmas party, which was pretty cool. We tried out the mojito bar they had there and drank nothing else all evening after that. My wife and I stayed overnight, not at the hotel that it was held at but at a nice place up the road. Less than half the price, so even with cab rides both ways it still would have been less, and they had a complementary breakfast there.
Goody day was awesome. My trifle didn't come out exactly as planned, I accidentally (well, inadvertently, I didn't read the directions well) used water instead of milk in the pudding part, and it didn't seem to gel up quite right. I mixed a second pudding and put it on top of that, but still it wasn't right. Anyway, I think people were scared of it, only a few people tried it. I'd made two, so there would be some left by the time the third shift got around to eating. That was not necessary.
Got my gravy the Friday before Christmas. Once again, right around where I'd figured it to be, and once again, the man did take his chunk, albeit temporarily.
Christmas weekend... A lot going on!!! Saturday we went down to my parent's house for the family get-together. I took my spare trifle, but it was forgotten until it was too late. Not that there was any shortage of food!!! My parents got my oldest son several varieties of army men, and wrapped them in an authentic looking military duffel bag.
Before we went there, I stopped in at my bank and deposited my cash profit sharing check. I also asked about a fee on one of my accounts, and decided that I needed to change my account. The girl that sets those up was busy for about half an hour,so I made an appointment for Monday.
Sunday we went to Oinkster for a celebratory feast. Good times. Monday morning I went to the bank and set up my new accounts. I got a 9 month certificate of deposit with a fairly favorable rate, and a money market account for the remainder. I also moved the youngest's money from a standard custodial account into an actual mutual fund account. Naturally, there's no telling where the rates will go with that, but it's likely going to do better than even my certificate of deposit will do. Now the youngest member of the family has the most aggressive portfolio.
After that, I took the family to the movies. Across the Universe was playing at a theatre not far from my work, but the published times were wrong. We ended up getting there about 25 minutes into the movie. I was ready to bail, but the attendant said she'd give us two passes to come back some other time and catch it all. Way to sweeten the pot!!! Of course, we spent about twice as much on snacks as on admission, so way to turn a profit!!! My older boy and I both enjoyed it quite a bit, but neither my youngest or wife liked it as much.
Christmas was great fun. The boys liked all their swag. I got the oldest, among other things, new components for his computer to give it a makeover. It wouldn't run XP for some reason before, so I got him a new motherboard with PCI-E slots and a dual core processor, as well as a 160 gig hard drive and a gig of memory, and a copy of XP. A cool thing that I found for him is a new mouse that looks like a pistol, good for use with those first person shooter games he usually plays. Both boys got new, compact keyboards (desk space is at a premium), as well as Lego sets and many Hot Wheels cars. My wife got me some cool, toasty Dr. Pepper pajamas. For my wife, I wrapped up a cigar and a $100 bill for her with instructions to light the former with the latter. She didn't. I had requested the Counting Crows' re-release of August and Everything After with bonus tracks and second live disc. My parents got me the right disc, but not the re-release. My wife was shopping without the list she had insisted I make her, and found the greatest hits "Films About Ghosts" CD instead. Ummm, I've already got every song on that disc, kind of no point to that. Ah well, it's the thought that counts. And the exchange credit.
After a morning of wrapping shredding, we headed up to Mount Baldy to frolic in the snow. The youngest has never been to the snow before. I had no idea what the conditions were going to be up there, but I figured that Christmas day might be less crowded than usual. In the crowds respect, it wasn't bad. In the snow respect, it wasn't good. The snow was patchy, and what was there had melted and re-frozen into icy surfaces. Good for sliding down, though, just watch out for those rocks!!! It didn't matter much to the boys, they had a great time. They slid a few times, and then collected icy snow chunks for a snowball fight. I took some video which I may post in the future. My favorite is of the older sliding down a slope and bowling over a little girl. Unfortunately, I turned off the camera before they both started getting up laughing. Good times!!!
