Winter Wonderland

Ok, so this post is about my Christmas time of the year. The first major thing that happened was Catherine and I visited Los Angeles to see my friend J-Hay. It’s the second time we’ve gone to visit him in LA and it was a really good time. Last time we tried to fit a lot in so it was a little stressful. One major highlight was going backstage on The Office. J-Hay had found the set on accident trying to find some pizza place. So he took us there, knowing that we are huge fans. When we were looking at the place and taking pictures one of the set crew looked at us, asked if we were fans, considered for a moment, and then told us we had 2 minutes to see the backstage. He showed us some of the warehouse and some of Angela’s house (yet to be aired!)

The rest of the trip was pretty mellow, but in a good way. We went to pinkberry (AWESOME) of course, and went to some sushi place where it was 2.50 a plate. That was great. And then last, but certainly not least, Catherine and I decided that our new nicknames for each other would be Sausage (her) and Ratjar (me.) Who doesn’t like autogenerated halo names? (pix)

After that I had to get back to work. I only skipped 1.5 days of work for LA, so I could use flex time (work late on other days) to make up for it. There was one problem though: I hadn’t accrued as much FTO (Flexible Time Off) as I needed for all of my little vacations. So what did I do? 12 hour days of course! It’s strange getting to work at 9 and then leaving at 9. One day I am gonna sleep at work, just to say I did it…

So next up (less than a week after LA) I went to Crested Butte, CO with some friends for skiing/snow boarding. It was Joy and C-4, Joy’s parents, and Kevin. We left Friday and got back Thursday at 1:30 AM. We skied Sun-Wed. Everyone except for Kevin wanted me to ski and Kevin wanted me to snowboard, so I flipped a coin to decide. Fate chose snowboarding so that’s what I did. It was pretty rough my first day, but I got better over the next few days and it was really fun by the time we left. Fact: The first day I snowboarded I turned 23, and the last day I snowboarded I worked over the internet. (pix)

I got back to work and worked less than a weeks worth of days but more than a weeks worth of hours and then it was time to go home for Christmas! I left after work on the 23rd and arrive early in the wee hours of the morning on the 24th. It was an interesting Christmas with lots of bonus family members. I must recognize the gift that my mom got me though: since I have been more of an adult I haven’t really asked for really expensive gifts because if they are a little expensive I just buy them and if they are a lot expensive they are, obviously, too expensive. So I decided to put unusual things in my wishlist that would at least be interesting for the reader. Here is what I put this year:

  1. A Free ticket to the Universe
  2. 4.5 Extra Hours per day
  3. A way to only have to sleep 4 hours a day
  4. Any given power item (star from mario, sonic shoes, the one ring, etc)
  5. Real Magic minus the evil
  6. Musical skill
  7. A better, more convincing argument that can be used in any situation
  8. The ability to have theme music to life with the caveat that it’s always appropriate to the situation and it’s good music

So mom decided to get a bunch of these, and what happened was I would open one, guess which it was supposed to fulfill on the list, and then open an envelope that went with the gift and see if I got it right. Here is how it went:

  1. Black shirt with skull singing on it: Musical Skull (mom misread it :-) )
  2. Some double shots from starbucks: a way to only have to sleep 4 hours a day
  3. A toy want with a star on it: Any given power item
  4. A piece of paper with, “…you have a point…”: a better argument
  5. A cassette tape of The Alexander Brothers’ “The Way Old Friends Do”: theme music

That whole situation was just too funny. Catherine also came down for a few days and we had lots of fun. I also got a newer car (I got it for the sunroof…) (pix)

And now I am back and everything is back to normal. Well, more than before anyway. At work I am (kindav?) heading up a new project, so that’s exciting. A coworker and I went to the customer’s site and discussed what we would do on Thursday. Over the next week or two I will be drawing up a plan and trying to estimate just how long it will really take to execute. It’s pretty exciting as we will be, hopefully, avoiding a lot of the mistakes made in our older systems.

Ok, back to the weekend!

Posted Sat, Jan 17, 2009

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