Dave's Daily

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Happy New Year!

Yeah, well, I'm a couple of days early, but today is my last day at work for the year, so I'm getting it in early! :-) I'm off tomorrow since New Years Day is on a Saturday this year. So, you think I'll just get to loaf around all weekend, right? WRONG!

My wife has come up with the idea to repaint the kitchen since it's a three-day weekend. It is needing a fresh coat of paint, so I guess nows as good of time as any. Plus, she was going to cancel my birthday party (scheduled for later on in January - more on that as the time approaches) as she didn't want people to see the current condition of the kitchen... Since we just moved in and all, she wanted it to look really nice for when all the hoards of people came. The kitchen has a boarder along the ceiling too... I hate painting for one thing... I hate boarders even more...

Well, I splurged a little (a lot actually!) and bought a new TV... It's a Sony WEGA 32" that even has a Memory stick slot in the front so I can take the Memory stick from my Sony digital camera and show the pictures right away on the TV... Not too many places had it in stock, but my parents found one at the Best Buy store in their town and are going to pick it up tonight. Hopefully they can bring it down this weekend. Maybe it will be best if they don't come until the painting is done... otherwise, it may not get done... HA!

To close on a sports note, our local college basketball team will be playing Gonzaga tonight... Gonzaga has been playing pretty good lately, so it will either be a bit blow out or another nail-biter.... Guess we'll find out tonight! Stay tuned!

Dick Clark... We're thinking about you... Try to enjoy the show from the hospital....

Happy New Year and many Blessings to you in the upcoming year!

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Christmas Recovery

Well, we survived the Christmas holiday with much joy and happiness (for the most part). We enjoyed a nice candlelight Christmas Eve service at our church and then went out to dinner at Country Kitchen afterwards. Then we went home, had some hot chocolate, read the Christmas story from the Bible with the kids and watched a Christmas special on tv. After we put the kids to bed, we set out the rest of the gifts and went to bed ourselves.

Thankfully, the kids didn't come wake us up very early Christmas morning, so we got to sleep in a little bit. ha! Got the video camera out and had a fun time opening presents. Then we got ready and went up to my sister's house for my side of the family get-together. We had a nice lunch and time of gift-giving. They got a new air-hockey table, so I got in a few games playing my nephew. That afternoon, we took off to head up to see my wife's mother (a 3 hour drive) and spent the rest of the weekend with her. Sunday evening we had a big family gathering for dinner and more gift-giving. We all had a really nice time.

I took time off on Monday and Tuesday from work, so we left on Monday morning, and on the way back home, we stopped at a nearby mall and did a little shopping. Finally made it home that evening and kind of just vegged out.

Tuesday we got all unpacked and didn't do a whole lot. My wife had to go get some groceries as we were all out of everything.

Back at work today and got all caught up with emails, etc. and now ready to go home. :-)

Blessings!

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Merry Christmas!

Well, so much for being able to brag about my local college basketball team... Except they did manage to not get blown out like all the other teams Illinois has played. They did a good job and almost came back to win, but lost in the end 70-64... There's always next year!!

The day started early this morning as I got two phone calls (one at 3:20am and another at 5:40am) from work about some problems. Thankfully they weren't hard problems to solve. It's hard to think at 3:20 in the morning... Other than that, it's been pretty quiet here at work today.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and since Christmas is on a Saturday this year, we have tomorrow off from work. Yeah! But it's suppose to be bittlerly cold outside (high of only 15 degrees), so guess we'll be stuck indoors. Family bonding time I guess! :-) We will be attending our church's Christmas Eve service which lasts only 30 minutes and then by "tradition" we'll go out to eat dinner somewhere (and contrary to where our kids want to go, it WON'T be McDonald's!!!).

This will be my last post until after Christmas. I'll have lots of goodies to share by then I'm sure.

Have a wonderful and blessed CHRISTmas everyone! Joy to the World! May you get to be with the ones you love and care about during this season.

Blessings and Ho Ho Ho!

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Mission Accomplished!

Got my wife's Christmas gifts all wrapped last night while she was gone taking my son to his Sunday school class Christmas party. They're now all under the tree, except for a couple that Santa is bringing Christmas morning. It wasn't the best wrapping job in the world, but it's done and that's all that matters.

No snow last night, but they're calling for it tonight now with temps reaching zero tonight. Ugh. We don't have Wed. night church services tonight, so we're going to light a fire in the fireplace and watch a Christmas movie tonight.

Our division director came around today passing out Christmas cards to everyone. I don't know how she does it. If she wrote a personal message in every card like she did in mine, it would take forever as there are close to 200 people in our division. I guess she won't have to worry about doing that next year since we're getting a new director due to the Governorship changing political parties next month...

Tonight is also the annual "Braggin' Rights" game for my local college basketball team. They'll be playing the number one team in the nation right now, Illinois... I hope it ends in a way I can brag about tomorrow.... :-)

Blessings!

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

First Day of Winter

It has officially arrived... Winter... It's sunny outside, the temp is about 40 degrees... pretty nice. BUT, the cold front arrives this afternoon, with artic winds and some snow fall tonight and tomorrow... So I guess it's appropriate for it to snow on the first day of Winter... How'd it know?

When I was messing with the wood for building our first fire in our new home Sunday evening (19th), something stung/bit me on the back of my right hand. Little sucker got me good... but, the pain went away quickly and didn't make a big deal out of it. Starting yesterday afternoon (20th), some redness started to appear on my hand and it started to itch. By last night it started to get puffy. It woke me up about 3:30am today 'really' puffy and hurting. I had been putting anti-itch cream on it, but it was (as still is) pretty uncomfortable. Suffice to say, I had a hard time getting back to sleep and I'm still dealing with the problem today. It's a little hard to type as some of the inflamation is in my wrist.

My son has a Sunday school class Christmas party tonight and then afterwards they are going to one of the local nursing homes to pass out candy and sing Christmas carols. My wife is going to take him so I can stay home and wrap her gifts. I hope I can get it done as my 2 year old daughter is staying home too and she always wants me to read books or play.

Have I ever mentioned that I have a wonderful wife? Well, I do... God bless you Sweetheart!

Blessings!

Monday, December 20, 2004

Brrrrr....

Wow, was it chlly yesterday (Sun., 19th)... It barely make it into the 20's in temp., but the wind chill made it a lot worse feeling! BRRrrrr!

On Fri, after I got home from work, my wife went back to JCPenney's and returned the cracked drinking glass. She was able to replace just the one glass instead of packing up and taking in the whole set which was nice. While there, she picked up a silverware set also...

On Sat., my wife got up early and went to the grocery store as usual. When she got back, I had the kids dressed and fed and so we headed to the mall for a little bit of shopping. We also had to take back the sliverware set she bought as after washing it, there were a few flaws in it. The mall was busy and after awhile the kids started to get cranky so we had to get out of there. Sat. evening we went to a Christmas party held by our Sunday school class. Had lots of good snacks and a fun evening of gift stealing (I mean trading). We played that game where you can pick someone else's gift or pick a new one. There was one gift, a small wire spiraled Christmas tree, that it seemed everyone wanted. It finally ended up with the lady that brought it (she wanted it!). Before going to the party, we went through a "drive-thru" Nativity display put on by a local church. That was pretty neat.

Since we got home pretty late from the party, we ended up sleeping in a little and went to our church's second service (starts at 11am) instead of going to the first service (8:30am) like we normally do. For the evening service, the adult choir performed their annual Christmas Cantata were they did an excellent job! When we got home, I started up a fire in the fireplace, got the kids to bed, and my wife and I enjoyed a cup of hot French Vanilla Cafe coffee (decafe of course!). I had a little trouble keeping the fire going as I think the wood was a little wet... but it was still nice.

Today (Mon, 20th), my supervisor here at work bought pizza for our group as his Christmas gift to us. We got him some movie gift certificates as our gift to him.

Weather rumors are that we're suppose to get a pretty good accumulation of snow this Wednesday... we may get a white Christmas after all... We'll see...

To close on an sports update... The local college basketball team came back from a 17 point deficit to defeat Indiana 56-53... That was a real nail-biter game.... I hate watching close games like that.... I'm gonna die early watching those things! The west side of the state pro-football team wiped up Denver from the field beating them 45-17.... but the east side team fell to Arizone 31-7.... Two outta three ain't bad... :-)

Blessings!

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Board Meeting

Last night was our monthly church board meeting. It was one of the longer lasting ones as we had a few issues to deal with along with going over the budget for next year. The meeting started at 6:30pm for dinner and we got done at almost 10:30pm... I was already tired from staying up late the night before, so with another late night, I'm just about a zombie today.

Not much going on today. My wife called to say she went to JCPenneys to buy a new set of drinking glasses. We've always bought some cheaper sets before (like at Wal-mart), but they always seem to develop a chaulky film on them. So, she found a really nice set (which was 50% off in price by the way!), got them home, and found one of the glasses has a big crack/chip in it. Since she had our 2 year old with her, it was kind of a hassle dragging her around in the first place, so she was pretty upset about it. Anyway, I calmed her down by saying that when I get home, she can run back to the store to get it replaced.

Got church tonight, so it'll be a quick dinner... Hopefully I can get to bed at a decent time tonight.

Fancied up my blog space today by putting a site counter on it... Okay, folks, start racking up the hits! :-)

Blessings!

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Retirements

Yesterday (Dec. 13th) we had a retirement party for one of our Operations Supervisors that is retiring after 30 years. At the end of the month, two more people will be retiring also. I guess with a new governor starting in January, they thought this would be a good time to go. We'll also be getting a new division director as well since the political party is changing from Democrat to Republican. Our current director is pretty good and nice (to me at least), but I'd hate to be on her bad side... She's small in stature, but she can still bite your head off and spit it out. :-)

We got an email today that our new division director would be coming around, meeting everyone, taking a tour of our data center, etc., but called and said he couldn't make it. We'd been told to tidy up our cubes, etc., but I just knew deep down that he'd cancel... They always do... :-)

I've got a church board meeting tonight. We'll be discussing the 2005 budgets for the various ministries. I just hope it doesn't last too long.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return on the King extended edition DVD set came out today. They added an additional 50 minutes to the movie... That'll push it close to 4 hours! My wife picked it up this morning.... That's another Christmas gift she can check off the list! HA! Guess that rounds out the trilogy though and not much else to look forward too. I'd love to get the Star Trek Original Series DVD sets, but at $99 a set, that's a little much right now...

To close on a sports note... Our west side of the state pro football team scored a touchdown with 35 seconds left in the game and won 49-38 against the Titans in Monday Night Football last night. Whoo Hooo! (for what it's worth....)

Blessings!

Monday, December 13, 2004

We Survived!

My wife took off last Wed. (Dec 8th) to go with her mother up to Connecticut to see her brother come in to port with his submarine crew (the USS Alexandria) from being out on a six-month tour of duty. He even got his picture in the paper showing him hugging his 3 year old daughter. His wife and kids are living up there too, so they had a place to stay and had a great visit. While she was gone, I took off work to stay home with our kids which gave me some good father/kids bonding time. I also used my Boy Scout "survival" skills by cooking lots of hot dogs (well, it wasn't quite that bad... ha!).

The time passed quickly as we had lots of things to do to keep us busy. The Wed. she left, after picking up my son from school, we had haircut appointments, then church that night. Thursday night, we had another play practice for my son's Christmas program at church. Friday, they had a special story time for toddlers at the local public library, so I took our 2 year old daughter to that. Santa Claus showed up, but she didn't want too much to do with him. But she liked the stories and treats. Friday night was a "free" night at home, so we watched a old funny movie. Saturday, my son had play practice again at 2pm with an evening performace at 6pm. Sunday we had morning service at church and then another kids play performace at 5pm. My wife made it back home right before the evening performance on Sunday, so both her and my son were glad she made it back in time to see it. My parents came down also to see it.

The play was about the "Jingle Bells" (all the kids were "bells".) One of the bells couldn't ring right. The main various bells were Desa Bell, Clara Bell, Paco Bell, and Bing Bell. My son was Paco Bell, a mexican... he wore a sombero and spoke with a mexican accent. He had a solo too and he did very well.

Both kids were really excited to see their mother again... Probably glad that they would be getting decent meals again.... HA!

The previous owners of our house agreed to our proposal about us getting those little items fixed and then deducting the cost from what we owe them. Our realtor had a few people lined up to get them done, but after checking with them, they were all too busy (most likely the job was too small for them to mess with). So, being a pretty good handiman himself, our realtor is doing it himself. He came out Sunday (12th) to work on some of it, and is coming back out tonight to do some more. He's a really great guy!

As far as my "daily" sports update.... On Saturday, the local college b-ball team blew out the Montana Grizzlies 87-62 (about time there was a blowout!), but the east side of the state pro football team didn't fair so well this weekend. The west side team plays tonight on Monday Night Football... :-)

Blessings!

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Day of Remeberance

Today we remember the fallen men and women that suffered the attack at the Naval base in Pearl Harbor. Back in the mid-90s, I had the chance to visit Pearl Harbor and visit the Arizona Memorial where you can see the oil still seeping from the sunken ship. My brother-in-law was stationed at Pearl Harbor at the time and he was able to take us around to show us the sites.

I bow my head in reverence to those lost, undergoing a suprise attack in 1941 which brought us into the war leading it to become a "day that shall live in infamy."

Check out this site at National Geographic which covers the events of that fateful day.

Flying my flag at half-staff.....

Blessings!


Monday, December 06, 2004

Piano man

Had a beautiful day on Saturday. My wife took the kids downtown for the annual Christmas parade. There were lots of floats and bands and it lasted almost an hour! I stayed home as the previous home owners FINALLY came and got their pool table and piano!! YEAH!! It really opened up the downstairs for us. Plus, I also wanted to watch some of the local college team basketball game. As it turned out, I didn't get to watch much of it as the moving crews came while it was on. But, they won none the less! YEAH!

Sunday was a pretty yucky day with it raining most of the day, but church was great and the local pro football teams won their games.

So, overall it was a pretty good weekend! :-)

The little items that STILL need to be repaired on the house STILL have not been done. We're giving the previous homeowners an option that I hope they will take. Since we still owe them some money when they put new shingles on it (we split the cost of upgrading to better shingles), we are giving them an option of letting us just repair the stuff and deducting what we owe them with the cost of the repairs. Our realtor is getting pretty upset with the previous owners (and I can't blame them). It's kind of a sticky situation as we're "pretty" good friends with the previous owners... I know it'll all work out. God's timing is always perfect.

Got a busy week this week. My son is going to be in a play at church this weekend, so tonight is a practice for it. Then tomorrow night is his first basketball practice of the season. Wed. my wife is leaving town for the rest of the week to fly up to Connecticut with her mother to see her brother come in on his sub from being out to sea for six months. I get to take off work to stay home with the kids! She needs the break and I'm glad she gets to go. Thurs. night is another play practice. We do get Friday night free, so we might get a pizza and watch a movie. Sat. is another big play practice day and performace that night. Sunday is church day and another play performace that evening. My wife is suppose to make it back in time for the Sunday night play. I hope she does or my son might feel a little down about it.

There was an employee choir that sang some Christmas music in the building's atrium during the lunch hour today. That was really nice.

Blessings!

Friday, December 03, 2004

December Already?

Wow... time is really speeding up.... It's already December!! I've got most of my Christmas shopping done, but not quite all of it yet... I still have a few days left... HA!

Tom Brokaw of NBC's Nightly News program has stepped down as of Dec. 1st. Dan Rather of CBS will be gone in March.... Peter Jennings can't be too much further behind.... Guess the world will end then as they are now debating whether the 30 minute nightly news program is even needed anymore. I'd miss it... although I really don't get to watch it most of the time anyway...

Had my six month employee review today. Everything was fine and it was mostly just a ritual thing to have to do. Although my supervisor did mention that since I was such a valued employee, he'd like for me to voice my opinion more often. :-)

Went to Lowe's last night and bought a new water heater. The one in our house is close to 16 years old and since we just moved in, I don't want the thing breaking down on me anytime soon. So, we're just going to replace it now and hopefully not have problems for a long time.

We're also suppose to be finally getting rid of the pool table and piano tomorrow... and possibly going to get some of those house things fixed that was supposed to be done before we moved in. We'll see....

Tomorrow morning is a Men's breakfast at our church. That is always a good meal and great fellowship with the guys. I'm looking forward to that. I'm also hoping to work on our TV ministry computer tomorrow to add a new video card and update some software.

Hey, it's Friday and it's really sunny outside and suppose to be really nice tomorrow, and so there is not much to complain about. Life is good.

Blessings!