Just wanted to wish

Everyone a Happy Thanksgiving...for those of you up north...then Happy Thursday!

Serious Business

Bags of mulched leaves lie about the yard like hibernating bears as I lean back against the rake having a cigarette and watching new leaves descend blanketing the ground I had just cleaned with flashes of gold and red. “Oh well,” I thought. “At least the barren spots in the yard can’t be seen now.”

Raking leaves wasn’t the only task in the tsunami of home improvement chores and maintenance responsibilities on a list of odd jobs as endless as the falling leaves. My mother was flying in to Houston on a business trip and decided to take a detour through Virginia for the upcoming weekend for a visit, and my wife was determined to show just how good of a daughter-in-law she was, proceeded in an attempt at making our home the Taj-Mahal of our neighborhood for her visit.

My parents retired in their early 50’s and determined the quiet sedate life of the elderly too mundane, they took contract positions with a company laying natural gas pipelines up in the northwest. Selling their home off of Puget Sound, the job took them from Washington to Oregon, negotiating right-of-way for laying pipelines across ranches, farms and municipalities. While they swear that when this contract ends, they’ll finally “really” retire to their house in Montana, I remain skeptical and I’ll believe it when I see it.

Fragrant candles sending tendrils of caramel and cinnamon throughout the house, hanging curtains, raking leaves, arranging and rearranging the furniture, shopping for home decor, cleaning and recleaning (nothing stays truly clean in a house with two children) our house was transformed into a Mecca of comfort and convenience within a week of her arrival, a planned day and a half stay.

I believe I’ve recovered from the hurricane of activity and think that I’ve finally perfected my pumpkin stew; I can now relax and get back to the important things in life.

Anyone up for a Broncos game? I brought beer and chips.

Blogger weirdness

I posted a video last night, nothing special, but a video I found interesting and while publishing I saw the signpost up ahead…database error, the maintenance people have been notified. Ooooh, the maintenance people…a special subclass of illuminati that work the gears of the machine and oil the mechanisms that churn out my daily drivel.

The odd thing was, while I received an error it still posted my video, but would not let me edit or allow any replies in addition to not allowing me to post any follow up entries. My blog was officially broke and with no way to notify my loyal readers I was stranded on Gilligan’s isle with only Mary Ann (who was complaining). Inspiration struck me in the WC and I thought, “What if I republish my entire blog, I wonder if that would correct the error.”

Miracles do occur, it worked and it beat the alternative of spamming everyone’s blog with irrelevant post on how I was trapped in a basement.

Maintenance people…who needs ‘em (only kidding).

It's my party and I'll...

So today is my daughter's second birthday. We're not doing anything today (which is good since my daughter is getting over an ear infection), but this weekend it's going to be a toddler's party.