Nothing In This World

Happy Day before the Christmas Season!  Get ready for muzak Christmas carols, more holiday commercials, and for phase one of retailers’ Christmas booty.

So, it’s been a few days.  Part of the reason I haven’t written is because my laptop died.  I was working on it and it went into hibernation mode and I haven’t been able to get it powered up since.  Thankfully I have a 3 year warranty on it and will be sending it in for repair.  But I miss it so much and am never more aware of how much emphasis I place on my laptop until I can no longer use it.  I should have it back in 10-14 days or so.

The weekend was busy.  I spent most of Saturday at a co-worker’s house taking pictures of his daughter’s 4^th birthday party.  It was fun but busy.  They had over 40 guests; at least half of them were children.  Talk about craziness.  I was there from about 11:30 until 4pm and ended up taking over 150 pictures.  The kids were great.  They hit a piñata, ate ice cream cake, played outside, and watched the birthday girl open presents.  After the sugar high abated, they crashed in front of a movie in my co-worker’s basement family theater.  I left exhausted yet satisfied with the job I did.  It was a little awkward because this is a co-worker who is relatively new.  I barely knew him and didn’t know anyone at the party.  So having to make small talk and small kids smile as a stranger was a little difficult at first.  I gave my co-worker the CD of photos today and he was really happy with them.  That makes it all worth while.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing laundry and FINALLY unpacking the last of the boxes I had packed when we thought we were buying a condo.  I hung the last of the wall hangings as well.  Our apartment is our cozy home once again.  Oh!  And I also managed to carve our 5 pumpkins into fun jack o lanterns.   I set them out on our north facing patio only to find that the squirrels had made a snack of them overnight.  Now, each pumpkin is in its own window which looks even better and spookier.  Click on the Flickr badge to see shots of the pumpkins all aglow.

OK. I’m 38 (almost 39) and I am gradually realizing that I am so behind the times.  The world is moving past me at dizzying speeds and I am not keeping up.  I was watching TV this weekend and found that if you watch VH1 early enough in the morning, you can actually see music videos!  One of my favorite past times while in high school was watching MTV music videos, as well as Friday night videos.  Anyway, I found that I really like a lot of the music that is out there now.  I have no idea who these bands/singers are for the most part, but I like what I saw/heard.  Based on that, I am thinking I should finally get on the MP3 bandwagon so I can buy these singles and enjoy them at my leisure.  I don’t want to be a fogey and think that the music of my day was music at its best.  I would like to keep up with the new music scene but since I am not of the music magazine/record store generation any more, I am not sure how I will keep abreast of what’s new and fabulous without an MP3 player and the iTunes website.  I tend to like what’s popular.  I have never been one to hunt through indie bands to find something I like, though by hanging out with people who do, I have found things I have liked that weren’t mainstream.  But for the most part, I am a music lemming.  If you have tunes/bands/singers/music you like that is outside of the mainstream, leave it in my comments so I can check them out when I have hooked up to an MP3.  Thanks!

Speaking of breaking into the 21^st century, we joined the ranks of those who have cut the cable and have gone satellite.  DirecTV came out yesterday and hooked us up.  Our cable company was bought out by a company who has not been known for great customer service or sales.  As an inauguration to their fabulous customer service, we got our fist bill from the new company which included a one time $40 service charge.  No rhyme or reason for the charge, just a one time deal.  Bob called on it yesterday and told them where they could put that one time service charge.  We got our service hooked up and everything was working hunky dory…until I wanted to watch TV and for some reason our living room TV could not find the signal.  I tried all the troubleshooting methods given to us by the company and nothing worked.  So today I will call their customer service number to see if they can be of any help whatsoever.

Hey.  Who is the teenage boy in Paris Hilton’s new video “Nothing in This World”?  He’s a cutey and looks familiar but I can’t find anything on him at all on the internet.   Anyone?

Bob may be featured in an upcoming issue of the national MDA magazine called Quest.  A writer emailed him to see if he would be free to do a phone interview new Thursday.  She is writing an article featuring FSH MD, which is what Bob has, and wants to put a human face to the disease.  The local MDA office pointed her in Bob’s direction.  Cool, huh?  We’ll see what happens.   We’ve had our hopes raised and dashed before in a similar situation so we will proceed cautiously onward.