artykins

Happy new year to you, my readers!  I trust you all did something wild and outrageous on New Years' Eve.  Personally, I did something so wild and so outrageous it defies description.  Despite my company (namely, my brothers) wanting to go streaking at the stroke of midnight, I spent the days before and after January 1st with a cold.  My New Years' Eve frivolity consisted of drugging myself heavily with cold medicine and falling asleep before midnight.

Matt even tried to wake me up, but he recalls that I was 'cranky' which probably isn't so far from the truth.  I'm not at my best at the 'waking up' stages of the day.  In fact, if I could, I'd totally be part bear and sleep through the winter.  But then I'd miss Christmas.  And winter is my favorite time of year, so I'd miss that.  Maybe a koala bear would be best.  They don't hibernate, I don't think, and they sleep for 20 hours a day and spend the rest of their time eating.  Sounds good to me!

Christmas this year was nice, as it usually is.  Uncle Ron and Aunt Becky came over with Pepper and we all ate and opened gifts and were generally very pleased with each other's company.  Pepper was able to sniff out one of her presents under the tree and whined until we opened it for her.  She then made herself quite happy stretched out near the fireplace with her new rawhide bone where she remained throughout all the present opening.

We all did pretty well this year, gift-wise.

I got lots of socks, which is what I wanted.  I got some new shirts, a beautiful blue leather-bound book from Jeff containing The Odyssey and The Iliad.  It's now next to the red leather-bound copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel that he gave me a couple years ago.  I got completely awesome dishes, a rad bowl and a rockin' cookie jar.  I got a 9"x13" cooking dish from my grandmother (which means I can now make lasagna!).  I got a pizza pan, Matt and I got a shredder as a joint gift from Uncle Ron and Aunt Becky (woo!) and Matt (DARLING WONDERFUL MAN THAT HE IS!) got me a pair of diamond earrings.  Yeah.  I wear those ALL the time, needless to say.

Dia de los Reyes is coming up this week.  Tomorrow, actually, but since it's in the middle of the week, we're celebrating on Saturday.  That, of course, means that all the viejos will be over at the house generally making noise and laughing and eating good food.  It also means some more presents, although there's never as much as Christmas.  I'm hoping for more socks!  I'm in need of new ones.

I'm also getting a new computer at work.  I'd be more excited if it was a brand spanking new Mac product.  As it is I'm being saddled to an HP Pavilion complete with Vista operating platform.  Oh yeah.  I'm super excited about that and you should be able to tell by the sarcasm dripping in my voice.  Still, it comes with 3 GB of RAM, which is a definite step up from my 448 MB of RAM.  It should take a couple days to be delivered and then a morning or afternoon for me to set it up and transfer all my files, which I've burned onto CDs as compressed files.  All in all, I'm a little impressed with myself for doing all this technological sorcery.  I usually leave that to Matt.

Staff meeting is tomorrow and at the suggestion of my illustrious leader, I'm going to purchase some cans of chili later this afternoon and set it up in a crock pot for that.  I'll also grab some sour cream, some scallions and some cheese.  It should be fun and save me having to go out tomorrow morning for something when Trader Joe's is crawling with customers.

Right now, however, my left eye is making me crazy.  I want to scratch it out because it's itching and watering like crazy!  More later.

- Arty