Day 55: Brown Eyed Girl

From 365

Day 54: Have a Coke and a Forklift

From 365

Apparently that's how you get the money out of the coke machine.

Day 53: She's eyeballing me

From 365

So cute.

Day 52: Sushi!!!

From 365

I love sushi. Well, some sushi. I'd never had any up until a couple of years ago.

The Jaguar and the Godzilla at Sekisui rule, though.

Day 51: Shopping

From 365

A little late night shopping..

Day 50: Down In The Park

From 365

We took a stroll out to Latimer Lakes Park at sundown. It was cold, but gorgeous.

Day 49: Ducks

From 365

So, there's tons of dead ducks hanging around at my office.

One of the company high ups 'donated' them, from his own home. There are, I'm serious, probably two dozen of these things hanging from the walls and standing on top of furniture.

Dead animals don't bug me, and I don't really have a problem with hunters either. But a flock of dead ducks at the office is bizarre.

Day 48: Case

From 365

Sometimes you stretch for a photo of something other than my cats.

Putting Out Fires

So I like to use the term "putting out fires". It means that I'm fixing problems and making things work.

Except today.

My phone rings.

"The lumber-tally computer is on fire."

So I raced down there.

The good news is that there was a fire extinguisher not too far away. Its also good news that it was not actually the computer, which is a very critical machine that we would be pretty much fucked, without. Instead, a heater in the booth, near the machine was on fire.

So when I say "Oh, I'm just putting out fires!", I might be serious.

Day 47: Nursery Paints

From 365

We're making progress!

There's only two more small things that need painting, then its all trim and touch-up. Woo!

Day 46: Puppy Love

From 365

Ahh, this would have been a great valentines day photo.

We played a goodly bit of Tomb over the weekend, which was fun. Awhile back I rambled about a dungeon crawl board game, which apparently does exist, and is called Descent. Considering the price of those kind of board games though, I'll have to see if I can get my hands on it at some point down the road.

Day 45: Birthing Class

From 365

We spent Hallmark Day in a birthing class at Baptist Desoto. It was informative and helpful. I'm SO glad that we were able to be there for much of Maddie's delivery. There is a vast difference in the delivery process that we catch on TV and the way it really goes down. Of particular help to me, I think, was the Lamaze style breathing methods. It's getting close.

I've not quite gotten a good synchronicity going with my 365 blog.. I feel like I mostly just post photos with brief descriptions these days, instead of giving you long rambling posts about gaming. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Day 44: Cats

From 365

(I hate the way blogger handles these large images, but my html code skills are suboptimal.)

Our cats. That's Cisco on the left, but we call her Biscuit. And Zoe on the right, but we call her Kiki. I'd tell you the reason why, but its kinda silly and stupid. We also call Kiki a huge fat ass, because she is, and we like to make fun of fat cats. She's our social cat, greeting her favorite visitors, loudly demanding to be fed, and lying about in the middle of the room where everyone can see her, and she can see everyone. Biscuit is the non-social one. She's got a bum leg, so she walks funny, and doesn't jump up onto stuff much. We love 'em.

Day 43: Golden Dragon

From 365

There are not a lot of great places for Chinese cuisine in Horn Lake/Southaven. But we've come to really appreciate Golden Dragon. After being super busy at work, fooling around with a new terminal server, and then getting home and running three miles, while Krissi and Maddie walked three, I went out for some Chinese food. Yum.



I planned all afternoon to make this comment on my picture from yesterday, but then forgot to: Because what we needed was ONE MORE walgreens/cvs/riteaid. *eyeroll*

Day 42: Storm Clouds

From 365

Goodman Road and Airways, just after our brief doctors appointment. Thanks to the high winds, I'll be on the roof sometime soon, repairing roof tiles.

Day 41: First Year Photography

From 365

Yeah, its a huge freaking tree. Not far from where I work. A friend of mine commented recently that a lot of my photos remind her of pics from friends of hers when they were taking first year photography. Yeah, that's what I'm doing here.

Check out this tree.

Day 40: Workspace, cluttered

From 365

Sorry for the size switching. I'm still new at this, so you'll have to be a bit patient with me here.

I am a terribly cluttered person. There's no refuting it, or prettying it up. My workspace has been a mess, no matter where I work, for at least the last eight years or so. On the other hand, we've tried really hard to unclutter our home and personal life. We've done a good job of not accumulating 'shit', and by that, I mean things that will gather dust. Don't get me wrong, I can't claim that we live a totally frugal lifestyle. I have scores of DVDs, and an Xbox360 that sometimes goes for weeks neglected, but we've tried to cut out bullshit accumulation. Dragons to set on the mantle? No thanks.

But yeah, my workspace? Give me reams and reams of paper, and let me stack it up for weeks, and then ask me for some info from one sheet of paper amongst those reams. That's good stuff.

PS- I have three blackberries on my desk because I'm troubleshooting one, using the other for parts, and the third... hell, I don't even know what the third one is doing there.

Day 39: Shopping

From 365

Taking care of the weekend grocery shopping. You can tell it is thrilling stuff.

Day 38: James and Some Trees

From 365

We ran up to Germantown to hang out in Alice's old house. It's being sold, which is a little sad. My grandfather built it in the 40's, and we all have tons of memories there. That's my devilishly handsome brother there in the foreground.

Day 37: Lumber I

From 365

I called this Lumber I, since there may be a few lumber related pics this year. I won't bore you intentionally.

Not much else to add to this one. I work at a lumber yard. Part of the process of processing lumber is air drying. They stack this stuff up and leave it out in sheds for a month or so.

Day 36: Tangle

From 365

My bad. I took a couple of photos on day 36, and should have done a double post of day 35 and day 36, but instead posted my day 35 one, and forgot to upload day 36. So my whole thing was goofed up. I caught the error, and went back and found a shot that I took on 36. Hence, I have fixed the problem. Meh. But that's why I'm posting this photo on like day 41, and backdating it.

That's a tangled mess of cords, phones, computers and an external DVD-R/W.

Day 35: Horn Lake

From 365

That's looking north on Hurt Road. And yes, just a little ways down that road you'll find the intersection of Hurt Road and Pain Road. The tower on the right is an elevator test tower. Krissi and noticed it when we first moved down, and drove up to it, wondering why on earth there was an air control tower out here. On a side note, my friend Jason, who is scared of heights, has been up to the very top at least once.

Day 34: Copper Pipes

From 365

Here are a few more pics related to the new PC

Yeah, as I've mentioned, I've build myself a new computer. And it super rocks.

I don't have much else to say, as I'm listening to my now-better-sounding-mp3s, and now=-better-looking-photos, and for real now-faster-running-and-prettier-looking-games. Unfortunately, it still does not dispense rum or blue moon beer from the front. Sigh. We'll keep hoping.


Oh, those copper pipes in the picture are part of the heatsink, drawing heat away from the CPU, which I'm overclocking to a cool 3.5 ghz. Interestingly, my laptop cpu, a 3.0ghz mobile processor that is 5 years old runs around 150 degrees Fahren normally, and this one, overclocked to 3.5 runs around 95 degrees fahren.

Day 33: Scooter's

From 365

We set off this evening to go for burgers at Huey's, and spotted Scooter's new restaurant. Scooter had a giant tour bus that had been converted into a Bar-B-Q kitchen on wheels. He always used to be parked in a lot not far from our house, selling delicious 'Q. Seeing that he'd expanded into a non-wheeled business venture, we stopped and had delicious pork bar-B-Q.

Day 32: Seven Layer Dip

From 365

We got together at the Williamsii casa on Sunday evening for some Superbowl action.

I'm not a sports fan, but when I sit down and watch one, I always enjoy football. So the one game per year that I watch is always fun. And this was a great game.

Maddie made her always-delicious seven layer dip. YUM!

Computer Yay!

On Tuesday evening, I'll be doing the WOOO, NEW COMPUTER dance. It's a very special dance, and no, the event will not be televised.

You see, I'm a computer nerd. But I'm a computer nerd on a somewhat tight budget. Back in the day, I had the luxury of building a new computer once every year and a half or two years. Just frequent enough to stay inside of 'the curve'. Then again, I was also working a shitty job, lived at home with mom, and racked up the credit card debt. Anyway.

About 5 years ago, we got a sweet Dell laptop that has been my primary computer ever since. I'm a computer game player, and I've been crazy lucky that it's been able to keep up. At least, until now. I finally got a game for my birthday that I'd be waiting on forever for, and..... it would not run on the laptop. At all.

So, here's what happened, along with some story. As I may have said, we're expecting a baby in April. Cool! We've both taken job cuts, and I won't claim that we make retarded money in the first place. Eh, not cool. On the other hand, we've worked fairly hard to pay off ALL of our credit cards, and now just have a car payment, student loans and a mortgage. Cool!! We are kinda scared stiff about affording a kid. I mean, we can all eat and keep the heat running, but like, we want to do Montessori, which ain't cheap, and live generally like upper middle class fat cats. And with Krissi planning to take at least a few months off, we have some anxiety about our income.

I don't know why I'm on here stabbing myself in the hand while telling you this. Maybe its somehow like getting something off my chest. Imagine your loved one bursting in and saying in a loud and anxious voice, "Okay, don't panic, I bought this really awesome thing. I know it wasn't the best idea, because we could have used that money elsewhere, but I did it, and its done, and I'm happy with my decision." And then staring at you really hard for a second, and saying "Are we okay?", as though prepared for an actual physical fight.

That's not at all what happened in my case, but strangely it feels like that. In my head. No, I'm very fortunate and Krissi gave her blessing, and BAM! Faster than you could blink, I ordered my computer shit. We also threw a hefty sum into savings.

I started to inventory the shit I got on here, mostly because I love looking back at stuff years later to reminisce, but also just a tiny bit to brag, but then it felt too bragy, so I'm not. Right now.


In the "Everything else" news quick round up... Maddie and John are still alive and going. Their new family additions have been a joyous and tiring and perhaps even stressful experience for them, but they're all doing fantastically. Maddie's mom was down for a few weeks helping, and I know that having her there was invaluable to them. She's gone back home, and everyone misses her, but hopefully she'll be back sometime in the near future.

My D&D game might be going on hiatus earlier than I'd anticipated. We're loosing players as everyone all the sudden has kids, or family obligations, and so forth.

Um, that's all I can think of.

Computer Yay!!