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Well, I’m back to work today after six days off, and as expected it’s a skeleton crew here. The opportunities to slack off are just about endless. I left for work 15 minutes late, drove about 75 mph and still got here at 5 minutes after 8; it’s wonderful when there’s no one on the road!

I don’t know about you, but for some reason this entire Holiday season has been entirely lack-luster for me. I have several postulations for this phenomenon:
1. The total lack of a bona-fide Thanksgiving. In my family, Thanksgiving dinner really ushers in the holiday season. Fish tacos and beer, while delicious and intoxicating, didn’t exactly fill that role for me.
2. Emotional baggage infiltrated my normally festive outlook, transforming me into a sour Scrooge at times. Bah Humbug.
3. Missing my Grandmother dearly! It’s just not the same without her.
4. All of the above, etc…

So here we are, the week before we roll over another calendar year, and it’s no wonder I’m finding it difficult to focus on a day and a half of work. The winds of change are blowing around here and I believe many new things and big events await us in the New Year. For better or worse, we will all persevere and grow another year older and hopefully wiser. After all, I turn 30 this year (Grandma would have been 90!) and you’d think I’d be able to shake this Peter Pan complex… We shall see. :) Happy New Year!

Last Thursday, I traveled to Orlando to help set up my first trade show. I love manual labor, so had a fantastic time. Good clean sweat and muscle makes the body feel alive — especially when there’s a cool tangible outcome! Anyhoo, Mike was left in the bitter cold of Rochester to look after the house and go to work while I worked 12-hour days and got to party it up in the evenings.

On Sunday, in the middle of opening day, Mike called. The conversation was of mundane caliber until I heard him exclaim, “OH CRAP!” (or some other colorful phrase). At that instant, he had locked himself out of the house. (New household rule: NEVER chat on the phone when you’re leaving to go out. Wait till you get in the car!) Moments later, my cell phone died without warning. I didn’t catch up with him until after dinner, hours later. Instead of breaking in, he decided to spend the evening at Phaedra and Lance’s place and spend $90 bucks at Target, so that he’d have something to wear to work the next day. No problem. I could let him in on Monday evening.

Sunday was my birthday and somehow I made it back to my room after last call and a string of shots purchased for me at the hotel bar. Naturally, I struggled a bit to pack up my bags on Monday morning. At the airport, as I stood in line to get my boarding pass, I glanced around at all the folks carrying jackets. Oh yeah! I was going back up North where it was cold… but MY jacket!? Where was it? IN THE ARMOIRE AT THE HOTEL — and my keys? WERE IN THE POCKET! Panic washed over me for a millisecond, and then I laughed. Crap like that only happens in bad sitcoms and I was living it. I decided not to tell Mike, because I thought he might freak out. I called the hotel and made arrangements to have my forgotten belongings FedEx-ed back to my house. For the rest of the day, between naps, I plotted about how I’d break into the house.

Unfortunately, Mike and Phaedra met me at the airport instead of giving me the opportunity to do all the dirty work on the sly. BUSTED! When I told him the whole sordid story, he was incredulous, but he thought it was funny. Long story short, we finally made it home. Mike pulled the safety hammer out of his car and we broke ourselves back into the house. True. Story.

With my new job being kind of busy, I simply haven’t found the inclination to mentally jot down interesting things to write about. Hence, my sporadic entry writing. I’m sorry. However, there were a few things recently that caused me to stop dead in my tracks and think, “WTF!?”

The first occurred in Wegmans yesterday. While picking up a few things for dinner, I saw two brothers getting a little rowdy ribbing each other. Nothing serious, they were just being boys. The younger of the two dropped to the ground trying to get away from his brother. A second later, I heard a woman’s voice reprimanding them from around the corner. As I turned my head in thier direction, I caught a glimps of her stellar parenting skills. She hauled off and KICKED the younger boy for being on the floor. Kudos to you lady, you win the idiot of the day award!

Earlier on Sunday Mike and I took his car to get washed. When we got to the drying stations, we saw this greasy old man get out of his car to WATCH the towel girl bend and reach over his car to dry it off — inspecting her every move with a smug grin on his face. Even if he was innocently checking to make sure she did a good job, he came across as a perverted lecherous old man! I left that place feeling dirty even though our car was clean.