First though, Thanksgiving. Was quite nice. Went to Cookeville and had dinner with the family at my uncle's sandwich shop/bar. Had fun talking with them and playing pool some. About the only time each year I play pool :P

Afterwards, took my Aunt Willie a plate since she didn't feel like coming out to the shop. Sat and talked with her a while then headed to the parent's house. Played Munchkin Booty (the pirate Munchkin game) and then had BBQ. Afterwards played Ninja Burger :P

Friday, we didn't get up especially early. Perhaps a little earlier than we would have if we just decided to sleep in. Witchcat had to go work some anyways so just as well. Actually went and braved the Black Friday shopping at two of the prime spots: Best Buy and Toys R' Us... At Best Buy took advantage of some $80 off MS Office 2007. Sure, I could have used Open Office or Star Office (Linux versions)... but some things still don't translate well and are just flat out dropped when I bring files from work home. So at least we got that now. Witchcat also got me a new flat panel monitor for an early Christmas as my 8+ year old CRT was beginning to die. Was flickering through colors at times, trying to turn everything a shade of purple :P So yay for that! :) Makes for a lot more room on the desktop :P

Saturday we figured out our Christmas lists and began to do a lot of online shopping (got a jump on Cyber Monday :P). Yay for Amazon lists :P Still have about 5 people we don't have ideas for... so will need to do some fishing for those.

Sunday was pretty much just a lazy day :P Did clean up the house some and made some cookies, but nothing terribly productive. Went through a disc of Season 1 of the new Doctor Who. We're both getting into I think. Sure, it's not as campy as the original series, but it retains a lot of the charm and fun of the original. I also checked and found that Chris Eccleston is the 9th Doctor. Couldn't remember how many there had been. I usually seem to overlook Peter Davidson completely and can rarely remember Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy's names. Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee were the two I remember the best... course they are also the ones that have done the most episodes (over 120 each).

Anyways, work has been the usual lately. Calls have actually been coming in for me which is almost unusual :P But Thursday, Witchcat and I are off and away to Phoenix for my sister's wedding. Yes... I do have a sister... even if I am an only child with three brothers and a sister :P Course... I barely know her really and have only met her... 7 times total in 26 years... Should be fun and I'm also thinking we can jump up to the Canyon while we are there. It is a fairly cool place and it's been 22 years since I was there last.

Had our office Thanksgiving get-together yesterday and as usual ate way more than I really should. But it was a nice break from stuffing envelopes for this mailout. To recap the weekend:

Friday: Witchcat07 off to Oropher's for the weekend without me underfoot.
Downstairs HVAC system appears to go on the fritz... finally shut it down by the outside breakers.

Saturday: Head out to Blue Raider Open fencing tournament at MTSU. Got shut out twice in the 5 touch pool bouts and was ranked 15 out of 19. Didn't move up any despite managing to get past my first direct elimination round. Second round was against the #2 seeded fencer... I did get 10 touches on him (first to 15), but I think that was more because he wasn't being cautious at all against me and just charged in more or less.
Pick up some minis and more boxes to put them in as I wanted to split some of my categories further as some boxes were getting over stuffed.
Began watching the first season of the new Doctor Who... after having had the DVDs for about a year :P Was actually pretty good and seems to rely on people understanding some of the basic premises of Doctor Who right off. Which is actually fairly cool.
Various gaming annoyances trying to get through an extremly hard dungeon.

Sunday: Raked the leaves, scraped the excess concrete off the mailbox where I had tried to fix it, pulled up the tomato stakes, did the dishes, cooked pumpkin pies, cooked 4 dozen herbed pinwheels.
Watched some more Doctor Who.
Futher gaming frustrations :P
Cooked supper as Witchcat was almost back home

Monday: Got someone to fix HVAC
Work on stuffing envelopes
Office party
Run off to fencing to drop off scoring boxes
Have a great evening with David discussing various things about life, work, and our private universes (gaming) :)

Was planning to go to dinner with sailingwest tonight, but she is feeling ill. Hope she gets better soon! So instead it will be a quiet, calm evening with the sweet wife :)

Thursday we are likely to be heading to Cookeville for family gathering. And then... Friday... might brave the Black Friday shopping. Got a few items I am thinking of getting and the best deals might be going on then. We'll see if we are brave enough to risk it :P

From ps238principal: A really cool article on potential instruments of the future. Admittedly some are already out there (my mother-in-law has an electric viola and I've seen TSO use such for a while) and at a level of mainstream. Some though remain far out and cool. My favorites of those that had demo videos: The Uniharp, the Electric Violin, the Hapi Drum, and the Orcarina iPhone app (turn your iPhone into a musical instrument!).

Well... at least I have gotten past yesterday. Yesterday was a day pretty packed with frustrations. Mostly involving work...

We're working on doing a mailout to a few thousand potentially affected small businesses (affected by NESHAP 6H if you really want to know) and one of the things related to that is a workshop we are working on with the TN Technology Centers. Due to the large size of the group, we thought it a good idea to create online registration. Sounds reasonable right? Unfortunately due to the department website still undergoing conversion to the new template and they not giving us the files so the updates can go easier like they used to... my initial idea for how to create the online registration was not allowed. Instead they wanted me to create an interactive Adobe file... this is a type of file which you fill in the various fields (i.e. text boxes for name, address, etc.) and then submit the form. A type of file that can only be created in Adobe Professional. Guess what program I don't have...

I did manage to find someone with it on a group workstation and then it was time to learn how to actually do it and get it to submit information that makes any sort of sense at all... And I was trying to rush through it as I had a doctor appointment that afternoon. I actually did figure out how to do it, but the data seemed unreadable. I was quite annoyed... bad enough my blood pressure was up 20 points over normal at the doctors. I have since figured out how to make the data readable and in the order we want it. And the forms are completed and sent to be updated. Had additional annoyances with my game last night, but that's a whole different matter.

On the plus side, I did manage to get my tux sized and set up for my sister's wedding. We've also got her a wedding present which should be on it's way directly to her anytime now. And the Preds won over the Sharks who are the current league leaders! So there is good news out there :P Got a fencing tournament this Saturday. Plenty of high ranked people coming... and I've fenced at least half of them at least a few times. So, we'll see how it goes.

Had a fairly good weekend. Started off Saturday with going out to Boxwell and setting up an orienteering course. Ran around doing that and was hunting for the person that had asked me to come in the first place. Turns out he was mostly absent due to just having gotten over the H1N1 virus... However, he had gotten over it and so was around some and was able to get me several compasses and a GPS... which proved to be a pain to work with and its batteries went out. In any case, I didn't have enough people coming over to actually learn about Land Navigation to even bother trying to teach it with an inoperable GPS unit... I only had three groups and one adult leader come by. And of the three groups, only a single one completed the course and found all 6 points... And they did it in the very reasonable time of 52 minutes. The first group found 4 of 6 (one of them being their starting point) in an hour and a half... and happened to be picked up by one of their dad's on their way back... The second group found 2 in an hour and 10 minutes or so...

I don't think I made it that hard. The course was maybe 2.5 miles long and had 6 points... the 6th being also their start point. The locations were marked with brightly colored paper lanterns so it should have been fairly obvious. I showed the map to one person who happened to be familiar with Boxwell and he was able to figure out where each point was just by looking at the map... which was part of the whole point! Unfortunately, none of the groups were too familiar with Boxwell so that did hurt them. Anyways, the whole Venture Corp rendevous seemed rather haphazard and thrown together with little in the way of structure or real scheduling. Somewhat annoying, but it was good to be back out at Boxwell Scout Camp for a beautiful day :)

Sunday I puttered about the house and managed to get the dishes done, the laundry washed and folded, and went out and fixed the mailbox. I have found I can not lay bricks... or at least not stick a few knocked out bricks well back into their hole. In part I think my first mix of concrete was too dry. My second mix (since I ran out of the first bucket) was probably what I needed and I used it like molding clay to stuff in best I could and for the seams. Oh well... just stuff to learn how to do.

Well, mostly recovered from a great weekend of gaming :P Fenced Monday and Wednesday... really needing to pick that up more as there is a tournament next Saturday. Just got 15 people pre-registered so it's a B1 due to all the higher ranked people (1 A, 5 B's!)... and I'm just an E. Still... I know somewhat how the A fences and have a few new ideas to try on the lefties I know are there. So, hopefully won't do utterly horrible :P

Tuesday had its major down with Witchcat losing her position at work. Now, she hasn't completely lost her job as she is still a part-time RN with them. But that means she works when they have need of her, going out to see patients, rather than reviewing charts and preparing audits and such which was a salary position rather than a by the hour type. But it really seems the head corporate is doing their best to lose the Nashville area... lots of bad decisions by them over the past year or so.

Tomorrow it's to the dentist for the both of us. And then Saturday I am running out to Boxwell to help teach orienteering and GPS to Venture crews. They are sort of the high adventure affiliate of Boy Scouts in that they are co-ed and consist of mid-teenager (15 or 16+) and often do higher adventure type things (caving, white water canoeing, rock-climbing). Explorers was similar, but they often focused on a career group from what I remember. Or else Explorers became the Venture corp. Picked up maps of the area, printed off some blown up sections of the map, and got a bunch of map symbol booklets so I am prepped there. Need to get some station markers and stamps... thinking Japanese lanterns from Olde Time Pottery.

And now... I really should work on putting up a recap of the adventure sessions.

Happy Birthday to sailingwest! May you have a great day!

Very, very drained, but it was a great weekend :) Spent from Thursday evening til Sunday morn with the guys out at a cabin near Center Hill Lake. I was the DM for the entire weekend... quite exhausting. I keep having to fight against falling over at work.

In all, probably played over 20 hours of D&D. Interpersed with Wings of War, ping-pong, and lots of food and talk :) Woot... too tired to write more now.

It seems if nothing else, the Twilight series has polorized people into those that adore it (often tweenies) and those that despise it (they're blood-sucking, diseased, faeries!). And even cats mock it: Two Lumps

Well... its a few days past Halloween, but the vampires struck our office today. Had a Red Cross Blood drive at the office and I went up to give. They put me on the apheresis machine again for a double red blood cell donation. And that also put me at the 4 gallon mark! No wonder I feel drained :P

Also, vitals looked good so that was nice :) Despite not getting a large amount of exercise lately (aside from fencing last night) which has caused some weight gain in me. Course... it being Halloween and lots of candy and lots of parties isn't helping matters :P I am so weak about avoiding eating too much :P

As I was walking down to the car over lunch, I ran into an old Scouting person I knew. He is still involved and asked if I might be able to help them out with an event at Boxwell in a couple of weeks. Will need to know more details, but I told him I might be able to. Got to check with Witchcat first. If it's the 14th, then she will be on call and probably just as well I have something to go to. If it's the 21st, then I have a fencing tournament I have already signed up for that will take priority. But if I do go, they will be asking me to teach orienteering so that's cool. Just so long as they provide me with compasses and they also said GPS... Guess it's a sign of the times when orienteering is done with GPS...