Taking the day off today at the request of my boss.

Well, she didn’t actually request it. No. What really happened is that our president sent out a memo a couple of weeks ago telling us that we had to use all of our vacation before the end of the year. No carry-over to 2007.

At the time, I had about 10 days left. Therefore, I’m pretty much working short weeks for the rest of the year, plus taking off a week and a half around Christmas to see how cold it can get in Vermont. So I’ve got today off. And next Friday. And next Monday. And last Friday. And that week around Christmas. And I think some other time that I’m forgetting.

This does not mean that I can just RELAX: work gave me a Blackberry a couple of weeks ago, and it never stops going off. I was up at around 6:30 this morning talking to a guy at work because someone else had paged me about a server problem.

Gotta love technology.

After fixing the server, I spent some quality time taking about about 4 billion bags of trash, which were generated last Wednesday, Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday. Those were the days during which my roomate and I hosted her son, daugther, boyfriend, brother, friend and friend’s son at the house for two-and-a-half days of non-stop eating. We had turkey, ham, squash, apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, beer, wine, rum, cranberry sauce, broccoli, asparagus, salsa, chips, cheese, pickled okra, coke, and pizza. And seconds.

And that was just Thursday.

Friday, I took off to spend some long-overdue time in the woods where I hurt myself (more on that shortly), while the others – except for the son – prepared to make tamales; but they ended up making menudo (some sort of weird Mexican chitlins concoction that I have yet to try). The refrigerator is currently completely full, there are still about 4 bottles of wine and a case of beer on the deck; and, as I said, I got rid of LOTS of trash this morning.

I also said that I took off on Friday to go camping. Hooked up with a couple of friends of mine who work at the CDC (always a good thing to bring with you when you camp, right?) and we headed up to the Sylco wilderness area in the mountains of Tennessee.

More specifically, we hooked up when we all got there. I got there first and managed to set up my 800,000 square-foot tent by myself (always wondered if I could do that) before either of them showed up. Okay….in reality, the tent is just over 200 square feet. Since it was supposed to drop down into the 30s each night, the plan was to put a heater in the tent; and, since three or four guys would be sleeping in it, it would stay warm. Bad plan, as it turned out. One guy slept in his truck and I never did get the heater set up. But hey…MY sleeping bag was nice and toasty. I can’t help it if the other two guys don’t understand cold-weather camping and spent the whole weekend crying about how cold it was.

At any rate, after everyone had arrived Friday evening, we set about collecting firewood. While breaking a decent-sized stick in half by jumping on it, I managed to really screw up my left knee, which I believe houses a chronic bowling injury (no joke), so I spent the rest of the night supervising the other two guys and drinking bourbon.

Saturday, while limping around, I managed to fall over and wrench my right elbow and left wrist. So I spent most of the day drinking bourbon and supervising.

Oh – and occassionally playing with my chainsaw (maybe I should have used that instead of my knee on Friday night….).

The three of us ate pretty well, although an early attempt at chili never did pan out, in spite of our best efforts to “rescue” it over the course of the weekend by pouring more and more stuff into it, heating it, tasting it, and saying, “Nope. Still sucks.”

Yesterday morning, we packed up the cars, made sure the campsite was in better shape than when we’d found it, and made the two-hour trip back to Atlanta.

Back at my house, my roommate had scoured my kitchen floor, cleaned stuff that I didn’t realize could be cleaned, and successfully kept my cats alive; so I thanked her by taking a bunch of leftovers from my camping trip and from thanksgiving and making two FANTASTIC Shepherd’s Pies (made with ground beef and venison sausage if you’re interested – and what a great combination for a Shepherd’s Pie).

We demolished one of the two last night, and I fully intend to take care of at least half of the other one today. Also need to do some laundry. But it’s only noon. I don’t want to strain myself.

All in all, the Thanksgiving weekend was a real treat and I hope everyone reading this had as nice a time as I did.

You’ll be hard-pressed to top it at Christmas, Cy; but I’m sure you will somehow. 🙂

TWD

My my my.

It has been quite a while since I decided to put anything in this spot, and I sincerely apologize to those of you who throng eagerly to your computers each day in order to drink at the fountain of wisdom that is this blog.

I must particularly apologize to those of you who were waiting for the second installment of the great American novel. Maybe later.

I’m technically in training this week, but needed to actually get some work done today, so I cut class and stayed home. Makes a lot of sense, huh? Actually, it does. I can get more work done from home than I can at the office.

Not that I’ve actually DONE that today. I’ve spent most of the day watching election analysis, reading newspapers online, and doing laundry….although I did check my email.

In order to tick my mother off, I must now reveal that I didn’t vote yesterday. This does not mean that I don’t get to whine about politicians. To the contrary, it means that I take my politics seriously enough to realize that I’m so independent that I border on being an anarchist. I didn’t care who won yesterday. Seriously. I fully expect the outgoing bunch of incompetent crooks to be replaced with a new bunch of incompetent crooks who color their states with a different color.

I could, of course, have voted Libertarian; but I’ve been told by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, my mom, etc., that a vote for a Libertarian is a wasted vote. Since I don’t like to be wasteful…

Anyway, what’s seriously going to change? Well, Rumsfeld finally got the boot. It took W getting kicked in the gut to figure it out, but it’s a start. I have a military friend who is currently quietly celebrating.

Bill Clinton probably had the best line yesterday. “Republicans will have you believe that Democrats will tax you into the poor house and that you’ll meet a terrorist around every corner and trip over an illegal immigrant on the way there.”

That’s not too far off base. How long will it be before someone says, “Man, the Democrats have only been in power for a week and they’ve already gotten us stuck in an unwinable war?”

Changing subjects abruptly, it’s a beautiful day in Duluth right now. The sun is out, there’s a great breeze blowing, temperature is hovering right around 60. If there was a football game going on in my back yard, I’d be in heaven. As it is, there’s a bunch of leaves that need to be raked in my back yard and the football game isn’t until Saturday. In Greenville. Fortunately, it’s the last one (of the regular season), and I won’t be obligated to go to any more after it.

I still MIGHT. I just won’t be obligated.

Last week was the fourth time this season that I had to leave very early and got home very late because of games. I’ve had to drive to Chapel Hill, NC (U. of North Carolina), Boone, NC (Appalachian State U.), Myrtle Beach, SC (Coast Carolina U.) and Elon, NC (Elon College). Elon was the easiest – I got home at around midnight. App State was around 2 am. UNC and CCU were both close to 6 am – and I had to play at church on the Sundays after each of those games. Color me sick of football season.

Today I discovered a plethora of little tiny ants trooping around on my kitchen counters. I have no idea where they came from or what they’re after, but I cleaned the living crap out of the counters and they’re still not gone. Anybody got any advice on that one? I put out a couple of ant traps, but they seem to have done nothing.

Last night, I made Banana bread. I’m told it was good – I haven’t actually had any yet. I’m assuming that it and the ants are not related.

A couple of months ago, I got a new self-cleaning litterbox for my cats. It works wonderfully. Problem is that they’re both scared of it. Boo (the female) will use it if I pick her up and put her in it. Bo (the male – and the one more likely to use anything that has litter in it) will have nothing to do with it. Sigh.

And that’s all for now. Hope everybody likes the new look of the blog.

TWD