Missing Days

Seriously, I have no excuse for not posting anything wince November 25th. No excuse.

We had a major snowfall hit us at the end of November and it effectively shut down the region for an entire week. My daughter ended up with an 10-day "weekend" because she had a Friday off, then didn't venture back to school (closures everywhere!) until a week the following Monday... December 4th. My wife had 5 of her 6 shifts cancelled as well, but because it's a union job, she still gets paid despite missing the shifts. Phew!

And I was home the entire time. I shoveled the driveway 5 times, which really put a 'damper' on my back. I went into Washington state on the Friday because the weather had cleared up by then.

But that's it. And I still didn't post.

I finished the web design project for the one company. I did do that. It turned out to be tougher than I thought as some of the coding for the menu system wasn't cooperating. I spent a couple days researching how to fix it and in the end, it turned out to be 3 words on 3 different lines. That's it. Very annoying.

I wrote a Christmas letter to go out to friends and family whom we've barely kept in touch with over the past year. My school stuff got in the way of that pretty badly. Some people aren't aware I've even graduated yet. Unfortunately, most of my humorous comments were edited out by my wife before she photocopied the letter at work. Meanie.

I put in a request for 2 books at the library back in October. Our library is part of a regional system, so I can request books from about 16 different cities in the area (about 24 libraries in total). I was #6 on the waitlist for one and #10 on the waitlist for the other. There are over a dozen copies of each book, so I figured it would be a few weeks before I heard anything. I finally got a call late Saturday saying that a book was in. I raced down to get it as I'm desperately waiting to read what I thought was the final book in this one series. The other book is, like, the 25th book in a series, so I don't think that one's ever ending. The third book in the one series isn't the final one either. I'm not disappointed, because the main character is quite likable. I finished the book on Monday, though. I was crazy into it and now it'll most likely be 2 years before the next book's published.

As for the other book, I asked where I was on the waitlist. I'm still #6, which means every copy of the book is over a month overdue. I know I'm not getting it for Christmas. It's a new hardcover just released in September.

I also read the entire Harry Potter series, save the Half-Blood Prince. I'm incredibly impressed with the 'maturing' of the characters and reading level throughout the series so far. It was kind of nice being able to finish one book, place it on the shelf, and pick up the next in the series. Even waiting to read the next book next week isn't too harsh!

There's still no word on the outcome of my appeal with the insurance company. I'm still pretty annoyed by the whole thing. If it was, as they claim, an intersection and I should have yielded for her, what makes them think she was there ahead of me? Did she stop? And if she stopped? Why? Was it because I was coming (and if she had the right of way, why didn't she just go and I would've rear-ended her --which wouldn't've happened as I would've stopped in time)? Or did she think she needed to stop instead of yielding? If she didn't stop and was just driving through, then she hit me in the passenger-side door of my car, meanig that I was already into the "intersection" when she hit me. I had the right-of-way simply because she hadn't arrived that the "intersection" yet. Told you I'm annoyed.

I've been catching up on TV shows over the past 10 or so days too. I'm still about 2-4 weeks behind, depending on the series. Studio 60 is deifnitely my favorite of the new season, with 'Jericho,' 'Heroes,' & 'The Class' immediately behind. I only ever watched one episode of 'West Wing,' so I can't say I'm a fan of Aaron Sorkin (yet). This series is well done, though. When it's out on DVD, I'm going to make sure my wife watches it. She can't stay awake past 10 most nights, so she'd never survive it's regular time slot.

I have one final eBay sacrifice going right now. It's a super-rare Beatles comic and the only known copies are in French and Dutch. There are also only 4 known copies in existence. 2 of the paperback edition and 2 of the hardcover edition. I own one of each. I figured putting a $100 reserve on the book was reasonable, as the artist who worked on it is super popular and his other "rare" book had a print-run of 500 and, coincidentally, sells for $500. I had another one with his art that had a print-run of 2,500 copies for the paperback and 15 for the hardcover. I sold that paperback for $100. I'm keeping the hardcover because my name's in it. So far, the bidding is under $20. I'm sad.

OK, I've really prattled on here and there are a few other things still to say. But they'll await another post.