Yesterday a trip to a home supply store to purchase a new kitchen faucet went awry when we got a flat tire halfway there. Changed the tire in the rain and continued on our way. Stopped at four places and no one had the tire in stock! Annoying.

One of L's sisters and her husband came to visit last night, having returned from spending the holidays on the beach in the Dominican Republic. Had a good dinner, played the new Cranium game (wife and I won!), watched Rush Hour 3 (I love Jackie Chan, but whoever wrote the dialogue in that script should never work again...).

I looked at my watch and saw it was Thursday today, and thought to myself that I don't return to work until NEXT Thursday. Right on! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet...

The cats are watching birds, the dog is asleep at my feet, and I'm listening to one of my Christmas presents: Mitch Easter's new solo album Dynamico. He was the main man in the band Let's Active, and produced the first several albums by REM. It's great singalong power pop, with jangly guitars and great harmonies. So probably about 1,000 people will hear it and in 10 years some big artist will list it as a favorite and everyone will discover it. I'm just giving you guys a decade head start!

Wow! Guess what? Cinematic Titanic, the new movie riffing group (the group is new, the movies are old) made up of MST3K alums Joel, Trace, Mary Jo, Josh, and TV's Frank has released their first, um... release, called The Oozing Skull. Check out the kick-ass trailer HERE.

Damn, I forgot how great Joel was at this. Their first DVD is available for only $15.94, which includes shipping and handling! Order it here. I did, and you should too!

Speaking of the good old Mystery Science Theater, we opened one early Christmas gift each tonight, from among the small pile of gifts we received from wife's father and stepmother, and I opened volume 11 of the MST3K Collection: Two classic Joel episodes and two classic Mike episodes!

Oh, and L, since you commented on the shock that I both showered and shaved on a Sunday... my original plan went awry when the wife had a sudden allergic reaction to the medication she was taking and we had to go to the emergency room tonight! Luckily, the doc immediately knew what was wrong and took her off the meds right away. Can you (pardon my French) fucking believe my wife's luck? Spends her entire life with no medical allergies, then when she catches something serious enough to need multiple hospital visits, she gets a medication that causes her to get MORE sick. Son of a bitch! The good news is that she already feels better since she started the new med. We are both sick of emergency rooms, as I'm sure my company's insurance program is sick of receiving these bills!

Day three of Christmas vacation. A lazy Sunday. Had some great food, some really good beer, and some pretty good wine. We watched the Simpsons Movie last night. Pretty damn funny. The rewrite of the classic Spider-Man theme: "Spider Pig, Spider Pig, does whatever a Spider Pig does. Can he swing from a web? No he can't. He's a pig." Ha.

Need to wrap a few more gifts, make shrimp dip, shave, and shower today. It's been nice and relaxing.

Thanks for the thoughts, folks. I hope everyone has a great Christmas, with a little time to give someone special a hug. Or two.

I promise my next post will bring back the stupid stuff I usually talk about.

My cousin died in the hospital yesterday afternoon.

Laura got back from her business trip last night. It was good to see her.

Today is our company Christmas party.

Tomorrow is my last day of work for 2007.

It's pretty tough to get past that first sentence, isn't it?

I have a cousin, two years younger than me. She has two young kids, and she been battling breast cancer for over two years. I've mentioned her here before. Over my visit home, I learned she's pretty much on oxygen and can't leave the house now. Now i just received an email from my mother saying my cousin was checked in to the hospital late last night and "they are keeping her breathing until everyone gets there. It probably won't be long now."

Two young kids losing their mother at Christmas. A husband losing his wife at Christmas.

That sucks. There's nothing else to say.

The wife had to leave yesterday on her last business trip of the year, returning Wednesday night. I took the opportunity last night to wrap her presents. One less thing to do later.

According to my page-a-day calendar, Chris Farley died ten years ago today, of the same thing that killed his idol John Belushi: an overdose of cocaine and heroin. Oddly enough, each also left behind brothers in the same business. Brothers who were not as funny. According to Jim should never have survived its first season. They show episodes of that at Gitmo as punishment.

Yeah, basically, I got nothing to say today. Sorry. I have two meetings today at work, then just three more days to go. I have to buy a gift for the brother of my father-in-law (uncle-in-law?) this afternoon. He's the only family member joining us at the river this Christmas. Everyone else will either be at their homes (NYC; Portland, OR) or on vacation on a beach in Central America.

I had clam chowder for dinner last night, which is very, very good when it's 20 degrees outside.

We had a nice weekend, and between the driving, catching up, and opening gifts, we found a few moments of peace and quiet to catch our breaths.

Friday evening was just me, wife, and my folks, so about 30 minutes after we arrived we were in a restaurant drinking margaritas and ordering steaks. Margaritas and red meat! It's a party!

My sis and her family arrived a few hours later and since the forecast was still rather iffy, we decided to open gifts that night, since we might be running to our cars later. (Thankfully the weather was just a cold, stinging rain and no ice.) My youngest nephew got a transformer that transforms from a truck to a huge robot fist holding a gun. It doesn't just transform from a truck into a gun, but a huge ROBOT FIST holding a gun. Oh, and it shoots Nerf darts that whistle when they fly. He also got a helicopter that flies by remote control. Those were both pretty freaking cool.

Everyone made out pretty well. Laura gave me an early surprise: a three-color striped scarf she knit for me without me ever seeing her work on somehow.

Saturday we went to visit my 92-year-old grandmother in the morning, then L and I grabbed a last-minute gift and a quiet lunch. Saturday night we had a Christmas dinner for 14 people, which was as crazy as you can imagine 14 family members in one place being.

Sunday morning we had brunch before getting on the road. On the ride back we listened to David Sedaris reading Holidays on Ice to keep the good mood going and make the miles go faster. Last night I wrapped gifts for sister-in-law and brother-in-law that I have to mail this morning (as soon as I finish typing this).

One week of work left in 2007, then I'm taking off the rest into 2008!

After a side trip to the store for bows, gift bags, and tape, I wrapped all the gifts we'll be handing out to my side of the family this weekend. Only had one beer though, since it takes two hands to wrap (BOO!). I'm dosing up on caffeine this morning in anticipation of the four-hour drive ahead. With a still recovering (and frankly, cranky) wife and an excited dog, I need to stay alert.

I also have to keep an eye on the weather because of course this weekend they're calling for snow, sleet, ice, rain, and who knows what else. Should make for fun driving over the mountains of Virginia. I'm hoping it stays above freezing until we make it back... and that a weekend with the family will help me relax a little (I know that sounds completely like I'm Bizarro Smacky, but what the heck, I'll try anything. Even spending time with the family!).

Still a bit blah, and wife is under the weather, so that sucks. But if I can wrap a bunch of gifts tonight, we'll be ready to go see my family this weekend. Lots to get done before Friday afternoon. But I'm not going to stress over it. I'll just put on some tunes, crack open a beer, and start wrapping. (Whoever gets the gifts I wrapped toward the end of the evening will have to forgive the sloppiness. I was probably tipsy after three hours of drinking and wrapping!)

Since I'm feeling sort of blah, I decided to pick music that suited the mood. Johnny Cash? No, not feeling murderous. The blues? No, I'm not morbidly depressed, just sort of blah. Hmmmm...

I ended up picking Gram Parsons. He pretty much invented what came to be known as country rock, or alt-country. He recorded one record with the International Submarine band, one record with the Byrds, two records with the Flying Burrito Brothers, and two solo records. Unfortunately he died in 1973 of a drug overdose at age 26. But he recorded amazing duets with Emmylou Harris, including a beautiful rendition of "Love Hurts" that you can (and should!) listen to HERE. He also wore amazing embroidered suits (like the one in these pics) designed by Bobbie Nudie, who was quite a character himself. Check out the gallery of celebrities Nudie "suited up" on his official site (click his name).

Man, I seem to be going into a funk. I just don't have anything going on outside of work. I haven't picked up a book in days. I'm just running errands and doing chores.

I have to wrap some gifts before Friday.

I think I need to take a few deep breaths and figure out why I have anything to be stressed about.

Unmotivated outside of work. I don't know if it's the cold, or the usual "Christmas is coming" stress. (By the way, I just read the previous sentence and realize I wrote "...the usual 'Christ is coming' stress," which would be pretty unusual stress, and I imagine one would deal with it by vacuuming the house a hundred times and crossing oneself a lot.)

Anyway, sacrilegious thoughts aside, I just don't feel like doing much recently. I took a 3.5 hour nap Saturday afternoon, which is really out of character for me. I don't feel sick, as much as just really, really lazy.

Driving home yesterday afternoon we came to a complete stop on the highway at 4:20pm. We switched to the radio and discovered that 95 North was completely closed due to a bad wreck. We sat still for 50 minutes before crawling past a destroyed looking SUV. I guess no one was seriously hurt, as I can't even find a single mention of the wreck on the local news websites this morning. The extra hour added to the trip didn't exactly improve my mood much. But both cats were overjoyed to see us when we got home (this was the first time in six weeks we went anywhere over the weekend) and they took turns sleeping in my lap as we watched television. That helped a bit.

SNOW! They're calling for 1-3 inches today. There's the lightest hint of a dusting on the road so far, and the news is already reporting accidents. What is with people??? I'm at work, in my windowless office, getting up every 30 minutes or so to peek out the window. Not exactly the storm of the century.

Friday night and Saturday were time with the wife, but Sunday was all about being a geek! Sunday morning I drove miles outside the city to Dunn Loring, site of a smallish comic show. I met up with all-around nice guy De (not an insult to be called nice!) and we proceeded to spend two hours digging through dollar boxes, 50 cent boxes, and "Buy 15 for $10" boxes. Money was spent. Comics were bought. I'm still on a bit of a kung fu kick (kick, get it? ha) and while I didn't find a lot in that genre, I did find this bad boy to the left. Iron Fist, in issue #1 of his first solo series, is punching Iron Man. This issue was published in November 1975 and cost me $1 in 2007! And it's a great story. Written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Byrne (with amazing cover art by Gil Kane!) this issue includes appearances by supporting characters Misty Knight and Colleen Wing (who currently star in the only new comic I read: Heroes for Hire).

Anyway, I also stumbled on a few issues from the 1960s for a buck each, including one (February 1969) with Nick Fury fighting a clone of Adolph Hitler (or possibly the real Hitler's brain inside a cloned body. They never make that clear.)

We finally reached our limit (the smell of newsprint mixed with geek sweat can make you woozy) and went to grab some lunch.

A very fun day!

Got home later, walked the dog, then settled on the sofa with a big pile of comics. Still have TONS to read, which should take me though the new year.