I am in the midst of another office cleanup. Unlike last year, I don’t think I’ll bore / shock you with too many pictures. But as I shuffle things around, I have to occasionally shut down the network- including the server that provides this website. I expect the outages to be fairly brief: so far, there have been three outages of under thirty minutes each. But you have been warned.
The final chapter… the nail in the coffin…. the slow, inexorable decline into oblivion: I’m there. I went to the optometrist today and, horror of horrors, I need bifocals.
I’m 44 years old today. I can’t complain about the day so far: my lovely wife gave me two (2!) XBox games for my annual “I’m older but still alive” celebration- Mass Effect and the Half Life 2 Orange Box collection, both of which were at the top of my list of “want” games. How cool is it to be married to someone who will give you games this good for your birthday? And my Mom gave me a very snazzy shirt as a gift- I’m feeling pretty spoiled.
First, I should explain the above reference. Moe, the bartender in the Simpsons, once referred to Homer as being “fancy” for calling his garage a … garage. When asked what it should be called, Moe responded “A car hole”. My closet has been the place I throw clothes I’m not currently wearing for the last several years, so calling it a “clothes hole” seemed appropriate.
The basic organization of my side of the closet hasn’t changed since we moved from Alberta. To be honest, there really wasn’t much organization to begin with: one small section for “work” clothes, one section for sweaters and shirts, and one section for “other”. Unfortunately, much of the space in this closet had become cluttered, confused, and generally unhelpful for the purpose of actually locating anything to wear. Golf shirts that I wear at work were mixed in on the shelf with T-Shirts I wear at home and not hanging on hangers where they belonged, because the hangers were all occupied by pants that hadn’t been worn in years. It was like someone had taken all the clothes from a Salvation Army drop box and thrown them willy-nilly onto various hangers, and then pushed me into the room and said “get dressed- you’ll look marvelous”.
There was one other set of factors that led me to the conclusion something needed to be done: much of the clothing in my closet was no longer something I would wear. “Stuff I wouldn’t wear” fell into two basic categories:
It was time to take action.
It is now 2008. In two more years the Winter Olympics will almost be open here in the Vancouver area. Irene and I will hopefully have a trip away from the area planned so we can avoid the traffic and endless “Olympic this” and “Olympic that” nonsense.
Irene and I opened our gifts a couple of hours ago. We both received lots of wonderful things, but most of all we got the best gift of all: each other.
Each year at Christmas time I like to take a moment to reflect upon everyone who is not so fortunate, or who as I often do lacks the will to see their good fortune for what it is. I’m so very lucky. I’m basically healthy, as is everyone in my immediate circle of friends and family. We have enough for essentials plus a great deal of non-essentials.
I am sitting here in the gathering dark as our short winter day comes to an end. We had a serious wind storm here during the night and into the morning, and around 9:30 am or so our power failed. It is a bit past 4:00 pm now.
My Mom’s 85th birthday was yesterday. My sister Judy pulled together a surprise party, and as many of us kids as could make it were there.
I have a stainless steel coffee mug that Irene bought me a while back that I really like. I use it several times a day. It is an extremely well made Oxo mug, highly polished inside, so it took a long time to build up a stain. But eventually, even a really good coffee mug needs more than just plain soap and water to make it sparkle.
Time is relative. When I started my vacation, two weeks seemed like forever. Now that I’m on my last day of vacation, two weeks seems to have been hardly enough to get started.
I had a lot of grandiose plans when I started. Some of them came to pass: when Chris was here we did pretty much all the things I had hoped we would, except maybe making it to see a movie. The airshow was once again a great day, and our boat trip was, arguably, the best ever. Perhaps not as memorable as the time we boated from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and back in a 15 foot boat…accidentally. But it was much more fun knowing where we were and not making any serious blunders. The scenery and sun were a blast.