Today is the anniversary of my lovely wife’s birth. If you see her around today, physically or virtually, please wish her a happy birthday. She truly deserves a happy day, as she’s a wonderful and beautiful person, and works very hard on very important things to make sure that all sorts of systems work smoothly […]

As is my family’s habit on a particular weekend in mid-January, we packed up and hauled ourselves to Williamsburg VA for Marscon, perhaps the premiere fan convention in the general Mid-Atlantic region, and rapidly becoming my favorite con that I get to each year. It’s a great chance to share an experience with like-minded people, […]

…or maybe it is, I don’t know. Its sort of classed in with minivans according to certain standards, but just as easily gets dropped in with “wagons” or whatever. In Europe, where actual statistically significant numbers of people buy this sort of thing, it’s known as a compact MPV. But, I’m getting ahead of myself: […]

…If you’re so inclined. If you are, I hope you enjoyed your holiday, whether it was celebratory or sacred for you. ‘Round these parts, it was a relatively sedate affair; some gifts exchanged in the morning (though we tried things a bit differently this year, doing a bit of gift exchange on the Solstice -December […]

As of 4:30 yesterday afternoon, I’m done working for the rest of the year. Had a really nice holiday luncheon with my co-workers yesterday where we all ate way too much delicious Italian food, then spent the afternoon putting a bunch of things to bed and setting up my out-of-office autoresponder. So now, it’s two […]

Beyond the usual modest slate of individual gifts, our household traditionally also manages to find a collective gift for the whole family to enjoy; it’s a nice little reward for getting ourselves through the year. This year, rather than grabbing some large entertainment purchase (We’ll wait a while on a next-gen console, for example), we […]

So, the big weather system that was supposed to cause such havoc ended up just being kinda wet and cold around here. Didn’t stop a bunch of things from being cancelled this weekend, though – which means, among other things, something I was hoping to be clear of after about 5pm on Sunday ended up […]

I expect, like you, I’ll be busy doing the cooking and eating thing all day. More than likely, I’ll be out-of-pocket. You should be too. Go watch some parades and football. (Unlike the subject of the last post, this song has only been around a year. Somehow, it makes me feel old too.)

Costumes for kids are still coming together, but the spouse and I got our kit on early for a party last weekend…with a theme: “dress your favorite decade.” We were kind of stumped for a while, though it was kind of a foregone conclusion that we went with different aspects of the 80s; her the […]

So, it’s the fourth day of the government shutdown. I haven’t been to work since Tuesday morning, when I went in for fifteen minutes to sign the letter telling me I was “non-essential” and changing my voice mail to reflect the fact that I won’t be available until congress gets their heads out of their […]