Well, the week is finally almost over. Which, in turn, means the year is almost over. And finding VH-1's One Hit Wonder Countdown in Hour 1 of 5 this late is not a good thing. Oh well.

This is not the first year the company I work for has been in business and yet all of the little nuances that I didn't know about last year while I was in QA cropped up this year as a project manager. You'd think that there would have been a meeting a month ago about all this end of the year nonsense. Today it was sprung on me that the rest of the paperwork that I had shoved aside was due by noon on Friday. Woo-hoo!

I'll get to the actual post that I had been writing in just a minute. I just got a phone call from Matt. He's been visiting relatives since last Friday and will continue to be visiting until after the new year. He was apparently out shopping and felt the pressing need to call and inform me that he could buy me, brace yourself, VALENTINE'S DAY CANDY!!!!! For the love of God, it's not even 2007 yet. I just don't understand. I don't get it. I don't even want to try. Now, back to the original post that I was working on.

Well, it's not quite the end of the year, but I did hit a number that I've been striving for all year. On January 1st, I listed the following items...

1. Drop 20% of my body weight
2. Double the number of novels read in 2005 from 15 to 30 (yes, I know it's sad that I only managed to clear 15 novels in the past year, that's why I'm trying to change it.)
3. Blog a lot more often with a lot more consistency
4. Begin writing for me
5. Visit family and friends

Number 1 didn't happen. I got promoted, got busy, and got lazy. I am ending the year 10 pounds or so lighter than I entered it, but I had much higher aspirations.
Number 2 didn't happen either. I didn't even make the 15. So I have two things to work on automatically for next year. Number 4 didn't happen. Number 5 happened sporadically, but not enough. There were many more that we couldn't get to and I do apologize. Hell, we went months at a time not seeing people here in Pittsburgh this year. Now, on to number 3 and the reason for this post. I decided on January 1st that the number I wanted to hit in order to satisfy number 3 was 250. That meant I could skip 115 days during the year and still make 250. Well, today's post is number 250. It took me almost the entire 12 months, but I did satisfy that requirement. Hopefully at least 1 or 2 of the 250 were worth reading. I know they weren't all masterpieces, but they weren't all angry rants either which is a good balance for me. So, I'll probably give a similar list for 2007 (maybe some additions, some scaled back aspirations), but for now I'm happy to have hit 250 posts for 2006 and there are still 5 days to go.
And, for anyone who is counting, it's 50 days til Valentine's Day.

Well, it's over. Back to the grind tomorrow. Then hopefully a lull going into the new year, but I doubt it. Several of my clients seem determined to see me have a nice massive heart attack. Gage seemed to have a really good Christmas. He got presents on Saturday from Uncle Tom. He got presents on Sunday from Terri's family. He got presents this morning from Santa and Mommy and Daddy. Then he got presents this afternoon from my family. So he's been pretty content. Hopefully he'll settle back into a routine in the new year.

Almost done. By this time tomorrow the hype will finally be over.

***The rest of this post deleted by author due to the inevitable backlash of yet another anti-Christmas rant***

Enjoy the day!

Ah, three days of rest and relaxation. Who am I kidding? We think we've finished up shopping, but who knows. I'm sure I'll have to make a run somewhere. Now I have to get everything organized so that Terri can get it all wrapped. At the moment we have no plans for tomorrow, but again, that'll probably change. We'll most likely run out of some food substance and it'll take me 8 hours to pick up a frozen pizza or something.

It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas. It got up around 50 degrees here today. The closest thing we had to snow on the ground was the frost I scraped off my car. I guess technically there's 3 full days before Christmas so you never know. Ok, anyone who has even stopped by my blog briefly probably made the astute assumption that I'm a hockey fan and that my favorite team is the Pittsburgh Penguins. That being said, I was of course following the whole casino awarding process quite closely. There were three plans competing for one award. The North Shore plan, which didn't really seem remotely plausible. The Station Square plan, which was good in theory, but bad in execution. The Isle of Capri plan, which, in addition to the actual casino, was also committing 290 million dollars to a new multi-purpose arena for the county. Of course, the Penguins would have benefited greatly from the Isle of Capri plan. Setting the hockey angle aside, I don't understand how anyone can look at the plan and not feel like it was the best one. There is not one person in Allegheny County who can say that the arena wouldn't host an event that they might attend. My Grandmother, who rarely left Washington County, went to the arena for the circus and the Billy Graham revival.
Heinz Field hosts somewhere in the vicinity of 25-35 events per year. Steelers games, Pitt games, the WPIAL championships, and some large concerts when available. PNC Park has 81 Pirate games and good weather large concert events. If scheduled carefully, an arena can be put to use 250-300 times a year or more. 41 hockey games for the Pens, concerts, the circus, ice-shows including Stars on Ice, Disney on ice, Sesame Street on ice, etc., Monster Truck Rallies, Pro-Wrestling, basketball games, and on and on. Hell, Pitt used to hold graduation ceremonies there for the entire University. How do you turn that down and face the people you just screwed? It can't possibly have had anything to do with the actual casino. Everyone involved knows that on some level none of the plans were going to meet their 1 year earning projections or their 5 year earning projections. Where exactly are the people using these machines going to come from? I know that people plan vacations to gamble, I get that. However, what does Pittsburgh have to offer to compete with Atlantic City, Vegas, Niagra Falls, etc.? And the casino is only slots. No table games. Serious gamblers need a tad more than slots. It absolutely baffles me how you can be a fully functioning adult and turn down 290 million FREE dollars. I guess instead of laying out money for season tickets next year I'll have to invest in the Center Ice package on satellite so that I can see the Kansas City Penguins or Cows or whatever the hell they end up being.

Ugh. In the category of things that would have been helpful to know last week. Almost the entire senior management staff was gone starting tomorrow and through the new year. That meant all paperwork had to be in and finished. Guess who got hosed on that deal. I showed up to work Tuesday morning around 9ish. I left work Wednesday morning around 8ish, ran home, showered, changed and headed back. I left work again at about a quarter after 6. The kicker...still not finished. They gave up and shortened my list to the crucial items. I got most of that done. Of course, that meant that I missed a Penguins game and two days worth of Christmas shopping. Oh well. 99% of my clients will be out of the office next week so hopefully I can finish digging myself out of the hole. Just in time to greet the new year.

Well, I also know where I'll be on July 4th. The trailer didn't even give a hint of plot, but that doesn't matter where the Die Hard franchise is concerned. I guess I'll have to give consideration to the other movie opening in July of next year. It's some franchise they're beating to death. This one will be number 5 and there are talks of 7 total.
Surprisingly enough, Christmas shopping (what little I've actually done) hasn't been too bad. Of course, I've avoided most malls and major stores, but whatever it takes. In fact, we're almost done with shopping for this year. Just a few more people. I think.

Well, congratulations to Matt. He's now Dr. Mutchler. As a nice pre-Dr. gift, I did not call to taunt Matt about the Penguins/Flyers Wednesday night match-up. And believe me, there would have been a lot to taunt. A nice 8-4 victory. Sidney Crosby has a 6 point night. He also takes the lead in the NHL scoring race. Several Pens players also had a 4 point night. And for the first time in Penguins history, they've opened a season series with the Flyers 5-0. Which means they'll only need to win 3 more times against the Flyers to sweep the season. That would be a nice Christmas present. We just need to figure out how to beat certain teams now. Like Montreal.

Gage and Colby Armstrong
Gage and Ryan Malone
Gage and Iceburgh
Well, I'll talk about Wednesday later once I have a little more information. For now, I just wanted to show these three pics.

On Friday night Terri had the late shift so I was watching Gage. At around 8 there wasn't really anything on television and I figured that most of the holiday retards would have cleared out of the local shopping haunts. So, I called Terri and told her we were headed out to do some shopping. I bundled Gage up and we headed up the stairs. Gage was singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of his lungs and that's when I noticed the front end of a car in my sight line at the top of the hill. That meant that the car was parked in the middle of the road. Then I noticed the bubble lights. It was a police car just parked there. I live on a dead end alley road and this was quite a surprise. Then I noticed there were two more cars and a police wagon parked behind the first car. I turned to the right and there was another car in the parking slot next door. I turned to the left and there was another car in the neighbor's driveway. So, there were 6 total police vehicles blocking our tiny little dead end alley. Gage is still singing away and the only thought running through my mind is that the police are on a manhunt and I'm about to be shot at. Then we noticed the nice neighbor lady in her kitchen so we headed up to see if she knew what was going on. Turns out the alarm went off in the not-so-nice neighbor's house and these were the responders. And, apparently they couldn't go in the house til they got hold of someone. Whatever the time limit is, they apparently went past that and forced the door open. The brand new door to his brand new addition. What made me laugh is that it was his front door that had the alarm go off. But the screen door was locked from the inside. Instead of just wrenching open the screen door apparently they broke the frame and some of the hinges on his new door. That's karma coming back around for you.

One of my team members at work turned around and said, "I really hate Mondays." My answer, "Around here, every day in December is a Monday. Did you finish your list yet?" Some Christmas cheer. Our holiday party got moved to next year. And, I'm pretty sure there's no way I'm going to be able to deliver all the projects that I have currently going. Of course, we're going to try. I'm cutting so many corners right now, my cube is shaped like a donut. MMMM, donuts.

So, December (what there has been of it) has gone by quickly and without any fanfare. Since I've been in the process of a bazillion different things, I haven't even had the time to stop and notice the usual holiday annoyances. Terri has done absolutely all of the Christmas shopping thus far and though I'll be tortured at some point, I guess it's gone quite well. Since I've been carrying CD's in the car (though I guess it's not technically a car anymore) I haven't heard much in the way of Christmas Carols. Unless you count Gage practicing for his Christmas program. In which case I've heard, "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "O Christmas Tree," and "Jingle Bells" over and over. This must be for the retarded child who can work weird contraptions, but can't cup their hands together and pat.

So I gave the audio book on cd another shot and this time it played without any glitches. So, for the past week or so, on my daily commute I've been listening to Shopgirl read by the author Steve Martin. I don't know if it was the book, Steve's intonation, or my general distaste for the whole genre, but it was not a pleasant first experience. Who knows, maybe someday I'll try again.

Tonight's game certainly didn't have the outcome that I wanted. However, I did get to finish watching the game from the special lower section box seats so it wasn't a total loss. Gage had a lot of fun and got to see Iceburgh up close again. I can't believe that it's only 20 days til Christmas. Which means that there's only 26 days left in the year. I wish I knew where 2006 went. There was a hell of a lot more that I wanted to accomplish.

What a weekend. The boxful of work went untouched. And while that was a good thing over the weekend, it didn't bode well for a good Monday. But, I managed to survive and keep punching and jabbing til I left. Of course, another pile came home with me. Hopefully Studio 60 will be good tonight and I'll be jazzed enough to stay up and make a dent in the work.
Through whatever combination of being lazy, busy, etc. I haven't had a shave in about a week and a half. So, I'm sporting a pretty good growth. Someone at work asked if it was my catch-up beard. Like I wasn't going to shave until I had all my work caught up. I thought about it a second and realized that if that was the case, I'd either look like this or this.

Is it a law that time and space have to slow down on a Friday? It's very painful to have a full week after the abbreviated week last week. Even though I only had one day off, we did manage to get out a couple of hours early on both Wednesday and Friday. Oh well, maybe car shopping tomorrow will be in my benefit. I doubt it, but I can hope.