Brain (s)Craps

Can I just take this opportunity to say what an incredible game that was? I thought the Orange bowl Tuesday night between Penn State and FSU was a bloody fight to the finish, but the Rose Bowl last night took the cake, injected it with nitroglycerin, and force fed it to me with a Plumber's Helper. It was like a late Christmas / early birthday present wrapped up in millions of glowing protons on my TV. Best of all? being able to put the game film on my other Christmas preset this year, my 60 gig iPod video. As Glen Quagmire would say: "Ooohhhh riiiiight!"

I hadn't really payed much attention to the whole iPod craze up until the newest iPod came out. Even then I was just like "Cool." Then my wife spring the surprise on me. She fooled me, too. She had me thinking she had bought me a new desk for Christmas. Now that I've got an iPod, I can't believe I didn't get one sooner. Well actually, I can because we don't have a lot of spare cheddar most of the time, but you know what I mean.

Hook 'Em!

Ooo look! Christmas! **WHOOSH** There it goes!

Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to those of you I didn't get to talk to over the holidays. Nothing rushes by quite so fast as Christmas and New Years when you're dashing from house to house trying to get 'quality' time in with as many family branches as possible. It was rather interesting to see the extremes of family involvement in Christmas. One side of the family just mailed in cards to everyone else. This side of the family has no kids under sixteen, so I can see the point, sortof. Another side of the family had a huge Christmas eve party with one of those goofy White Elephant gift exchanges that's so popular around the workplace these days. Yet another branch of the family had a big Christmas morning do where all the adults stayed up all night getting everything set up for the little ones. It was quite a roller coaster.

Normally I'm all about peace, quiet, and solitude. For some reason, my tolerance level goes way up when the jolly red fat guy gets ready to make his appearance. I guess it's me getting into the Christmas spirit. It was great fun being in a big noisy house filled with family members I hadn't seen in ages, even if I did feel out of place for being the only one not wearing cowboy boots.

Family Ties

Last time I was on here, I talked about seeing my biological father again after a number of years. It went OK. Talk was rather banal catching up kind of chatter. It was his first time meeting my wife, so there was that. I saw cousins I hadn't seen in years all grown up and married with "little'uns" running around all over the place. I saw my older sister again and her youngest. Cute kid. Big sis looked like life was not being kind to her. I narrowly missed meeting my youngest sister for the first time. She's nineteen now. Every now and again I get a little wistful thinking about my sisters and how we could have made things work out despite our jacked up family arrangements. Then I wake up and realize they would probably feel the same way about me swooping in and trying to be a brother after all these years that I feel about our father trying to swoop in and be a dad after being persona non adesse.

While the atmosphere was great, it wasn't really conducive to a heart to heart talk. This is probably for the better, for now. I do have issues that need to be sorted with him, but I don't know that I'm ready to pick those deep psychological scabs and examine the pus just yet. It was suggested that a relationship with my father might be a good thing because he would more readily accept me as I am, whereas my Dad is a hard man who may never accept or approve of me. What would be better, the approval of a man who has guilt for not being there for thirty years or the disapproval of a man who has known me my whole life?

Another Holiday Rant

I've vacillated back and forth about whether to have a public rant about this, but I'm just gonna do it and damn the consequences!

People just don't appreciate what is done for them. Allow me to explain...

My wife is probably the warmest, sweetest, most selfless person I know. I'm not saying that she's a saint or anything, but whenever an opportunity to help someone arises she is always there, giving time or money or her own blood sweat and tears. Even more so when the person in need is one of her own family.

This year for Christmas, her family got her a grand total of ten bucks worth of junk. A couple of DVDs out of the Wal Mart bargain bin. Some of them got her nothing at all. It wasn't even an issue of people not having any money to buy something, it was just an 'Oops, I forgot' from most of them. After all the things she has done for them over the past year, they could at least give a thoughtful card or something if they were really hard up for cash. I know Christmas isn't supposed to be about the gifts. "It's the thought that counts" right? It would have been nice if anything she had gotten had been thoughtful. Or if the one who 'forgot' to get her anything had been a little more appreciative when she asked him to help her out with some of the proceedings that day. I know I'm being vague, but I really just wanted to get this out in the open since it's been festering in me since Christmas day.

Ho ho ho.