Yesterday was his birthday, and we went to breakfast today at Julienne. After breakfast i promptly went home and ran to OSH to pick up a ladder of my own and xmas lights. Jen held the ladder and wondered why i was such a pansy when i climbed to the very top. He only fell once. Cracked a few ribs if i do remember correctly. I had that in the back of my mind the entire time i was decorating.
So now at least the house looks presentable for the holidays. Its best that i don't try to overdo it. I'm never going to be able to compete on the level of the block anyway.
Tonight is the Montrose Xmas Parade. So I have a feeling that there won't be any parking available on our street. Just out perfect planning... we invited all the family over for dinner.
I lost it, and everybody in the office was wondering why i was laughing so hard.
My brother Grayson couldn't make it out this weekend cause he had a huge deadline, but i still took the time off to get my own shit done and relax a little. Friday night Jen and I went to Scampi with Bob and David. The restaurant is now with a new owner, but still is exactly the same. Its maybe two guys in the back cooking, two waiters, and the owner himself. The food is incredible. So after dinner we just headed home to sit around. We ended up watching Closer. I liked it, jen didn't.
So we had reservations for Tea at the Huntington already set up, and we invited my parents to join us and tool around the gardens. Tea is always relaxing, and the Huntington wasn't crowded as usual. It was a nice break. Jen and I headed home to prep for friends dropping by that night. We ran around cleaning the house to get ready for Deputy Steve-O and friends. Steve just graduated from the academy and is now officially a San Bernardino Sheriff. So everybody showed up to the house around 6 and we headed over to Star Cafe for dinner. It ended up 10 of us in all and all we did all night was sit around and eat and drink. Good time, but i think i ate too much of the cheese dip.
Sunday was lazy. Jen usually has to drag me kicking and screaming to get a tree, but i went quietly this year. She was a little shocked i think. First place we hit was the nursery about 200 meters from our house. You've actually gotta drive about a mile to get there, but it actually almost backs up to our property. The only had trees in pots, but we walked around the place for awhile just taking stock of all the stuff they've got for the next time we're in the gardening mood.
Next stop was a little tree spot on foothill. We did a drive by and i was making the turn to go around the block when Jen said, "well we could always try the Y. They've got the best trees anyway." WTF?! You've got me shopping at the places you know suck? So the little tree lot on foothill got skipped altogether, and we headed to the YMCA.
They had a really good selection of trees and the place was a madhouse. We ended up finding a great tree and getting out of there unharmed.
Dinner was a good lasagna that Jen cooked up and we sat around and watched the new West Wing. I'm starting to get a little weary of the new episodes. Its kinda like Highlander. The first one was great, but you gotta see all the sequels cause you're hoping that they'll do one just as good. but they never do. West Wing is going downhill. They've dumbed down the writing and taken a far more middle of the road approach to everything. The most political show out there just went and became nothing more than politically correct. but we still have to watch. Cause you just hope that they're gonna pull it out and be as good as they used to be. anyway...
today I finally got up on the roof and fixed the one string of lights that was out. other than that i sat around on my ass and did almost nothing. All i can say is that i searched for a few modeling programs and stumbled across Blender. I'd seen it before, but never gave it much thought. I then ran across a tutorial on how to model a character. I started looking at Blender more closely and found there are a HUGE amount of online tutorials on everything from basic interface to advanced modeling techniques. So i dug in. I put about 5 hours of work in today to start to learn all the basics. All i remember is modeling in Strata Studio Pro back in college, and a little 3DSMax, so this was a crash course. Anyway, i'm already really diggin this shit. I'm just starting to model simple meshes etc, but its amazing how powerful a tool this is FOR FREE!! Its just going to have to be my little side project for awhile.
back to the grind in about 11 hours. not looking forward to it. I've dropped back to lunch on my own. I've just not been liking the vibe of the group lately. We've lost way too many people and it feels like a witch hunt now. waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I've been listening to this since lunch, and all i can say is... fuckin brillant! I already own almost every Green Day album. I've seen them quite a few times and i'll probably see them again, and buy their albums in the future and t-shirts and fuck... you get the point.
This is art. It shows respect.
and something about it sounds like EBN. hmmmm.
If this was PHP it would have been done in an hour. But no way. The client needs it in ASP, and eventually needs it to work with ORACLE. Talk about overkill. anyway, thats the job. But hold on, this isn't my fuckin job. That's the way it goes I guess... This week i get resourced programming ASP scripts with ACCESS database backend when what i should be doing is the ActionScript and Flash animation and a really nice XML parsing system. Oh, i forgot, we're not talking about 1 or the other. This week i get to do both. Lucky Me. Osiris or Ra or some demented fuck is laughing.
