Christmas 360

Christmas, round 5. My brother and his girlfriend arrived just hours after my parents left today. It was a good visit, but due to various schedule conflicts and illness, our Christmas gatherings this year have been pretty scattered. We're having our 5th family-oriented gift exchange (with my bro and his woman) tonight. Wow. Then it will be done. Officially.
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In other news, Nick at EBgames is da man. He hooked me up with an XBOX 360 2 days before Christmas. After some cancellations and Nick's desire to see me have an XBOX before some family got their SECOND one before Christmas, he hooked me up. So it's been a serious gaming holiday around our house. Been playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Call of Duty2, King Kong, PGR, Perfect Dark: Zero, and Condemned. W00t.

Now I've got to get set back up online and figure out how to use Windows Media Connect to synchronize the XBOX with my PC.

Even J-mo...casual dismisser of all things console...seems intrigued by this new system. Maybe - somehow (if J-mo gets one and I can hook up with Scott) - we can get a local XBOX live communty going.

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On a weirder note, I got to watch a tow truck haul off our 2004 Mazda6 today. Good grief. Nothing like seeing a car with only 8900 miles on it getting towed. Apparently, the fuel pump went bad or something. It started, then died before I got 100 feet from the driveway, so my brother and I pushed it back. Sadly, right now the old '68 Mustang in the garage runs better than the Mazda...well, it starts anyway.

Just feels like a lousy epilogue to what's been a GREAT christmas vacation so far. I hope they've got parts in stock, or it'll be Tuesday or Wednesday before I see the Mazda in our own driveway again. At least I'll get hooked up on a rental in the meantime...

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On a note I would call different, my brother will be drumming for us Sunday morning. Should be interesting to actually play music in church with him. In all the years he's played drums, I don't think I've EVER jammed with him. So tonight's rehearsal ought to be fun...

Anyway,

Peace...

Blogworthy...

"I love it when a plan comes together" - Hannibal Smith, 'The A-Team"

Everything went pretty smoothly tonight at rehearsal. We're doing "Undone" by Lifehouse on Sunday morning nested in the middle of a dramatic performance, and it turned out pretty well. The E is on leave for the next 3 weeks, so Philip has graciously stepped in to help. New song by David Crowder called, "Here Is Our King" also came together...

Anyway, I think the most memorable part of the evening was when Jack pulled his earpiece (Shure E3s) out of his ears only to find that the rubber tip remained in his ear. The next few moments were laugh-out-loud moments as Eric tried to remove the rubber piece from Jack's ear, first with a small pocket knife, then with a Gerber tool that Philip conveniently kept in his bass case. Nothing like seeing Jack trying to hold still as Eric is sticking a Gerber set of pliers into his ear to remove the rubber earpiece. LOL! Too bad no one had a camera on them. It was pretty funny.

Headed out to Ruby Tuesday's after dinner, where we waited 40 minutes for our food, even though there were only like 8 people eating in there and 4 waitresses. Good grief. Still, good food, good times...all that.

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Nick at EBgames told me Scott got his XBOX 360 today. -sigh- Mine is nowhere in sight, though. I may not even get it before year's end. Lousy Microsoft. Sure, what a smart decision to pi$$ off U.S. customers who pre-ordered their systems...then invest too many resources in a launch in Japan where the 'launch' fell kinda flat. Note to Microsoft: Get XBOX's in the hands of people who already committed to buying them BEFORE you engage in such a risky launch in a country ruled by the PS3.

-rant: complete.

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Sorry about that. I'm really not that upset about it. I'll get the thing when I get it. Still... Microsoft = bunch of boobs.

A whole lotta nothin'

Twelve days until Christmas. Whee!!

My shopping is 90% done now. That's a good thing, I suppose. And I haven't stepped foot in a store to do it. Just like last year, I've done everything online. For one, it saves me the headache of engaging the shopping crowds. Second, things are generally cheaper online. Case in point: I bought Stacey a gift that is a good $60 cheaper online (at a reputable site) than in ANY local retail store.

In other news, I've been fighting off this perpetual cold for over two weeks. This week, it's been this weird drainage going down my throat from my right ear canal. Talk about an undesirable sensation. Eww... Nothing like waking up with a sore throat AND an earache. I only hope that this will finally go away by Christmas AND that no one else in my family gets sick. Again.

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I read this article this morning about a winter storm threat to the deep south beginning on Wednesday of next week. Snow, ice, maybe the works. Unusual for December in Alabama, but it's apparently happened before...so who knows. Maybe we'll get some sort of a white Christmas... I know there are skeptics out there (I'm surrounded), and a forecast a week away is generally 'off,' but still... It's the hope that's exciting...

Being a kid at heart, I still love snow. I can understand people who don't like snow if they're from a place where snow really is a headache of winter...like, Ohio (My friend, Jack, is from Ohio originally, and he does NOT like snow...heh). There, once it snows, it's there for days...or weeks...or, like in Minnesota (where Stacey's sis lives), once it snows in December, there's pretty much snow on the ground from then until late May.

But here in Alabamba, we haven't had a real snowfall since 1993. Sure, there's been a few dustings of snow and 1 or 2 major ice storms since, but we are WAY overdue for a real snowfall. I don't want 1993 redux, though...that was a real blizzard, and it socked people in and knocked power out for days (for some people). I just want a few inches of snow on the ground...enough to close the roads for 1 or 2 days. That's it. Then I could just stay home, play with Kailyn in the snow, and drink hot chocolate by the fireplace. Like a scene from an L.L. Bean catalog. Okay, maybe not that cheesy. But snow has been so rare recently, I WILL make the most of it whenever it happens.

Think it'll snow? Do you like snow at all? Feel free to discuss :-).

Show Me the Money...

I watched "The Office" for the first time ever last night. Funny show. In it, the main character...oh, the whats-his-name guy from "The 40-year-old Virgin"...blows a secret Santa party by giving someone a video iPod rather than sticking to the whole $20 spending limit. Totally spoiled the party. Made everyone else feel inadequate compared to the standard he set by turning the whole thing into a competition. But it made for a pretty funny show.

I hate money. I hate needing it. I hate spending it. Sure, I love the stuff money can buy...like...electricity for my house, clothes for my kids, and wonderful bits of technology like a Sony PSP. But I hate money, nonetheless.

I shouldn't complain, I guess. Other than some lingering debt that still hangs on to our lives like the cough that hangs out after the chest cold has passed (though significantly smaller than it was years ago) , we're better off financially than we have been in years. But...

Yes, but...

Take this Christmas-thing. Christmas is becoming a bigger and bigger expense. Stacey and I have to shop now for each other, for TWO kids (now), my brother, her sister, my brother's girlfriend, my parents, and her parents. On top of this, there's the inevitable gift purchases for co-workers and still others I don't want to leave out. Boohoo...

Every year, I understand more and more why many people LOATHE Christmas. The "excess." Granted, we've tried to stick to the same budget no matter how much larger our Christmas gift 'collective' has grown, but it's tough.

I had a cousin years ago request to not have to buy Christmas presents for everyone that year, since he simply couldn't afford to do so. He asked that the whole family kinda play our own version of Secret Santa, and only buy gifts for one or two people of names drawn out of a hat.

I remember his mother (my aunt), got pretty pi$$ed off at that idea. If memory serves, we were all irritated by that. AS IF he was the only one strapped by the holiday expense.

In reality, he really was more strapped than any of us. And he was trying to set a boundary that holiday so that he didn't have to turn a stressful time of year more stressful by piling huge bills on top of everything.

So maybe the rest of my family was inconsiderate. Maybe not - after all, we did accommodate him. But people don't like having tradition altered. In the end, I remember it being a sucky year for gifts 'cause my brother an dI didn't get near as much as we normally did. So much for tradition.

Spoiled, materialistic brats we were, I guess. Not really...my parents didn't raise us that way at all. But still...the materialistic mindset that dominates the holiday in our culture (if not in my familiy) seemed inseparable from our celebration of the birth of Christ.

Maybe that's the problem. All the spendage that seems so necessary...and to risk changing it is to 'spoil' the tradition, even if that tradition keeps people bound to things like debt and shopping stress and even the stress that comes with 'choosing the right gift.'

I dunno. Maybe I'm just blabbling about all this because I spent a large portion of my day shopping for my kids and others online. I spent a lot of money, too.

So maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood.

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How do I make Christmas a happy time of giving to my kids without indoctrinating them with the materialism of the holiday?

It's something worth thinking about...

"No need towel...need sleepy" - Tommy Boy

Yes...need sleepy.

Man, last night I was back in the 'can't sleep' routine. WOOHOO! On the bright side, I stayed up charting out songs when I couldn't sleep. Ahh...2 a.m. productivity.

Didn't do much today, unless you count going grocery shopping and putting up Christmas decorations as 'doing something.'

And playing MLB Baseball on the PSP. That count?

Probably not.

But Publix was VERY crowded when we were there, so it felt like a big deal to be out doing that. Good grief. Nothing like stop-and-go traffic (with grocery carts) on the spice aisle. At least we're stocked up for the coming week. If Publix was that crowded on a Saturday, I can only imagine what Wal-mart was like today. Yee-ikes!

Anyway, I'm going to crawl in bed now. There's supposed to be some thunderstorms sometime later on. I know it's starting to get really warm, windy, and humid outside...and there's a HUGE line of storms popping up in Mississippi. So sleep may remain elusive tonight, too...mainly because thunderstorms and 3-year-olds don't make good bedfellows. So, "Wahoo!" in advance...

Peace...