New Years Eve

I go back and forth on what I do on New Years Eve. This year I sat at home and just hung out. I haven’t felt that great this week. And to be honest I didn’t really want to do very much. In years past I have done parties, hung with friends, gone to Time Square (twice), done Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and traveled far and wide to ring in the new year with friends. It is nice to just relax at home sometimes. Why does everyone feel compelled to do “something” on new years. My family has been asking “what am I doing”? They don’t understand when I say I want to do nothing.

Here is to a low key (aka restful) new years eve!

What In The World Is Kwanzaa?

I am told it is Kwanzaa. When thinking about this “holiday” I can’t stop thinking about an episode of Futurama. Bender is talking to “Kwanzaabot” about what gift he is giving out to all the children that year. Kwanzabot’s reply is the traditional Kwanzaa gift. he holds up a book with two kids looking at each other with a bewildered look on their faces. The title of the book is What in the world is Kwanzaa. It was very funny. That whole show is very funny, but I remember that scene. Tried a little while ago to find that scene on the internet and I was unable to. Futurama’s entire X-Mas theme’d episodes are really funny. You should check them out.

So after thinking about the book reference above, Jayson showed me the Official Kwanzaa website. After checking it out for a minute I have come to a conclusion about holiday’s I will observe. First I will say that I respect other people’s believes, and their right to celebrate any holiday they want. I for one am a fan of Festivus. What I have come to believe is that I don’t think I will observe any holiday founded by someone who is still alive. Furthermore if that person was alive at any time in my lifetime I have to question a holiday’s integrity, unless that person was killed and the holiday was formed in his or her honor. For example Martin Luther King day to me is a legit holiday. Mothers & Fathers day’s, not so much. So I guess another rule is if some company somewhere made up the holiday it is just as bad as some guy somewhere doing it. A holiday that the founder has a message on his website (aka Kwanzaa) does not convey to me the long standing legitimacy. But that is just me. I am 30 and I still believe in Santa Clause.

Now anyone that may stumble upon this posting when searching the internet should hopefully realize that any writing like this one that refers to commentary from a cartoon when talking about a holiday should not be taken very seriously. But if you are a whack job, you can feel free to be offended.

Allergy Med’s and Good Food!

Today I felt horrible. I ran out of my allergy medication Zirtec. I ended up going out and buying over the counter Clariton D, but it will take a while to get in my system. I feel like I have a cold, but it is all due to allergy’s and the dry heat in my apartment. Yesterday was no better. I had a head ache right when I woke up. That is never a good thing. I ended up taking 2 doses of Butabitol to get me through the day and night. At least I was feeling better enough to go out and meet some friends.

Joe was in from Baton Rouge for the a few days visiting his girl friend. Jay, Joe, John, myself and Joe & John’s girlfriends all got together last night for dinner. We hit City Crab. It is right by my office so I didn’t complain. I wasn’t feeling so great so I didn’t splurge on the King Crab legs. They looked good, but I stuck with the cheaper (still very expensive) Crab Cakes. They were great. Most everyone else got the surf n turf. Jay had a salad! We had a good time catching up. Joe went to the Christmas show at radio city tonight. he was then going over to John’s for some Halo. Jay and like 6 other people also went over there. I still wasn’t feeling so great, and I was tired from the craziness all week so I bowed out. I had no good excuse, but I was just tired. Everyone will have to get by fragging others.

It’s Snowing Outside

As I sit here writing my Blog I notice it is still snowing. It started snowing a little before we left the movie theater. Now about an hour later there is a sizable dusting of snow on the ground. The sidewalks are covered in snow. The roads are being used enough that no snow has accumulated on them yet. They say there will be up to 2 inches tonight.

I love snow. Being in it, not so much. But watching it snow is cool. Coming in from the snow was always a nice experience. Hot Chocolate, Mmmm. Commuting in snow or other bad weather, not so good. We shall see how living in Manhattan and relying on mass transit that is entirely underground for me goes tomorrow. Should not be a problem, but since I am a realist I am prepared for problems! For now I am finishing up this entry and going to look out the window some more…

Holiday Week Recap

I could say that I took the week off, and that is why I haven’t posted in a few days. That would not be true, but I could say that. I worked all of last week. I even ran to the office on both friday and Saturday. I had off both days but I had some quick stuff to do so I ran down there for about an hour each day.

Christmas eve I did some rewiring of my TV and computer. I bought RCA cables to hook up my computer video card to my TV and stereo. I can now use Beyond TV on my TV like a Tivo. It actually works really well. More news on that as it develops. I ended up down at Outback with Jayson and Gretchen for dinner. It was empty because it was Christmas eve, but the place was open till 10:30PM. I made it down in record time. The cab powers that be have been kind to me for finding cabs in the freezing cold. Gretchen knows I cannot pass up Outback. Dam her! That was the third time in recent memory that I have dropped what I was doing and went down to Outback because of a phone call. She is not helping my diet. Since I don’t have I diet, I shouldn’t care:) I did have a bloomin onion for the first time in months. It was a good day!

I went to my parents friends house for a Christmas party. it was ok. My family is friends with a bunch of crazy people. I should learn not to trust my mom when it comes to time or how far someplace is. The trip to the party was LONG. traffic was bad. Coming home it was not as bad, but my sister got into a small fender bender. As she was pulling over to the curb to let me out to the subway we hit another car. Some dumb-ass was stopped at the curb, so my sister went to pull in front of them to park and let me out. The dumb-ass begins to move and hits us in the side of the truck. I could see no damage to my sisters cherokee, but the other car had a nice dent and paint off of the bumper by the front headlight. After some “nice” words between the group of us, we exchanged insurance and off we went. Not sure who will be blamed by the insurance company. I think we will, even thought this ass-whole was not moving when we were moving into his lane. At least morgan slept through the whole thing.

As for commuting on the subway on a cold holiday, I was surprised by how quick most of the trains came on Christmas. Maybe I got lucky, but 3 out of the 4 trains I had to catch came quick.

Today I hung out at home. I had work to do on my laptop (see another post on that) and I had to update my checkbook in quicken. What fun. I just got back from seeing meet the fockers with Jayson and Gretchen. I went down to their neck of the woods and we saw it. That movie was stupid but funny.

Lets hope this week will be a calm and q—t. I won’t say the “Q” word. But I am probably wrong about it being “Q”. Why you ask? Because I am thinking it will be.

Only Good Thing Today

I forgot to mention the only good thing that happened today. Last night I went over to Jayson’s and we hit the Bed Bath & Beyond by his house. Sounds exciting right? Well actually it was. I got 2 sets of chocolate filled alcohol. If you haven’t had any I suggest you get some. It is bite sized chocolate in the shape of bottles with different alcohol’s in them. Very tasty. You can only find them during the holiday’s. Jay, Cari, AJ, & Danny ate a box today after work. I have another one at home to savor. Danny is getting another box so we can have more later in the week.

Hanukah But Late

Went to my sisters today for a Hanukah brunch.  If you are Jewish, or if you keep track of holiday’s you may be saying "wasn’t that last week"?  Yes, yes it was.  My sister was in Jamaica (the island, not queens) for vacation so we had a get together when they got back.  Morgan had tons of presents, and wanted to play with all of them.  That kid is too cute for her own good.

I got a bottle of Gentleman Jack (Daniel’s) out of their trip.  It is my favorite, but I am not a shot drinker like I used to be.  Whenever anyone in my family goes somewhere I always end up with a bottle of alcohol.  I may have done too much spin on my drinking habits with them, because I have a full liquor cabinet of stuff from vacations.  I am not complaining.  I actually just finished off my last bottle of Gentleman Jack, so this new one is now in my freezer.

After my sisters I went over to Gretchen and Jay’s to hang out for a bit.  It was a nice weekend day…

I Am A Bad Parent

I don’t have kids, but I am a bad fish parent. I have a confession to make. Last week when Jayson was away in Baton Rouge selling his condo I was really neglectful of our fish. I totally forgot to feed him for an entire day. The crab too, but I feel worse about the fish. He never does anything wrong and I was a bad parent:( I think I made the situation worse when I realized what I did and over feed him. I wanted to compensate for my lack of feeding. In reality I did feed him on both thursday and friday, but forgot to feed him on Friday morning. So he went a full day (thursday night to friday night) without food. Poor little guy. He just swims around and when we walk over to the tank and open the lid he is all ready for feeding time. I let him down.

I got laughed at by someone at work (i think it was brad) for talking to him the other day. Crusty (the fish) needs attention too. So if you have a problem with me talking to fish, get over it.

Jayson and I are both bad fish parents because we said we were going to get Crusty a friend for weeks and we still haven’t. We need to soon. The only problem is that Crusty had 2 fish friends before and they both died. Not sure if he had anything to do with it, or if it was the water temperature. Either way we have our eye on our killer fish, but we still love him anyway.

Do You Want A House?

Do you want to buy a house? Jayson is selling a house in Baton Rouge. It is nice. Lots of space! If you buy it and mention finding out about it via this blog I will get $1,000! I doubt that anyone will follow up on this, but for a grand I will make a post!

I just hope he can sell it so he can have spending money again.

Elevator Etiquette

For some reason Jenn seems to think I pressed all the buttons on Dan’s elevator last Sunday so she would have to wait for the elevator. The story is that when we were leaving Dan’s Sunday she was taking a long time for some reason or another. Since we all (Cari, Jayson, Gretchen, Jenn, & I) were not really traveling together it was ok for us to leave. She didn’t ask us to wait for her, so we left. We heard her as the elevator left Dan’s floor and knew she just missed her. Someone joked that it would be funny if someone hit all the elevator buttons. We all laughed and we think she may have heard us.

We got to the lobby and left normally. I took off Monday, but on Tuesday I hear Jenn claiming that I hit all the buttons. I was surprised since no one hit the buttons. I don’t remember anyone doing it. So either she is making the whole thing up since we were joking about it, or someone must have done it at the last second after we got out. I am thinking she may have just made up the situation. I don’t think we will ever know the truth…

I just want to say if I do play a joke on someone, I will be man enough to say “ha ha, I did that” and then prepare myself for the retaliation that may or may not ensue.