Thank You

Happy New Years Eve! I would like to take a moment before heading out to the New Years Eve celebrations to stop and share something with you.

Thank you for making this year great.

With time being so short this year when it came to blogging, I still don't know how I would of made it through this year if it wasn't for the blog. And you return time and time again to check in with what crazy goo is coming out of my head and on to the computer screen. So, without getting all sappy, thank you. I'd totally give you one of those bro hugs right now.

I hope 2013 is great to you, if not let me know and I'll kick its ass just for you. But, I'm sure it will be great. I soon will be heading out to the New Years Eve celebration with complete optimism.

Enjoy 2013; I’m sure it will be kind to you.

Xmas Recap

How was all y’alls Christmas/Feastiveness? Despite not having vacation time at the new job, mine was pretty damn good. Christmas Eve looked like this…

You’ll notice the gentle ubiquitous and ironic snow falling like a Thomas Kinkade painting. Just less icky. Most importantly Christmas Eve brought this…

An anglophile Christmas pudding. I can still taste the delicious treat with its massive amounts of tasty liquor. Christmas morning brought this….

Incase you are not schooled in the art of identifying Dyson vacuums in the wild, that is a Dyson in the middle of the Xmas explosion.  I also got this…

In case you’re not a raging nerd, this season I’m sporting a Doctor Who scarf. Nerd.

 

Christmas Morn'

Oh, dear God. Make the happiness stop...

Christmas Evie

It's time for our annual Christmas tradition, brought to you by Evie Harris....

I Am Well

I’ve been walking around lately like my modifiers don’t stink.  This is due to receiving my finial grades for my fall semester. Even with my bad habit of skipping out of class early, I continued my 4.0 grade point average. 

My “look at me I’m so smart” education buzz was shattered last night when upon entering a Boulder 7-11 and the clerk asking me how I was doing, I responded, “I’m doing good.” Well! Damn it. I should of said “I’m doing well.”

Regardless of my 4.0, I still (pardon the colloquialism) ain’t good with the concept of Good verses Well. I guess the Spring semester can’t start soon enough. 

Cookies

Today truly is the most wonderful day in the year. AlthoughI am not necessarily saying that Andy Williams should suck my pink steel, forthis reason anyway, I do prefer today over the day that the silver-backed daddybear with the velvet fetish comes down my chimney.*

Today is Christmas cookie baking day!

Picture it. Denver. 1998. A tradition begins when a smallgroup of lifelong friends decide to get together in Frank’s recently remodeledkitchen to bake cookies.  One moveacross country, one kid, husbands, countless hairstyles, and jean sizes we’restill gathering to bake cookies.

During the passing of time I have gone from swimming in 34 size jeans, to squeezinginto 38, then  back to 34’s I still look forward to today every year. 

*So much for this blog post being a warm holiday greeting. 

Man Uggs < Muggs

Three years ago, on Christmas morning, I unwrapped what would be a life-changing present. This amazing gift was from my good friends, Frank and Kevin. Who knew one gift would alter my life in such an amazing and comforting way. Sheepskin fleece lined slippers. Since then I have realized that there comes a time when you decide that comfort just might be more important than style.

Matthew McConaughey
sporting Uggs.  

In the past three years I have purchased dress shoes, five pairs of Pumas, Nikes, and several other running athletic shoes, yet what I ware the majority of the time, is my sheepskin slippers. Sometimes I did receive some gentle teasing for showing up to restaurants, house parties, Opera Colorado, dinner parties, the gym, and pick-a-part junkyards sporting house shoes, but hey; they’re suede leather, that’s fancy.  The only down side to this choice of pro foot comfort - sans style is that I had to resign myself to never achieving status as one of the cool kids. The jocks never sit at the cool-kid table kicking back in sheepskin-lined boots. Or do they…

Just as I had abandoned any hope of being one of the cool kids, I was standing in line at Taco Bell, in my most comfortable footwear, when a local high school gang of hot jock – athletic type dooods came poring into the establishment. I continued to text away waiting for my #7 as I pretended to not notice their tight jeans and clear skin. As I waited for my order, I noticed something… they were all pretty much wearing the same type of kicks.  I would of snapped a picture, but felt it wrong to be the forty year old guy that stands in Taco Bell, taking photos of seventeen year old boys. “No, officer! It’s just for my blog.”

With this level of encouragement, I now have worked up my self-image to publicly say that I am comfortable enough in my masculinity to wear Uggs. Man Uggs. Muggs. I have asked Santa for a pair of Muggs. All the sheepy softness to cradle my feet in a “I stopped caring about fashion, yet I really yearn to be stylish” kind of way. We’ll see if Santa agrees.  

Sleep In

Coal power plants, and most likely you receive your power from a coal supplied power plant... unless you're lucky enough to live in an area with alternative power generation, and of you do great for you. Bully for Bixby. Coal fired power plants can only operate at one level. Fully on.

During the night, this power from the burning of coal is not utilized. As the day starts, the load demand goes up and up into the peak hours of demand. In most areas, the demand goes up and beyond the straight unwavering level and ability for the plant to produce and provide. The power companies, then must switch on line more expensive and dirty power plants.

If we were able to shift a small amount of the demand off of peak demand times, we could utilize the wasted energy produced during the night hours. A small fraction of the population would be needed to change their sleep and work patterns. Move from traditional early morning start times to starting their days in the early afternoon.

I for one, would step up. To help save our resources...and sleep passed noon.

Christmas Adjacent

I attempted to build up some Christmas spirit yesterday by heading to the local Town 'n Country garden center turned tree lot. The place personified Christmas, the hot husbands in their best Carhart buzzed away on chain saws, whilst the sister wives supervised the older children. All were adorned in themed sweatshirts smeared with felt Santas and reindeer made in church crafting circle. I was there not to buy a tree, but to smell the evergreen (which alway makes me hum Barbara Streisand) mountainy scent in an attempt to spark the pilot light of spirit down in my dark cold soul. I'm completely lacking in spirit this season. Completely.

I did, however; get a handmade evergreen wreath for the front door. I decided that commitment to the whole decorating thing was too much, yet a gourmet wreath would be Christmas adjacent. Nothing like a 40 buck circle of tree limbs to mark the season.

As the sixteen year old girl rang up my over priced ring of forest scented loveliness, she asked if I needed my receipt. My response was that I did because I may want to exercise my right of the thirty day return policy and bring back my wreath in January. The stunned silence on the girls face was just enough to launch my weary soul into the feastavice season.

Fa-la-la-la.

Can I Watch TV Now?

Good news everybody. Last night I completed my 30 minute finial presentation on the history of the gays in the U.S. military and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. I called it "The Menace of Fabulousness" and felt it went well, I did feel like a macropod* with the crazy amount of random facts I pulled out of me during the talk. This is due the small factor that my categorized and color-coded 3x5 index cards were completely safe at home instead of with me in my college lecture hall. Yay.

This presentation was my final for hopefully my last communications class I will EVER need to take. Unless I change my major. Again. This means that after my written final exam on Monday, consisting of 200 words why I believe that Napoleon was a selfish lover, a paragraph on how the Glorious Revolution was neither, and how General Patton was all pownd by the Chinese My mind shall be free.

God! I nearly started to recite the panel 2 quotation on the Jefferson Memorial. That is sooo like me.

I guess what I'm attempting to say is that I desperately need a break. Less Truman Doctrine and more Steve watch TV Doctrine.



*Part of the marsupial family Macropodidae, which includes kangaroos, wallabies, tree-kangaroos, pademelons, and several others.