Home for the Holidays

Hope you all had an excellent holiday break (or are still having one, if that's the case). Liz and I made it back to Rochester Wednesday evening after spending almost a week visiting faily and friends. As always, it was great to see everyone again, but it still feels nice to be back at home.

Liz finally got to hand out her handmade sweaters as Christmas presents. She's been working on them for the last few months so she was quite excited to finally give them to her mom and sisters. As you might have guessed, they were a rousing success.

If you'd like to see stunning photos of our trip home, look here.

Liz and I made it back just in time to get our new kitchen appliances. For the most part, it was a pretty simple process. The trickiest part was getting the water line hooked up to the new fridge, but only once did I have water shooting all over the kitchen, so it wasn't too bad. (I knew it was a good idea to put in that shut-off valve.) But now the new fridge and stove are in place. We've got a ton more room in the fridge, but I think that's partially because we threw away a ton of old, nasty food. Nonetheless, the fridge is nice.

Betty was also very happy we made it home. We had friends come over to make sure she had food and water while we were away. Little did I know that they were planning on stopping over every day to make sure she was okay. Spoiled cat. Regardless, she has been extra-cuddly since we got back. It would seem she missed Lizzy quite a bit.

Anyway, not a lot going on aside from traveling for the holidays. Have a safe and happy New Year, everyone!

Happy Holidays!

Well, this post seems somewhat bittersweet considering the topic of my last post, but Happy Holidays, nonetheless. I hope you all have an excellent time getting together with family and friends and eating far too much.

The weather report looked none too promising for this weekend and, after missing Thanksgiving at home due to bad weather, we were certainly not going to miss coming home for Christmas. So, in order to avoid freezing rain, we ended up taking a couple extra days off work and coming home a bit early. I guess it's not all bad - we actually get to spend a couple days in one place over the holidays, as opposed to constantly running to see everyone, although I'm sure we'll be doing plenty of that.

Liz took a promotion at work. The promotion is great. The fact that she has to travel to India a few times over the next four of five months, not so much. We'll get through it, though, and it's a great opportunity for her. I guess I'll just go back to living on frozen pizzas and hot dogs every so often. If you feel sorry for me, feel free to send food. :)

I guess I don't really have a whole lot to say just now. I really just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Take care, everyone!

Good Bye, Mark

For anyone that doesn't know, Mark Joy passed away today. My sister just called tonight to let me know. Mark was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and, seemingly, things went downhill pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I never did get a chance to speak with him about how he was doing.

For anyone that didn't know Mark, he ran the Stables in downtown Clintonville (where I worked, during high school) for quite some time. Despite having multiple hip surgeries and a severe lack of hair, you just couldn't help but smile when he was around. I still tell people about his "diet foods", which included rice cakes covered with chocolate frosting, or his 5 jazz Christmas albums that I was forced to listen to for two months during every holiday season.

Mark did a lot for Clintonville, and for me. He taught me a lot (mostly about men's clothing), but I now know how a suit should fit, how to tie a tie, and, probably more importantly, how important it is to make someone smile.

You'll be missed, Mark. You really will.

Love,
Corey

Christmas Is Coming... I Guess...

Well, it would seem that season is upon us. Thanks in large part to my lovely wife, we now have a decorated tree, our Christmas shopping is done, and we ate dinner from little plates with snowmen on them. Certainly none of these things would have happened when I was living alone. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. After all, I didn't have to decorate the tree by myself, I didn't have to come up with ideas for Christmas presents all by myself (meaning I can realistically blame someone else when my family doesn't like their presents), and the food I ate off the little snowman plates was made by my wife and was far more delicious than anything I cooked before we were married.

And, of course, last night I spent a half hour watching "It's Christmas, Charlie Brown." I'll probably still be watching that show and laughing my head off when I'm 80. And you know it'll still be playing then, too, along with A Christmas Story.

You'll shoot your eye out!

For those of you that don't religiously follow college hockey, the Badgers swept the Gophers (who, coming into the weekend, was 2nd in the WCHA and ranked 4th in the nation) in a two game set in the Twin Cities. That, coupled with a 2 game upset sweep of Denver over third place Colorado College (sorry, Red) has allowed the Badgers to open up a whopping 8 point lead in the WCHA. (For the hockily challenged, that's a 4 game lead.) So, all is good in Madtown.

My fantasy football team has once again proved to be more valuable than I expected. Despite losing my second round draft choice, Javon Walker, in the first week of the season, I finished the regular season in second place - good enough to get a first round bye going into the playoffs. Mind you, I have little hope for the playoffs, but at least now I know that the worst I can finish is 4th place, and that should be good enough to put me in the money. That's good enough for me.

We had friends over this last weekend to play poker. As usual, that was our excuse to clean the house. It's actually retained some semblance of cleanliness and, considering that it's now Wednesday, we're doing pretty well.

This weekend, we'll be off to Sheboygan to visit Liz's folks and make Christmas cookies. Well, Liz will make them, for sure. I may get suckered into it or I might just sit in the living room and take a nap with Liz's dad. We'll call it male bonding and go from there.

Catch y'all later.

Turkey and my life in a Dilbert cartoon...

So, as usual, it's been ages since I've posted anything on my blog. Let me try to fill you in on what's been going on in my fantabulous life.

Work is going along fine and dandy. As usual, no one seems to care what I do so I suppose it's a good thing that I take some pride in my work. Had my first annual review - I was handed a checksheet with roughly 70 different catgeories of "work-related performance." I received a perfect score in every category. As much as I'd like to believe that I am the model employee after just my first year, I don't think I'm quite that naive. I suspect that providing actual feedback would have required more work, so that was pushed aside. *sigh* So, for now, I guess I'll just keep doing whatever I think is best and run with it. I suppose there are many worse situations in life.

Lizzy hasn't been feeling particularly good, lately. She came down with a cold a few weeks ago and has been fighting it ever since. I, on the other hand, was able to fend off the evil cold germs...right up until Thanksgiving Day. We began our annual pilgrimage with a stop in La Crosse to see some of Lizzy's family. The next day, we'd be back in C-Ville to visit more family and friends. Most of the day went well (although Liz's skill at Sheephead left her husband a tad bit embarrassed - at least it wasn't with the Hansens) but, by mid afternoon, I started to feel ill. At first, I thought it was the fact that Liz's uncle's grandma (yeah - so that's no real relation to us, at all) had us watching Judge Judy and Oprah instead of the Dallas/Denver game, which went to overtime. But, as time passed, it just got worse. So, shortly after dinner, Liz and I scampered on home so I could spend the night in my own bed, rather than on the basement floor jammed between Liz's folks and cousins.

I was hoping that, by the next morning, I'd feel up to making the trip home. As luck would have it, I was feeling a bit better after a night's sleep, but we woke up faced with a few inches of snow on the ground, already. So, due to snow, the journey was cancelled. The down side? Obviously, no chance to see my family for Thanksgiving - that may be the first time that's ever happened. The up side? I now get to eat my entire pan of delicious dessert that I'm sure Dean would have devoured had I brought it home.

I've actually been staying pretty busy outside of work (or at least I had been). I was working as a member of a team doing editing of a new book from O'Reilly. That was eating up a lot of my time and, about the time that was about finished, I got an e-mail from someone at Manning that wanted me to do a manuscript review for a new edition of one of their Java books. So that took up quite a bit of my time. Now that both of those projects are done, though, I'm finding that I have a whole lot of free time on my hands. Unfortunately, I'm still fighting this dang cold so, for the most part, I spend my time testing our furniture.

Let's see...sporting news...here's a breaking story: the Packers are really bad. Oh, you probably all knew that, already. Here's something most of you probably didn't know: the Badgers' hockey team is now ranked number 1 in the nation. In the last month, the Badgers swept #5 North Dakota (in North Dakota) and then returned home to go 1-0-1 against #2 Colorado College (Liz and I were in Madison to catch their Saturday night win - it was splendid). Finally, last weekend, the Badgers knocked off #18 Michigan State and #1 Michigan to take the top spot. So far this season, the Badgers are 11-1-2 overall, and 8-0-2 in the WCHA. This weekend? A two game set against Minnesota, who is in second place in the WCHA and #4 in the nation. Should be a great weekend.

Betty went to the vet a couple times now. I think she got into a fight with some other cats outside and took a shot to the face. She had a bloody eye so I took her in. It was all well and good until the vet started actually digging into her eye and pulling stuff out. To anyone in the medical profession, I'm glad you like that work, because I just couldn't take it. Betty and I made it home, a little worse for the wear. But, after a week of medication, Betty is doing better and made it back to the vet to get some more shots. It's now official - she's not rabid.

I gave blood for the first time in my life a couple weeks ago. I've always thought about doing it and just never did. Finally, I figured I should just go and do it. It wasn't bad. The only bad part was that I gave blood in the morning and I never eat breakfast so I was rather "light" on my feet until after lunch. I guess I'll make it a point to make my future appointments in the afternoon.

With Christmas coming up, I suppose I need to start thinking about getting Christmas presents for people. I've heard more horror stories about people going shopping the day after Thanksgiving and, once again, I gave thanks for Amazon.com this year. Let all those other folks get up at 4 in the morning to freeze to death outside Best Buy. I'll roll out of bed this weekend around 9 and start Christmas shopping in my boxers. Suckers.

Of course, I've got family asking me what I wasnt for Christmas and, as usual, I can come up with absolutely nothing. I've simply come to the conclusion that I suck. So if you can think of something that I would really love to have, please let me know.

Yeah, so I can't really think of anything else to gab about right now and I've got a splitting headache so I guess that's going to be enough for now. Catch y'all later.