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.